Jorge Masvidal’s distaste for Colby Covington is well documented. But just because fellow UFC contender Khamzat Chimaev is also a card-carrying member of the anti-Covington club, it doesn’t mean that Masvidal and the undefeated Chechen see eye to eye.
“I don’t give a f***. They’re both p******,” Masvidal said on The MMA Hour when asked who’d win a potential fight between Covington and Chimaev.
“F****** you miss weight by 8.5 pounds? Get the f*** out of here. And you’re still talking about, ‘Nobody wants to fight you,’ and all this. Go f****** make weight before we talk about fighting, bro. That’s the first thing. Don’t do steroids and make the f****** weight that you agreed upon as a f****** man. You’re going to miss by eight pounds and then you’re talking cool and you’re calling people out? Get the f*** out. And then I saw him do a comment that he was calling out [Alex] Pereira. Who the f*** are you? This is the world champion. You don’t even have a f****** win over a top-15 guy. Get the f*** out of here at 185.”
Masvidal, 38, is of course referencing Chimaev tipping the scales at 178.5 pounds for his scheduled main event against Nate Diaz at UFC 279 — 7.5 pounds above the legal limit for a non-title welterweight bout. Chimaev’s dramatic weigh-in miss prompted a last-second reshuffling of UFC 279’s card that ultimately led to him fighting Kevin Holland in a 180-pound catchweight bout, which Chimaev won via first-round submission.
Chimaev is one of many UFC contenders who expressed frustration at UFC president Dana White’s insistence that Covington deserves to be the next title challenger at 170 pounds. Chimaev recently told MMA Fighting that he verbally agreed to face Covington on multiple occasions over the past year, however the matchup never came to fruition.
White said the UFC expects Chimaev to move up to middleweight for his next bout following his weigh-in miss. Masvidal, meanwhile, is just sick of hearing Chimaev talk.
“Like the rest of us, put your hard hat on, put your mouthpiece in and get to work,” Masvidal said. “You ain’t s***, bro. Everybody’s got an Instagram now, everybody’s got an opinion now, and everybody just wants to talk. Man, go out there and put in the work. You can’t miss weight by 8.5 pounds and call for title shots. Get the f*** out of here.
“That’s for all [new fighters], this style of f****** promoting and fighting. Go fight and then talk, you know what I’m saying? These motherf****** don’t know. And look, the guy that he got a split decision win over, I’m about to go bury that dude, bro. So people can see the level of difference between me and a lot of these corny-ass new-age motherf******, bro.”
Masvidal has his own battles to worry about as well. The 38-year-old veteran is slated to face Gilbert Burns in a high-stakes affair on April 8 in the co-headlining bout of UFC 287. “Gamebred” enters the contest having dropped three consecutive fights to then-champion Kamaru Usman and, most recently, Covington on March 2022 at UFC 272.
Masvidal is already more than a 3-to-1 betting underdog against Burns, however when he looks at the intangibles of the matchup, he likes what he sees.
“The key is punching him in the face,” Masvidal said. “Just punch him in the face, and then just punch him in the face a little bit more. And then when he thinks I’m not going to punch him in the face? I’ll punch him in the face some more. And that’s it.
“Gilbert, he’s tough until he runs out of gas or until he gets hit hard. He’s a front-runner ... and he’s got a lot of sissiness in him that I’m going to bring out, man. He could get all butt-hurt and mad, but at the end of the day, every time I’ve seen get hit with a decent shot, he always looks for the way out immediately, or if he’s in a fight with a guy ... and he can’t get that takedown right away, he starts to fold and melt, man. So I’ve just got to bring it to him.”
With current UFC welterweight champion Leon Edwards already openly campaigning to fight Masvidal next if he gets past Burns, Masvidal is confident he’ll be able to change the UFC’s mind about Covington’s place in the championship pecking order.
At UFC 287, he also plans to remind anyone who may have hopped off the “Gamebred” bandwagon about why they became a fan of Masvidal in the first place.
“April 8, y’all must’ve forgot,” Masvidal said. “I really don’t care, man, because I ain’t in it for that. And I get it for the people that have forgotten me, because that’s the awesomest thing about combat is, you’re only as good as your last fight. So I can’t blame them. If you forgot, I still love you, man. Ain’t no heat, no beef with any fan that forgot or anybody. It’s my job to remind them all on April 8. I feel I’ve got the perfect candidate, perfect opponent — put a hole in his face and remind everybody that I’m nothing but violence.”
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