EXCLUSIVE | Colby Covington shares UFC 225 title win with with Jorge Masvidal, Dan Lambert

For all of the self-confidence and bravado Colby Covington exudes, he is very much a part of a team. The polarizing welterweight has been a member of American Top Team since his mixed martial arts career began, and has evolved from a raw, college wrestler into the interim UFC welterweight champion under the world famous facility’s roof. As such, he’s sharing his UFC 225 interim title win over Rafael dos Anjos with his teammates at ATT — most notably, fellow UFC welterweight Jorge Masvidal, and ATT founder Dan Lambert.

Colby Covington paid tribute to his ATT stablemates on the latest episode of BJPENN.COM Radio.

“It’s crazy how we started this journey eight years together,” Covington said of Masvidal, who was in his corner at UFC 225. “The first person I met was ‘Gamebred’ Jorge Masvidal when I went to American Top Team. We’ve been training partners. We’ve been through so much stuff together, man, it’s unbelievable. We lived together for two years in a shitty apartment, you know, just scraping by, getting ends to meet just to be able to go to the gym and ride our bicycles to the gym. So to go through that, and get a world championship, it’s everything that we envisioned, you know? We’ve been talking about this for a long time. Me and Jorge have these dreams, you know, we’re gonna be world champs, and now I’m world champ, he’s in the top-10. He’s got an opportunity to make his way up to a world championship title shot. It was a special moment for me and Jorge Masvidal man. I really just took it in.”

“Just big shout out to my agent, Dan Lambert,” Covington continued. “It was a special moment [at UFC 225] outside the cage. There’s not many guys that are homegrown world champions from a gym. I came into American Top Team fresh out of college, didn’t know much about martial arts. [Lambert] took me in like his son, gave me a place to live. I had a lot of student debt, college debt. He made it so I could just focus on training and being a world champion. To be homegrown from American Top Team is so special, and the moment I had with Dan Lambert last night was truly a special night that I’ll never forget in my life, so a big thank you to him.”

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 6/11/2018.