{"id":728341,"date":"2026-06-10T22:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/728341\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T22:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:40:09","slug":"bo-nickal-colby-covington-ended-his-entire-career-to-avoid-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/728341\/","title":{"rendered":"Bo Nickal: Colby Covington ‘ended his entire career’ to avoid me"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2013\u00a0Bo Nickal<\/a> has his own theory as to why Colby Covington abruptly retired from MMA.<\/p>\n

Nickal (8-1 MMA, 5-1 UFC), who fights this Sunday at UFC Freedom 250 (Paramount+<\/a>) at the White House, believes Covington was trying to avoid fighting him to the point that putting an end to his career assured the only way.<\/p>\n

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“It’s crazy that he doesn’t want to fight me so bad that he ended his entire career,” Nickal said at Wednesday’s UFC Freedom 250 media day. “Probably a smart move by his part.”<\/p>\n

Nickal and Covington are far from friends. Covington, who had an ugly split from Nickal’s current gym, American Top Team, many years go, has long talked poorly about many fighters from ATT, including Nickal. In their more recent run-in, the two were jawing at each other and throwing insults during an RAF press conference earlier in the year.<\/p>\n

The back-and-forth resulted in Nickal publicly challenging Covington to a fight at the White House. The former Penn State wrestling star said he hadn’t signed the contract to fight Kyle Daukaus (17-4 MMA, 4-4 UFC) at the time and urged Covington to call the UFC brass to make the fight happen. In the end, Nickal’s bout with Daukaus ended up moving forward, and Covington, who was asking to fight, made a surprising move to retire.<\/p>\n

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More: UFC White House: Make predictions for\u00a0Topuria-Gaethje, Pereira-Gane<\/a><\/p>\n

Covington or not, Nickal fights this Sunday on the South Lawn, which has him feeling honored and excited.<\/p>\n

“I’m grateful for all the opportunities I’ve been given to compete at big events and exciting places, so this is definitely the biggest and most exciting that I’ve been a part of,” Nickal said. “Overall, just feeling really grateful for the opportunity, and yeah, it’s a blessing. I want to make the most of it.”<\/p>\n

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Unlike in Covington’s case, Nickal has a great deal of respect for Daukaus. He’s impressed with Daukaus’ ability to fight his way back into the UFC after the promotion cut him in 2022 and re-signed him in 2025.<\/p>\n

“It says a lot to be able to, you know, make it back to the UFC after being cut,” Nickal said. “So he’s a tough guy and has a lot of good skills. Looking forward to going out and putting on a dominant performance on Sunday.”<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: UFC White House: Bo Nickal puts Colby Covington on blast one last time<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2013\u00a0Bo Nickal has his own theory as to why Colby Covington abruptly retired from MMA. Nickal (8-1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[36390,64,63,17832,56533,786,200732,785,85,787,263470,19542],"class_list":["post-728341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-american-top-team","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bo-nickal","tag-colby-covington","tag-fighting","tag-kyle-daukaus","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-freedom-250","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728341","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=728341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}