Colby Covington And The Celebration of Awful People
UFC 272 and a history of cheering the bad guys
Colby Covington is an awful human being.
Sure, he may be putting on an act—but at this point he’s been doing it so long and so loudly it might as well be genuine.
In fear for his livelihood way back in 2017, he cultivated a controversial persona, calling Brazilians “filthy animals” and generally doing the world’s worst Chael Sonnen impression. But that was just a test run for his new “Chaos” character, a red-hat-wearing MAGA thug who attempted to insert himself into every divisive issue of the day.
Covington promised to win the UFC title and visit the White House to celebrate with President Donald Trump. And damned if he didn’t do it, albeit with an interim title that didn’t shine quite as bright as the real thing.
With Trump’s power to antagonize fading over time, Covington shifted his act to include shocking personal attacks on his foes, most recently his claim that Dustin Poirier was a cuckold and his wife a jezebel, even questioning whether Poirier is really the father to their five-year-old daughter.
“Dustin, you’re a fucking coward, your wife is a hoe and she has fake tits on her chest,” Covington said in an interview. “And you’re a piece of shit father.”
This is pretty repulsive behavior by any standard and we should all condemn it in the strongest terms. In a better world, he’d be drummed out of the sport by popular and unanimous consensus.
But we don’t live in that better world.
From Tank Abbott mockingly imitating an opponent’s convulsions after a brutal knockout to Kazushi Sakuraba’s race-baiting Super Mario entrance before his fight with Kevin Randleman in Pride, MMA has always been a shit show geared for the lowest common-denominator. The greatest fighters of our time are Jon Jones and Khabib Nurmagomedov. The two most popular attractions in the sport’s history are Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor.
If you’re looking for heroes, you’ve very much come to the wrong place.
Long gone are the days of Georges St-Pierre, a man whose idea of trash talk was telling champion Matt Hughes that he wasn’t impressed with his performance—and then apologizing because he felt he’d gone too far. In 2022, chances are celebrating excellence in the cage means celebrating an athlete you probably wouldn’t like as a person. The Covingtons are what we’ve got and either you can live with that or it’s time to flip the channel to something for people with more delicate constitutions.
So I make no apologies for cheering Covington on to victory against Jorge Masvidal, himself a controversial figure. I love the way he breaks lesser men over the course of 15 or 25 minutes with his unyielding pressure and pitter-pat punches. Against Masvidal, he pushed his supposed hated rival into the fence, took him down with ease and reminded him over and over again that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
Covington’s game is far from perfect. But that’s what makes him so compelling. Despite his dominance in some areas, his lack of fundamental finishing techniques means his opponents will always have a chance to turn the tide.
His ground-and-pound is tepid at best. His submission game, here consisting of half-hearted neck cranks and choke attempts, is best described as completely inadequate to the task. Covington’s fight game matches his character perfectly. It’s non-stop trolling designed to piss the other guy off, wear him down, and leave Covington as the only man in the arena smiling when it is all over.
That he’s a dreadful dolt and crass simpleton is kind of beside the point. This is MMA. And, in MMA, whether you like it or not, you’re almost always rooting for the bad guy.
they literally try to beat other dudes out cold for money. they aint good and we are even worse for being fans of it. We're all deplorable TBH, this crap is too sanitized nowadays. Get rid of all these normie fans and bring back the just bleed guy. Let's all just agree to be scumbags. It suits us well
Great Text (as always). This shift towards even more bad behavior, may it be for show or because fighters are just assholes in general nowadays (widespread Qanon idiocy and so on makes me question the show aspect) is what made it really hard for me to root for anyone anymore and has led me to stop watching MMA altogether. Sure as you said in the text it was always a tendency but in my feeling Fighters, back when I was a self described hardcore Fan, were whacky or out there and sometimes intimidating, but in general seemed like good people (ok you had your Joe Sons and so on but you get my meaning) . Now they turned the volume button from brash or cocky to all around asshole and that’s not for me. One could say if this makes me leave behind a whole sport, says something about my love for MMA in general, but for me it was always rooting for someone (and then maybe switching mid fight), which has been made hard by the UFC especially since they got so many fighters and events you have to keep up with. And if those you do recognize come out with stuff like the shit Colby says (or the once beloved Gina Carano) it’s hard to cheer for idiots like this, he’ll even to cheer agains them.
But maybe that’s just me.