{"id":537820,"date":"2026-03-13T13:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T13:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/537820\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T13:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T13:14:07","slug":"covington-hater-hunter-campbell-is-trying-to-ice-me-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/537820\/","title":{"rendered":"Covington: \u2018Hater\u2019 Hunter Campbell is \u2018trying to ice me out\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The more Colby Covington stews over getting rejected for the UFC White House card, the angrier he gets. \u201cChaos\u201d is in the middle of a promotional push where he\u2019s speaking with all the MMA media, and he\u2019s gone from being \u2018bummed\u2019<\/a> about the exclusion to fully pissed off.<\/p>\n

In a new interview with Submission Radio, Covington went off on the UFC for what he calls years of disrespect and mistreatment. He reminded the world that the promotion stripped him<\/a> of his interim welterweight title for refusing a fight on four weeks notice. He claimed the UFC promised to take care of him after he stepped in last-minute to compete at UFC Tampa against Joaquin Buckley. Since that one-sided loss,<\/a> he says, there\u2019s been no care at all. No fight offers either. Their current plan: have Colby fight the winner<\/a> of Mike Malott vs. Gilbert Burns at UFC Winnipeg.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re trying to ice me out,\u201d Covington declared. \u201cIt\u2019s been fifteen months and they\u2019re fighting in the April. So they\u2019re not gonna be able to turn around til third quarter, fourth quarter minimum. So it\u2019s like, what do you want me to do? You want me to sit here and just twiddle my thumbs and play with myself? Like, what the f–k am I supposed to do to earn money, dude? I wanna pay my bills, man. I have a lot of bills. So it just sucks, man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel so disrespected by the company after everything I\u2019ve done for them, put the company on my back for the events that I promoted, sold out Madison Square Garden, top 10 gates all time. What I did in Brazil, putting my life on the line for their company to make them money when I was getting paid peanuts, $30k when I made them tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. So it sucks. I just feel disrespected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Covington took aim at Hunter Campbell, who now oversees all the fight bookings<\/a> at the top of UFC\u2019s cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cHunter\u2019s hated me from the start,\u201d Covington said. \u201cHe\u2019s never liked to deal with me, but he\u2019s had to deal with me because I was their biggest star in the welterweight division. So they just lost their biggest star and it sucks I can\u2019t get fun fights. Why can\u2019t I get another guy around my age that\u2019s a legendary fighter that adds to my resume, a high ranking guy? Why against some un-established nobody? You just wanna build this kid out of Canada because you don\u2019t have any Canadian stars right now. Not a lot of it makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the most frustrating thing in the world, dude. I get stopped ten, twenty times a day every day. People are like, \u2018When\u2019s your next fight? Why aren\u2019t you fighting?\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Bro, I have no control over if I\u2019m fighting or not. I call Hunter every week and I\u2019m like, \u2018Dude, can I get a fight?\u2019 \u2018Hey, where\u2019s the fight?\u2019 \u2018What\u2019s the next matchup you want?\u2019 He said, \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t have anything yet for you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat can I do, man? I just have to stay patient,\u201d he concluded. \u201cAll I can do is control what I\u2019m in control of. I just think that the UFC\u2019s checked out, man. They got the 8 billion from Paramount. They don\u2019t care about putting on the best exciting fights. They\u2019re getting guaranteed money. So they\u2019d rather stick a guy out there that\u2019s making $10k and $10k than stick a guy out there like me who makes big money. That\u2019s just what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just over the UFC. You know? I did my time there I might fight another fight there, wait for that winner. But after that, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m just all in on Real American Freestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n

So is the UFC actually icing Covington out, or is this a prison of Colby\u2019s own making? While \u201cChaos\u201d insists he\u2019s never turned down a fight offer, our sources say Covington definitely turned down a fight<\/a> against Ian Machado Garry in 2024 and that the Florida resident has ruled himself out of multiple Sunshine State cards due to being picky about opponents and demanding about pay.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all about fighters getting paid and, yeah, it sucks when the UFC decides to move you into the \u2018fodder for up-and-comers\u2019 matchmaking pile. But if you\u2019re going to lie about everything all the time, how can you expect people to believe you when you claim you not only didn\u2019t turn down Bo Nickal at the White House but never turned down any fight ever?<\/p>\n

Still, it would be nice if the UFC were able to manage its roster better and get some of its bigger names into the cage more often. Colby Covington and Jon Jones are both tough examples to feel sorry for, but their situations reflect a larger issue with the promotion keeping its stars active and in interesting fights when the clear preference is leaning on Contender Series guys to keep costs down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The more Colby Covington stews over getting rejected for the UFC White House card, the angrier he gets.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396,125620],"class_list":["post-537820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news","tag-ufc-white-house-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}