The Supreme Cynicism of Colby Covington
He is rarely seen without three things. The first is his bright red “Make America Great Again” hat. Describing all that the hat has come to represent would be beating a dead horse at this point but suffice it to say it remains a loaded symbol. The second is his UFC interim welterweight title belt, which he was stripped of in 2018 due to an extended absence rehabbing injuries. The third are his aviator sunglasses, worn indoors, natch, always a strong accessory for someone attempting to play the villain, the heel, but in a post-Conor McGregor world they may as well be mandatory.
His name is Colby Covington. He was born in California. He won a high school state wrestling championship in Oregon, then won a junior college national wrestling championship as a true freshman. He transferred to Iowa State and then again to Oregon State, where he was an All-American. He’d later go on to win gold at the 2013 FILA No-Gi grappling world championships. He’s currently 15–2 in mixed martial arts competition.
Wrestlers of all disciplines have historically been among the most effective MMA fighters, but those who choose to rely mostly on their wrestling often struggle to capture the hearts of fans. Fighting an elite wrestler is like being in prison, he’ll tackle you to the mat and keep you from imposing any part of your game plan again and again. There’s nowhere you can run and nothing you can do except stuff the take-down, which can be very tricky. The trouble is that the casual audience wants to see knockouts, they’re not interested in watching two guys sweat on each other for 15 minutes until one of them gets his hand raised. You can either stand up and learn to box, or you can learn to sell yourself. Colby chose both.
On December 14th 2019, Covington fought a Nigerian-American immigrant named Kamaru Usman for the UFC Welterweight (170lbs) title. The fight went 5 rounds as he and Usman, a 3-time All-American wrestler in his own right at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, instead opted to stand and box for 5 tense, brutal rounds. Usman broke Covington’s jaw in the 3rd. Colby knew, he told his corner as much, but he kept fighting, he thought he could win. He thought he was winning. Maybe he would have, had Usman not dropped him late in the 5th and final round and finished him with a flurry of ground strikes. Covington contends the stoppage was early, and he was robbed by referee Marc Goddard. He and his team left the cage before the results could even be announced and ran backstage, likely en route to the nearest hospital.
It was a fitting exit for a self-styled supervillain, which he undoubtedly is. After a successful outing in Sao Paulo against Brazilian grappling legend Demian Maia, Covington dropped an infamous post-fight rant calling Brazil “a dump” and its inhabitants “filthy animals.” Since then, Colby Covington has gone from a run-of-the-mill respectful competitor to a a hyperbolic cartoon character that does anything and everything to court controversy. After his loss against Usman, it may have paid off in an unexpected way.
The morning after UFC 245 #MAGAJAW was trending on Twitter, as the world took the opportunity to point and laugh at a supporter of a racist head of state getting bloodied, dropped, and smacked around by a man of color. It’s not so different from any cell phone camera video of one of the litany of fascist LARP-ers in this country getting jumped by some dudes in a Wendy’s because he demanded the right to use his phrenology calipers on the manager. Only this had live commentary, an audience of thousands in the stands and millions watching on pay-per-view, and, crucially, a clear winner and loser. The black guy won and celebrated in the cage with his family, the MAGA chud lost and ran to the back to get his cracked jaw wired shut. Roll credits.
Millions and millions who had never known or cared about Colby Covington suddenly knew him as a lightning rod for all their pent up anger and resentment at the ever-more-insane state of American politics. He’s Trumpism incarnate. A smug white guy who will declare himself the real champion before the fight even takes place, then call the legitimacy of the of the officiating into question via social media after he loses. That’s who he is to the world now. It’s how they know him. Ironically the social media firestorm likely guaranteed him a job with the UFC for the next half-decade if he wants it. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.
I don’t think that’s really him. When I look at Colby Covington I don’t see a fascist, a white revanchist, a deplorable. I see something that may actually be worse. I see a guy who was about to be cut from the UFC despite winning 8 of 9 fights in one of the most competitive weight classes in MMA. A guy who decided that he’d rather get paid for being loathed on the biggest platform possible than fight for smaller money elsewhere as just another pretty good, sort of boring wrestler. I see someone who doesn’t believe in anything. Though there’s a whole separate debate to be had on whether there’s even a distinction to be made between people who clap like trained seals when the president says a catchphrase (fake news!) and people that genuinely don’t believe anything.
