Colby Covington is more vulnerable than ever before at UFC Tampa — and he knows it

There was a time, when his red hat was still very much aflame, that the idea of a Colby Covington main event sneaking up under the radar would’ve seemed impossible. Yet heading into Saturday's UFC Tampa main event, it’s like he’s performing the after-hours slot, the closing act of 2024, headlining a quiet card long after a parade of pay-per-views that left the MMA fan base hoarse.

This is not the typical Covington build-up to a fight. No real "Chaos" is to be found this week. It seems the rabble has long run out of rouse. At 36 years old, Covington’s politics don’t as easily offend or incite, they just are what they are. The off-color remarks he’s made about Brazilians and the surrounding virgins and nerds and poor Marty Fakenewsman, well, they belong to a different time. There will be no stripper informercials, no forefather perukes, and barely any sloganeering to strike at the American ire.

Even his opponent on Saturday night, Joaquin Buckley, is having trouble drawing out the kinds of Covington hostilities that we’re used to.

“Dude, honestly, I have nothing bad to say about him,” Covington says. “When I was at my old gym, I invited him to come do a condition workout, I’m like, ‘Yo, come through.’ He was cool, he was funny. He’s a fun up-and-coming fighter, he’s explosive, he goes for the kill and he's hungry.”

Hardly the words of a self-professed “supervillain," but perhaps this relative calm before the storm is a good thing. After all, this is the first — and biggest — fight of Covington’s post-contender life, in that it could be the last chance he gets to remove “post” from the operative word. Buckley has won five straight fights. He is the buzzsaw that Covington is being fed into, similar to earlier this year when the UFC tried to feed Dustin Poirier to the younger Benoit Saint-Denis. Or rather, when the UFC tried to build somebody’s name off Dustin Soyrier, as Covington liked to call him.

This whole thing has a different feel. Buckley doesn’t have the brand name that Jorge Masvidal or Kamaru Usman does, or carry the gold accessory, which is why Covington calls him a “nobody.” Any sense of entitlement from the matchmakers is up in smoke. This isn’t a cherry-picked fight, or one that benefits Covington more than his opponent.

This time he’s the target, and he knows it.

“That’s the biggest thing that makes him so dangerous, is that [Buckley] has nothing, and he wants to take everything from me,” Covington says. “That’s a dangerous thing when they have everything to gain. So, I’m not going to say any bad things about him — don’t think any bad of him at all — but I do have bad intentions for him Saturday night.”

To listen to Covington tell it, part of the quiet has less to do with his lack of activity (he’s fought just four times since 2020), or that he’s lost three of five (all of them title bouts), and more to do with the politics within the politics. His ongoing friendship with President-elect Donald Trump, for instance, has caused reactions from other power sources, he claims, who have broken out the muzzles. He claims Meta overlord Mark Zuckerberg has "completely shadow-banned" him and that's limited his profile.

“I’ve had a million followers for five, six years, but they won’t let me get above that million threshold; they literally censor me," Covington says. "Some of my fans and followers be like, ‘Dude, we don’t see your stuff here, your content doesn’t come up.’ So, it kind of sucks.

“But on the other side of the spectrum, it’s like, you know what? At least I stood for principles, something I believed in. I stood for the Trumps, and I stood for America and the troops, and our military servicemen, and that’s more important to me. I don’t need followers. I don’t care about being famous; I just want to serve and protect.”

Covington has been called a lot of things. People have said he’s the definition of an ugly American. He’s been called a racist, and a misogynist, and xenophobic. Obnoxious. Arrogant. A blowhard. He has been called a coward by Kamaru Usman. When he choked out Lil Pump on a live stream a few months back, people called him an attempted murderer. Early on he was even being called the Andy Kaufman of MMA, in that his MAGA “shtick” was so overdone that it felt like orchestration, like kayfabe in pro wrestling.

It's no gimmick. Gimmicks don’t get “invites to be at some of the most exclusive parties ever,” Covington says. He’s run with it. And these days it runs with him.

“Trump's taken me in like a second son,” he says. “He’s putting me close to his family, put a lot of trust into me, a lot of faith into me, and let me get close, let me go to a lot of the rallies and be a part of everything. I pretty much have an open invitation to go to Mar-a-Lago, his house, whenever I want and have dinner, so I’m always there for all the holidays.”

So why agree to a disadvantageous, high-risk fight with only a few weeks’ notice? Covington says he’s kept himself in great shape throughout his hiatus. He’s been running a lot and training with new coaches, such as two-time Olympian boxer Eromosele Albert, and Roberto Soldić, whom, as Covington points out, “holds a win over [UFC middleweight champion] Dricus du Plessis.”

He says the whole thing was a redirection. He claims to have called UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell and offered to step in and fight Shavkat Rakhmonov at UFC 310 when Belal Muhammad fell out, which put him back on the radar for a fight. With Ian Machado Garry already pegged for the gig, he was then steered toward filling in for Garry to face off with the 30-year-old Buckley in Florida. It wasn’t ideal, but he didn’t have a lot of wiggle room to say no.

“I said, ‘Yes, absolutely, sir. Whatever you want, sir,’” he says. “I mean, I’m a company man, I love this company, anything I can do for this company and good business is important to me.

“And I love being an underdog, it’s a great feeling, man. I’m telling you, there’s nothing better in America that people can identify with than the true underdog story. I love that feeling going into Saturday night.”

It might peeve some to think about, but a win over a surging contender like Buckley could keep Covington relevant in the title picture. That part is “completely up to the company and the fans at this point,” Covington says, “I’m going to put on the best performance of my career Saturday night and we'll let them decide.”

But a loss? That would leave Covington, the UFC’s most polarizing figure, and the “supervillain” who never let good taste interfere with a good promo, to contemplate his future.

When asked if going into politics after his fight career is over might be in the cards, that’s when it finally shows up — that familiar Colby smile, pushing his cheeks up towards his ears.

“I will consider something like that,” he says. “I want to serve the people. I've been selfish in my career and my goals my whole life, now I want to be selfless more and be able to serve the people. And I just know that I’m not going to sell out and there’s not going to be any big organizations that can buy me off to pass agendas. No, I’m going to put America first, people first.

“I believe in freedom, that’s what my grandfather fought for in the U.S. Air Force when he fought in Korean and Vietnam War. He wanted to fight for our freedoms here in America and our constitutional rights. That’s what inspires me to be able to bring that back out and fight for the people. So if I could serve in any capacity as a public servant for the people, that would be my greatest honor, bigger than my UFC career.”