Colby Covington slams UFC for ‘slave labor negotiations’

Colby Covington is once again butting heads with the UFC.

The former interim welterweight champ was expected to challenge Kamaru Usman for the undisputed welterweight title at UFC 244 this November, but this plan fizzled when the fighters and the promotion could not come to an agreement that worked for all parties involved.

Speaking on the latest episode of BJPENN.com Radio, Covington trashed the UFC’s business practices.

“That’s how UFC does business, they do the bully tactics,” he said. “They do the slave labor negotiations. It’s sick man. They don’t want to pay any of the fighters because they want everybody to be poor, so they keep back coming back and fighting all the time, and fighting six times a year.”

Covington continued, explaining that he’s tired of doing the UFC favors — like stepping in to fight Robbie Lawler on short notice at UFC Newark this summer— and receiving nothing in return.

“The UFC always makes promises, they’ve made me so many promises,” Covington continued. “[They say] ‘Oh, do this and we’ll give you a favor here. We’ll throw you a bone next time.’ They never end up throwing that bone back, man. They just use you even more next time. So it’s just… I’m not going to be played for a fool anymore, man. They want to do business like that, then they’re not going to get any business. That’s that.

“They said, ‘Oh, show up for the Robbie Lawler fight,'” Covington continued. “And needless to say, Robbie was training for 12 weeks for that fight. He was getting ready for [Tyron] Woodley, but Woodley was scared and he pulled out with a sore pinky. So Woodley didn’t want to get knocked out by Robbie, he was scared. He knows he got lucky the first time [they fought]. So I showed up on four weeks’ notice, without a training camp because I got a nasty cut from a head butt in the first week in training camp. I couldn’t even train. Pretty much had to run on the treadmill every day, that’s it. That’s not training timing, accuracy, all that. So I showed up with no camp, to save the UFC, to save the main event, to bring the First Family, to get the President Tweeting about the UFC. To get all the troops all over the world watching in their bases because I’m America’s and the troops’ favorite fighter.

“The UFC still doesn’t do good for me,” he concluded. “I make them millions and millions and they just continue to just pocket all that money, and they don’t want to pay me a fraction — not even 5% of any of that money. It’s ridiculous how they can pocket 95, 98% and not give the fighters anymore than the 2, 3%.”

What do you think of these gripes from Colby Covington? Should he, and the other fighters on the UFC roster, be getting a bigger piece of the pie?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 9/17/2019.