It is fair to say that Colby Covington made his mark among Brazilian fans on Saturday night, but for all the wrong reasons
Referring to your hos country as “a dump” and its inhabitants as “filthy animals” will generally go down like a lead balloon.
“I had my suit ready,” Covington told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “I was all dressed up, ready to go. But then [UFC official] Reed [Harris] put me in the van. He was like, ‘Hey, we’ve gotta get you out of here. We don’t know if it’s safe for you to be here.’ They either pulled me for two reasons. They either pulled me because they thought it was dangerous and they didn’t know if it would be good. Or they pulled me because they thought I was gonna say more controversial comments about Brazil.”
“We went in through the negative levels,” Covington continued, discussing his stealth mission back to his hotel room. “They guarded me up the elevator. They wouldn’t let anybody else on the elevator. We ducked so no one sees us over the balcony. We walked back to our room. I’m in my room on lockdown.”
“I was a little nervous. I can’t lie. I’m not gonna come lie to you today. I’m not a liar, I’m a truth teller.”
Covington also explained why he said what he did:
“I just didn’t like how they treated me when I was in the tunnel before the walkout to the fight,” he said. “I’m sitting in the tunnel and they’re yelling all these things. ‘Oh, I f*cked your mom,’ this and that. Stuff about me, ‘Oh, you’re gonna die.’ Throwing cups and stuff and hot dogs.”
“You need to respect me,” he added. “I’m going into a fight, this is professionals. So, I just felt disrespected by them. I didn’t say anything that was too outlandish.”
“With the way they treat people over there, you can’t do that over in Canada, Ariel. You can’t do that in the USA. You won’t hear whole crowds doing stuff like that and the things they do. So, I don’t think I crossed any line.”
