Kamaru Usman sees nothing wrong with referee Marc Goddard’s decision to call an end to the UFC 245 main event with under a minute remaining in the fight.
Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington both carried with them extensive winning streaks coming into their UFC 245 showdown in the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. What resulted when the two clashed was one of the most tightly contested title fights in the history of the UFC, with both fighters going back and forth continuously like a fight scene from a Rocky film. And in the climax of this feature showcase, Colby Covington was dropped just as the fight was reaching the end, in typical Hollywood fashion.
With a broken jaw and battered face, Covington willed himself to his feet in a tremendous display of heart, only for Kamaru Usman, the babyface to Covington’s self-admitted heel, to send him back down and finish the fight.
But the drama did not end there. There was some controversy as to whether or not the stoppage by referee Marc Goddard was justified. Colby Covington did not waste time tweeting out his thoughts on the matter immediately following the fight, calling both the stoppage and the referee “fake.” When told of Covington’s antipathy towards the stoppage, Usman endeavored to set the record straight.
“Oh, he was leaking under there. He was hurt bad,” Usman said in the UFC 245 post-fight press conference prior to getting into more particulars. “As a wrestler, if you’re underneath someone, you want to hang on to a leg. And he wasn’t even on a leg. That’s why I was landing free shots. Right behind the ear, I was landing them. And great stoppage by Marc Goddard. That’s why he’s one of the best referees out there. He’s there to protect you, even though you’re dumb enough to not protect yourself.”
Kamaru Usman’s victory over Colby Covington marked the first successful title defense for The Nigerian Nightmare in what was his first time headlining a pay per view.
Do you agree with the stoppage of the UFC 245 main event between Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington?
