Colby Covington and Kamaru Usman Will Settle Their Bad Blood at UFC 245

Will the real UFC welterweight champion please stand up?

Colby Covington has been adamant over recent months that the only reason UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman is able to call himself the division’s best fighter is because Covington, the former interim titleholder, was unable to secure a match against previous champ Tyron Woodley before Usman did.

Usman defeated Woodley in March at UFC 235 to become the UFC welterweight champion, and things have never really been the same since. 

Heck, Covington and Usman got into a scuffle while standing in a hotel buffet line the very first day of Usman’s title reign. That fight was broken up, but since the altercation, both have seemed adamant about getting their hands on each other next. 

After negotiations stalled last month and even seemed to be doomed, the fight was suddenly announced earlier this week for December 14 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. 

Usman vs. Covington will headline UFC 245, rounding out a championship tripleheader that also includes Max Holloway’s featherweight title defense against Alexander Volkanovski and Amanda Nunes’s women’s bantamweight defense against Germaine De Randamie.

John Locher/Associated Press

It’d be overly simplistic to say Covington, 31, fighting out of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has talked his way into this important welterweight title fight. After all, Covington will head into UFC 245 having won seven straight fights against mostly notable opposition, including impressive wins over Robbie Lawler and Rafael Dos Anjos.

But there is at least some aspect of Covington’s title challenge that relates to the aggressive way he employs his specialized brand of self-promotion strategy. He’s coarse. He’s brash. He says things simultaneously designed to rile up his haters and stir up his fans. 

The shortest way to say it is that he’s basically an internet troll who loves to be hated, but one that could totally beat you up if you ran into him in real life.

It’s almost as if he’s playing a character, one that would probably be considered a heel in the professional wrestling world.

Covington wants money and fame. This is just how he’s going after it. 

But Covington is also an impressive fighter. He’s ranked No. 2 in the official UFC welterweight rankings for good reason. He has an aggressive striking style and has become a rising star in the MMA world because of it. 

Still, he’s best known as the guy who boasts heavily about his pro-Trump political leanings while surrounding himself with bikini-clad women, and he probably always will be. 

Meanwhile, Usman, 32, fighting out of Dallas, Tex., is nothing like that at all.

Following an impressive collegiate wrestling career in which he became a three-time All-American, Usman won The Ultimate Fighter 21 to get his foot in the door at the UFC and he’s become one of the most dominant fighters at 170 pounds since.

Like Covington, Usman is an impressive striker on his feet. He’s gritty, rugged and always ready to bring the action.

But where Covington is known for issuing cringe-worthy diatribes pretty much anytime he’s handed a mic, when given the same kinds of opportunities, Usman has been known to do things like immediately offer classy tributes to felled opponents. 

And who can forget him going out of his way to embrace Woodley’s mother backstage back in March after lifting the UFC welterweight title in dominating fashion?

If Covington is a real fighter pretending to be a caricature of some kind in order to attract clicks and views because he thinks that’s the surest way to net him the most amount money during this fighting career, Usman is a real fighter just being a real person and letting the chips fall where they may. 

Usman is riding a 14-fight win streak. To check the box for No. 15 against Covington, he’ll likely need to exploit the assumed technical edge he’ll have over Covington on the ground. While both fighters are fierce strikers with solid standup techniques and high motors, Usman seems the naturally stronger, and perhaps more athletically gifted fighter overall.

The bad blood between the two is legit. According to TMZ Sports, Covington’s expert-level troll job has really gotten on the champ’s last nerves. 

"Every opponent that I've faced, I've never really had ill will towards ... I've never had bad blood to where I was in there maliciously trying to hurt them,” Usman admitted to TMZ. “This is a guy that I have that towards."

And as for the ever-antagonistic Covington, he'll just keep doing what he does right up until the bell rings on Dec. 14. The latest poke at the champ is that Covington just hopes his opponent shows up that night. 

“There is a very real possibility he doesn’t show up,” Covington told theScore MMA. “That is the only thing I’m worried about, I’m not worried about anything on my end. I know what I bring to the table, the UFC knows what I bring to the table. I’m going to show up Dec. 14 and the most coveted title in sports will get defended.”

Regardless, whatever happens between now and then, the surest bet for the fight is this: things won’t be all that pretty until these two fighters get into the Octagon to face each other. Once there, the fight is sure to be a real barnburner, one where the winner conceivably grabs hold of the welterweight division’s reins for good.