Mike Heck of MMA Fighting<\/a>. \u201cI want to go against Arman [Tsarukyan], I want to test myself on this mat in the first sport that I started in. I started in wrestling. As a little kid, this is the sport that brought me into the UFC and gave me everything I had in the UFC. It\u2019s wrestling. This is how I got an education. It got me a degree to go to college.<\/p>\n\u201cSo, what I had to do to open up all these big matchups with Arman, with Marty [Kamaru Usman], potentially [Belal Muhammad], whatever you want to call it, red tape retire. But in my mind, I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m retired because I would still take a fight. I still train every single day, I\u2019m still in great shape and good health. So I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m retired, but if that\u2019s what needed to happen to get all these matchups in RAF, so be it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cred tape\u201d Covington is referring to is a restriction the UFC has around its athletes competing against each other outside of the promotion. While the UFC seems to be comfortable with its fighters competing for RAF, the company has drawn the line at UFC fighters taking on other UFC fighters, making many of Covington\u2019s most sought-after matchups impossible unless he retired from MMA.<\/p>\n
But while practicality may have been the biggest reason Covington retired from the UFC, the truth is he also enjoys RAF more than the UFC anyway.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m much happier now,\u201d Covington said. \u201cI had a lot of time reflecting after that fight, like, \u2018Do I still want to do this? Is my head still in this game?\u2019 I\u2019ve achieved everything. I\u2019ve already fought for a title four different times. I already fought in 7, 8, 9 different main events. So, I\u2019m thankful for everything I\u2019ve accomplished and everything I did in the UFC, but now I\u2019m back to my true love and my passion, RAF.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so much fun. It\u2019s so light-hearted. You see, we\u2019re hugging people on the stage. It\u2019s not like that in the UFC. everybody\u2019s like, \u2018We want to kill each other!\u2019 on stage. You see your opponent before the fight, and they\u2019re like, \u2018What\u2019s up, bitch! I\u2019m going to f*ck you up!\u2019 It\u2019s all serious. Here, it\u2019s all love, and it\u2019s family-friendly. I\u2019m just so thankful to be a part of RAF.\u201d<\/p>\n
MMA retirements are notoriously short-lived, and with Covington even acknowledging that his might not even be real, there is always the chance that the former interim UFC welterweight champion returns to the cage at least once more. But if he doesn\u2019t and this really is the end, \u201cChaos\u201d is at peace with the career he had inside the octagon.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I\u2019m OK with it. I\u2019m OK with everything I\u2019ve been able to accomplish,\u201d Covington said. \u201cI won a world title there. I fought many high-level fights, headlined many pay-per-views, sold millions of pay-per-views through the years, so I\u2019ll be OK with it. I\u2019ll have no regrets for everything that happened. Everything happens for a reason.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colby Covington is returning to his roots. Earlier this month, Covington notified the UFC that he had retired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,18457,641,638,56859,82,19545,640,36996,98463],"class_list":["post-704313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-colby-covington","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-raf","tag-sports","tag-the-ufc","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-fight-night","tag-ufc-fighters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704313","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=704313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}