It would be appropriate to assume a pattern has reemerged, and it seems similar to one particular playbook.
In the wake of his unanimous decision loss to welterweight champion Leon Edwards (22-3 MMA, 14-2 UFC) in the UFC 296 main event this past Saturday, Colby Covington (17-4 MMA, 12-4 UFC) first said it was because the three judges were biased against him because of his support for Donald Trump, who was cageside along with fellow right wing conspiracy theorist Kid Rock as guests of UFC CEO Dana White.
Then he drew some new attention when he said he broke his foot inside the first 30 seconds against Edwards. And on the same podcast, he decided to double down on the thing that stirred up the most heat with Edwards during fight week.
Edwards’ father was murdered in London when he was 13. Edwards has said in past interviews his father was involved in some less-than-ideal activities in their native Jamaica, as well as in the U.K. when they moved there. At a pre-fight news conference, Covington said he would take Edwards to hell in their fight and “We’ll say hello to your dad while we’re there.” Edwards threw a water bottle at Covington and the two had to be separated.
Covington didn’t let back on accusations that Edwards’ father was a gang member, drug pusher and criminal in subsequent interviews and said he didn’t feel bad not caring he was murdered because he was a bad person.
But now he’s taken it a step further and first said he wasn’t comparing Edwards’ father to Adolf Hitler, he still was “that same level of bad guy” as Hitler.
Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party in Germany from 1921 until his death by suicide in 1945. After Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland led to World War II, Hitler was the de facto architect of the Holocaust, in which more than 6 million Jews and other minority groups were killed in a years-long mass genocide.
During UFC 296 fight week, virtually anyone in the MMA space who was asked condemned Covington’s comments as a crossing of the line already. It’s doubtful the new Hitler comparison will convince any of those detractors to reverse their criticisms.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 296.
