{"id":680408,"date":"2026-05-19T20:52:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T20:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/680408\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T20:52:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T20:52:17","slug":"as-ufc-white-house-looms-colby-covingtons-quiet-retirement-is-mmas-ultimate-tragicomedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/680408\/","title":{"rendered":"As UFC White House looms, Colby Covington’s quiet retirement is MMA’s ultimate tragicomedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s doubtful too many people found themselves broken up over Colby Covington\u2019s retirement from the UFC<\/a>, not with that shtick that had a hard time shticking. The UFC deleted him from the roster with a snap of its fingers on Monday, and just like that \u2014 poof \u2014 he was gone. No different from Brad Riddell and Mayra Bueno Silva, fighters who were jettisoned on the same day.<\/p>\n

It was an awfully quiet way to step aside for anyone who\u2019s followed Covington\u2019s career. Though he never won a title, Colby was the UFC\u2019s all-time leader in obnoxious moments until Sean Strickland came along.<\/p>\n

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(Covington, it might be remembered, called Strickland \u201ca pathetic excuse of a human being.\u201d I recall somebody on X responding to a post of that very quote with, \u201cColby\u2019s nickname should be \u2018The Kettle.\u2019\u201d As far as repartees go, that might\u2019ve been cleverer than anything we\u2019d seen from the Covington playbook.)<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a tragicomical element to the timing of this, it\u2019s that Covington\u2019s run comes to an end less than a month before the UFC holds its big presidential birthday bash at the White House<\/a>. For Covington, this was an Arcadia, his personal Super Bowl, a Mecca for the MAGA mind \u2014 it was an event specifically tailor-made for him after his yearslong devotion to Donald Trump<\/a>. Knowing Covington\u2019s style, he himself might\u2019ve called it a \u201cmoney-shot moment\u201d or perhaps bragged about doing his camp at Mar-a-Lago. Who the hell knows?<\/p>\n

Thing is, we\u2019ll never find out.<\/p>\n

\"TAMPA,<\/p>\n

Colby Covington’s time in the UFC has come to an end.<\/p>\n

(Mike Roach via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Though he took patriotic expression to the extremes \u2014 often to the thong-infested swimming pools of South Florida \u2014 either he turned down a White House fight against Bo Nickal<\/a> or he didn\u2019t, depending on whom you believe. As with everything Covington-related, separating fact from fiction became the game within the game.<\/p>\n

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In the end, he\u2019s not only not on the card, he\u2019s done with the company that, in his own words, \u201cmade me a self-made millionaire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not that Colby\u2019s leaving the fight game entirely. He\u2019s now swinging all attention into competing in Real American Freestyle (RAF). He has his next match already scheduled for May 30 against Chris Weidman at RAF 9 in Arlington, Texas, as a matter of fact. He\u2019s still going to be in the periphery of the public eye in the wrestling venture, though \u2014 at least for UFC fans who\u2019ve come to love or hate him \u2014 not directly in it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want meaningful fights that add to my legacy \u2014 if it doesn’t add to my legacy, then what’s the point?\u201d Covington recently asked on \u201cThe Ariel Helwani Show.\u201d<\/a> \u201cAm I just going to fight for money now? It\u2019s not about money to me. I got in this sport, like every wrestler does, because you do it for the glory. You don’t do it for the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Covington\u2019s legacy, of course, is a tricky one.<\/p>\n

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He was 17-5 in the UFC, which is unassailable by even the strictest standards, yet he was 0-3 in title fights \u2014 a couple of which were gifted to him. In the first one at UFC 245, Kamaru Usman (a.k.a. \u201cMarty Snoozeman\u201d) shut him up quite literally by breaking his jaw. In his second chance, once again against Usman at UFC 268, he made up the louder half of a dull affair and lost just the same. By the time he got his third chance, against Leon Edwards (a.k.a. \u201cEdward Scissorhands\u201d), his shtick felt tired even for the indefatigable subset of Colby defenders and enthusiasts on social media.<\/p>\n

He lost that one, too, via decision.<\/p>\n

His final fight came in a Fight Night main event against Joaquin Buckley<\/a> (a.k.a. \u201cA Nobody\u201d) in December 2024, a sad affair in which he showed up in a diminished form. He ended his UFC run on a 2-4 skid, with his last victory coming against his former training partner\/former bestie, Jorge Masvidal (a.k.a. \u201cStreet Judas\u201d) in 2022. Masvidal came to hate Covington so much that he (allegedly) ambushed Colby outside a Papi Steak restaurant in Miami Beach.<\/p>\n