I am, admittedly, being a bit melodramatic. There’s a decent chance Covington was always a right-winger in some form or fashion like a lot of fighters, and he’s just leaned into it more as of recently. Having said that; I wouldn’t call it much of a stretch to say there’s more than a little theatre and much more than a little self interest to Covington’s whole schtick. Playing a character to sell your fights is a hustle as old as the fight game itself. Covington could even be said to be walking in the footsteps of fellow Oregonian, right-winger, and accomplished amateur wrestler Chael Sonnen, who built a storied career for himself thanks in no small part to playing gadfly to Anderson Silva during the Brazilian’s storied UFC middleweight championship run.
Though despite similar origins, the two are not quite the same. Sonnen’s strategy was mostly based around building his personal brand by saying witty, quotable things that would piss off Silva’s supporters and win him fans among UFC viewers who were losing patience with “The Spider’s” antics. Sure he was hated, but in a tongue in cheek kind of way. That’s the thing about good heels, whether in professional wrestling or in real sports, first you hate them, then you start to respect them, and once they’re gone, you miss them. Look up any compilation of “Funniest UFC Press Conferences” on YouTube and Chael will be there, telling Silva his hurt rib is “inside of a coward” and pretending to fall asleep while Tito Ortiz tells a long, rambling allegory about being a lion surrounded by jackals. Sonnen lost both of his title fights against Silva but in the long term, his strategy worked. He turned his gift of gab into a long, successful career in the UFC and elsewhere, and now serves as a commentator both for UFC and on ESPN’s first ever MMA talk show “Ariel and the Bad Guy” (he’s the bad guy in case you couldn’t guess).
By comparison; Colby’s strategy is much more straightforward. Say or do something inflammatory, it doesn’t matter how unoriginal it is or how insane you seem, just get it out there, create content. Say Kamaru Usman’s family have never served the USA outside of a federal penitentiary. Threaten to leave with the welterweight title and go be a professional wrestler if you don’t get paid more. Tell Robbie Lawler that he should have taken a lesson from his teammate Matt Hughes (who was nearly crippled after a train hit his pickup truck) and gotten off the tracks when the train was coming through. Say the founder of Usman’s gym is in Hell. Post a bunch of pictures on your Instagram of you hanging out with Donald Trump and his dipshit sons, but mostly his dipshit sons.
The Trump boys connection is, to me, very telling. I can’t imagine an easier mark for a guy with seemingly very few scruples and a self-promotion-at-all-costs mentality than Donald Trump Jr.; a man who’s spent his whole life plumbing the depths of his father’s rancid soul for affection and acceptance that does not exist. He’d be pitiable were he not rich, stupid, and utterly without morals. Don Jr. gets to stand next to a man with big muscles and a title belt, just like dear ol’ dad used to do with Mike Tyson, and Colby gets a seat on the gravy train, market share in the lib ownership economy, more leverage for his grift.
Therein lies the real question. Is this even a grift? Am I simply cutting a truly awful human being too much slack? Dan Lambert manages Colby at American Top Team and he’s arguably the architect of Covington’s heel turn, having encouraged the “filthy animals” tirade in Brazil to keep UFC from cutting him. This persona hasn’t just grated on fans but on Colby’s gym mates, particularly UFC lightweight Dustin Porier and fellow welterweight Jorge Masvidal. He accused Porier of crying crocodile tears following a loss to lightweight champ Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 242, and called Masvidal a “jealous little bitch,” as Masvidal lost to Demian Maia while Covington arguably used him as a platform to elevate himself to his current public enemy number 1 status. Fellow ATT member Joanna Jedrzejczyk has chimed in as well, saying that “You never talk bad about your teammates, doesn’t matter if you like them or not,” per ESPN.
Though with a Masvidal/Covington collision almost certainly in the cards for 2020, part of me comes back around to wondering if this is in fact all just theatre, more marketing, more grift. A master plan concocted by gym buddies to get themselves paid more while they’re all in their fighting prime and at their highest profile. Though like Don Jr. seeking acceptance from Daddy it’s entirely possible I’m just looking for something that doesn’t really exist, maybe this guy just makes Masvidal, Porier,and Jedrzejczyk as mad as he makes the rest of us.
Time will tell if this is all just marketing, and indeed if Covington will drop it, but really why should he? It’s working. The fans didn’t care, now they do. It’s cynical, sure, but combat sports are ultimately a very cynical business. Some fight fans consistently tune in regardless of the stakes. They love the artistry of it, the human drama, the superhuman athleticism, but they’re the minority. Casual fans like grudge matches between mainstream stars, and what is Colby now if not a mainstream star? Win or lose he just main evented one of the biggest pay per views of the year and was briefly a number 1 trend on twitter.
Ironically, if he commits to being the supervillain of mixed martial arts for the rest of his career, Colby Covington may be a truer ideological heir to Donald Trump than any of his children. All he wants is for you to know his name while he cashes bigger and bigger checks.
