{"id":400297,"date":"2026-01-10T10:11:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T10:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/400297\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T10:11:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T10:11:07","slug":"colby-covington-luke-rockhold-criticize-bo-nickal-to-his-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/400297\/","title":{"rendered":"Colby Covington, Luke Rockhold criticize Bo Nickal to his face"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jan. 9, 2026, 5:29 p.m. ET<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">SUNRISE, Fla. \u2013 Colby Covington and Luke Rockhold are competitors Saturday at RAF 5, but they worked as a team during a pre-event news conference.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Saturday&#8217;s wrestling matches on Fox Nation feature a host of who&#8217;s who from the MMA and wrestling worlds, so the promotion decided to rotate athletes at the podium during Friday&#8217;s news conference. This was bad news for <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/fighters\/bo-nickal\/\" data-autotag=\"f4a8aea0-16e6-4619-8db3-1430ae967a48\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\">Bo Nickal<\/a>, who sat in the audience as he was berated by the two former UFC titleholders.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">&#8220;Listen, it&#8217;s the type of bozos like this that just kill the sport of wrestling,&#8221; Covington said to Nickal, who was seated front row without a microphone. &#8220;We need stars. We need people who are willing to be vocal and call their shots.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">&#8220;No, that&#8217;d be too easy, bro. You&#8217;re a bum. You got broken by a Dutch kickboxer. You&#8217;re a bum, dude. You&#8217;re not even the main event, there&#8217;s a reason.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Rockhold then chimed in with a similar fiery, antagonistic attitude.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">&#8220;You should be in the top-10 before you talk about a sport that built another sport. The reason that wrestling is on this stage is because of MMA. And you&#8217;ve done absolutely nothing in the sport of MMA. You quit before the knee even hit you, Bo. Button it up. Button it up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Covington inserted a cackle here and there before he dropped a line of, &#8220;He&#8217;s crying over in the corner.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Rockhold continued, &#8220;How many world championships have I won? What have you done on a world stage? Absolutely nothing. You&#8217;re a college bum, Bo. Shut up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Rockhold then challenged Nickal to a hybrid rules fight that would play up to both of their skill sets before the conversation moved on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Covington and Rockhold will turn their attention to one another during a three-round wrestling match that headlines Saturday&#8217;s event at Amerant Bank Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 9, 2026, 5:29 p.m. ET SUNRISE, Fla. \u2013 Colby Covington and Luke Rockhold are competitors Saturday at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[159202,49,48,641,638,82,162055,162056,168877,159087,159750,159089,168876,159085],"class_list":["post-400297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-accessfree","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-sstssportsmma","tag-sstsnmma","tag-tagbo-nickal","tag-tagmartial-arts","tag-tagoverall-negative","tag-tagsports-news","tag-tagwrestling","tag-typestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}