Covington filed a lawsuit against Masvidal last month, seeking $50,000 in damages.<\/p>\n

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Still, from the time he burst on the scene after beating Demian Maia and offending the entire country of Brazil by calling it a \u201cdump\u201d full of \u201cfilthy animals,\u201d his raison d\u2019\u00eatre has seemed to be to: A) rile people up, B) insult every fighter in his vicinity, C) drink as many \u201cnerd\u2019s tears\u201d as we were willing to give, and D) make Donald Trump a polarizing extension of his own personality.<\/p>\n

\"LAS<\/p>\n

Colby Covington speaks to Donald Trump prior to his championship fight at UFC 296.<\/p>\n

(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Everything Covington did was leading to the West Lawn. To the White House, where America\u2019s political leaders will be cageside come June for what is (not so coincidentally) the president\u2019s 80th birthday. Hell, Covington would sometimes bring Donald Trump Jr.\u2019s book, \u201cTriggered,\u201d to the dais with him, reading passages and dreaming of an alliance.<\/p>\n

Now the whole thing can\u2019t help but be triggering. For Colby, not being on the card must sting worse than any of those squandered title shots. And now his UFC legacy, on some level, goes down as an unconsummated love affair<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Which is perhaps fitting. If anyone could recognize a virgin, it was Colby Covington. He saw his detractors \u2014 meaning a good portion of his viewing audience \u2014 as virgins. You know, people who haven\u2019t had sex yet. He said that Ben Askren (a.k.a. \u201cBen Ass Cream\u201d), that \u201cNapoleon Dynamite-looking virgin,\u201d had children through \u201cscience and test tubes,\u201d which Askren soon disputed. He said Stephen \u201cWonderboy\u201d Thompson wasn\u2019t only a virgin, but a \u201cchoirboy\u201d to boot, which is perhaps the meanest thing ever said about that fight-game saint.<\/p>\n

Covington had something for everyone, though. He said Tyron Woodley (a.k.a. \u201cTyquil\u201d) was a \u201ccommunist and a Marxist\u201d and, worse, a bad rapper. He called Nate Diaz a \u201cjourneyman,\u201d Alexander Volkanovski \u201ca midget,\u201d Khamzat Chimaev \u201cC** Shot,\u201d and Khabib Nurmagomedov \u201cKabob.\u201d He even said that Dustin Poirier\u2019s charity, The Good Fight Foundation, was nothing more than a tax write-off.<\/p>\n

Forced? Damn right it was. Right down to the bright blazers and sunglasses and scantily dressed women at his side.<\/p>\n

Nobody was sure if he was supposed to be a heel, a pro-wrestling persona, or if he was even in character at all. Sometimes he crossed the line. He went after Edwards\u2019 late father in the build-up to their fight, saying, \u201cI’m bringing you to the seventh layer of hell \u2014 we’ll say, \u2018What’s up?\u2019 to your dad while we\u2019re there.\u2019\u201d If there were such a thing as trash-talk etiquette, Covington made sure it didn\u2019t apply to him.<\/p>\n

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What is the legacy of a guy like Covington? A very good fighter who said he was constructed of \u201craw American steel and twisted sex appeal,\u201d who took the role of Ugly American as a duty, at all times happily tone deaf to a cringing audience? At best he was a provocateur, but when he said he\u2019d dunk his nuts on Rafael dos Anjos\u2019 head, I can remember thinking the early comparisons of him being MMA\u2019s Andy Kaufman were \u2026 you know \u2026 perhaps a bit generous.<\/p>\n

In any case, he made us look there for a while. Each of his final seven UFC fights were headlining spots, and in each case, it would be hard to argue he wasn\u2019t the A-side. If anybody showed the way to Sean Strickland<\/a> and Josh Hokit, it was Colby, who was always trying to make something \u2014 from America to the welterweight division \u2014 great again.<\/p>\n

It was a quiet farewell to the UFC, and the UFC was at least kind enough to warn him to not let the door hit him on the way out.<\/p>\n

Some people leave the UFC on a stretcher. Some leave with a whimper.<\/p>\n

In Colby\u2019s case, at least he got the luckier of the two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s doubtful too many people found themselves broken up over Colby Covington\u2019s retirement from the UFC, not with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,18457,1376,641,7181,638,35696,82,19545,640,1971],"class_list":["post-680408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-colby-covington","tag-donald-trump","tag-fighting","tag-jorge-masvidal","tag-mma","tag-sean-strickland","tag-sports","tag-the-ufc","tag-ufc","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680408","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=680408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}