Colby Covington believes poor instructions from former ATT cornermen contributed to his loss to Kamaru Usman at UFC 245

Colby Covington believes that poor instructions from his former ATT cornermen contributed to his loss to Kamaru Usman at UFC 245.

Covington lost via fifth-round TKO to Usman the first time these two welterweight rivals met inside the Octagon at UFC 245. In that fight, the two archrivals went back-and-forth for nearly the full 25 minutes until Usman dropped Covington late in the fifth round and referee Marc Goddard stopped the fight. In the two years since then, Covington has done everything in his power in order to convince the UFC to give him the rematch, and they finally caved in and gave it to him. This Saturday at UFC 268, Covington gets to step into the Octagon for the second time when he takes on Usman for the welterweight title.

Part of the reason Covington believes he has a better shot of winning in the rematch is that he is no longer part of the American Top Team, but rather is a member of MMA Masters now. According to Covington, this move to change camps is going to be huge for his chances in the rematch, given that his cornermen didn’t give him proper instruction the first time. At least that’s what he told the media at the pre-fight presser ahead of UFC 268.

“If you go back and look at the first fight, the instructions that I was getting. They were telling me something that I do every single day. They were saying, ‘Colby, breathe.’ Dude, we breathe every single day, why are you telling me to breathe. I mean, everybody in this room knows how to breathe. Not everybody knows how to fight and how to instruct fighters with the right instructions,” Covington said (via MMANews).

Do you think Colby Covington will pull off the upset and defeat Kamaru Usman at UFC 268?