Mailbag: Is UFC Tampa the end of the line for Colby Covington?

What’s really on the line for Colby Covington in Saturday night’s UFC Tampa headliner against Joaquin Buckley? Who would be the toughest father-son duo to fight in a cage? And what does the future hold for Chris Weidman after a loss at UFC 310?

All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @benfowlkesMMA or @benfowlkes.bsky.social.

It’s kind of incredible how Colby Covington has fallen entirely out of the conversation at welterweight. He went from a perennial contender to a mostly forgotten afterthought all without ever losing consecutive fights.

So yeah, Covington really needs to win this one. Oddsmakers don’t really expect him to. He’s more than a 2-to-1 underdog on most sportsbooks right now, and he’s up against a guy in Joaquin Buckley who’s won five straight. If Covington loses here at the age of 36, you can probably banish all thought of him fighting for a UFC title again.

I see where your head’s at and I get it. Take a couple jiu-jitsu specialists, match them up against each other and see if we get a different kind of fun out of it. But then, that’s sort of what the UFC seemed to be thinking when it matched Gracie up against Mitchell. All we got from him there was a bunch of ineffective guard-pulling.

Looking at that fight, I don’t quite understand what Gracie is hoping for from this stage of his career. Is he just taking the fights because he’s under contract? Is it just for the payday? Because if you look at his game plan in that fight, it doesn’t look like anything that belongs in the UFC in the year 2024.

How about this: Everywhere he goes from now on, Movsar Evloev has a large boa constrictor draped around his shoulders like Jake “The Snake” Roberts.

At press conferences he often appears distracted, talking to and petting the snake without paying much attention. When he is asked direct questions he first stares intently into the snake’s eyes, then turns his head to let it whisper in his ear before he answers. He refuses to tell us anything about the snake. He won’t even tell us its name. He definitely won’t discuss where he got it. He sometimes speaks as if he and the snake are one, like there is no true distinction dividing the two of them. When an opponent insists he’s not worried about the snake because it’s not like the snake can help Evloev once the cage door closes, Evloev just smiles deviously and says good, let him think that.

I agree that the recent career arc of Chris Weidman is harsh reminder of how unforgiving the fight game is. But also before we feel too bad for him, let’s remember that Weidman’s last win (his first since 2020) was a technical decision over Bruno Silva following a deluge of fouls. The lax rule enforcement mechanisms of this sport giveth but they also taketh away.

I like Weidman, so it was hard to watch him struggling toward the end of this one. It’s crazy that he’s had fewer than 25 pro fights and yet has been through so much. He defeated a legend and won a title. He defended it and got to ride that high as champ. He lost it all and snapped his leg in half. Now he’s clinging to the edge of the cliff at the age of 40 while UFC CEO Dana White is telling him straight up to retire.

That’s the fighter life cycle right there. And it always seems to happen so much faster than you think it’s going to.

For those unaware, the post he’s referring to was about a Polish fight promotion that supposedly forces fighters who miss weight to then compete in a handicap match against not only the opponent but also the opponent’s father. The video is as rad as it sounds.

In answer to your question, I have to go with A.J. McKee and Antonio McKee. The younger is just an incredibly talented and tough fighter all on his own, while the elder was severely underrated in his day and is still in great shape. Imagine Antonio taking you down and holding you there while A.J. smashes your teeth in? That’s a nightmare. It’s also good motivation to make weight.

No, this cannot be allowed to happen. If Jon Jones does not want to defend his UFC heavyweight title against Tom Aspinall in his very next fight, then he must be stripped of the belt and Aspinall’s interim heavyweight title must become the real title. It’s the only way to keep this already ridiculous situation from turning into a complete farce.

I get the sense that Merab Dvalishvili grew up with very different children’s rhymes advocating a very different way of moving through the world.

What concerns me is that if he ends up having to pay people every time he’s baited into attacking them in public, that makes him a pretty easy target moving forward. Imagine you’re four beers deep at a UFC event. That right there sets you back like $50, and you’re already drowning in credit card debt. Then you see Merab walk by and think, maybe if I call him a sorry little munchkin I’ll end up with a broken nose and a settlement check. Worth it? For some people, yeah maybe.

Martial arts isn’t really the kind of thing you can learn from a book. That’s my disclaimer before I go any further. Boxing might be one of the rare things that you can learn a lot more about via YouTube than you can any book.

But if you’re already training in a real gym with real coaches and live training partners and are looking for a little supplemental reading to further your development, I’d recommend getting a little history and technique with stuff like Jack Dempsey’s “Championship Fighting” as well as Georges Carpentier’s “My Methods Of Boxing As A Fine Art.” Both are dated but interesting.

There are really three distinct categories.

There’s what’s best for the fighters, in terms of helping them earn money and get access to opportunities while being protected from contractual abuses.

There’s what best for the fans, in terms of getting to see the fights they want to see at a reasonable price.

Then there’s what’s best for the promoters, mainly the UFC.

Right now the balance is all tilted toward the UFC. There is really nothing substantial the UFC as a company could want that it doesn’t already have. The contracts protect UFC’s interests while obligating the company to do very little for fighters. UFC can treat fighters like employees while classifying them as independent contractors. Competitors can’t make much headway because even when they do get a fighter people care about (Francis Ngannou, for instance), they can’t get meaningful opponents for him because those are all locked down in long-term UFC deals that basically never expire.

There’s an argument I’ve heard, even from fighters, that the UFC should be an MMA monopoly the same way the NFL is a football monopoly. Thing is, the way the NFL got around antitrust laws (after years of court battles similar to the UFC antitrust cases) is by working with a players’ association. That gives the athletes a way to collectively bargain and get stuff like pensions and health care, as well as a voice in deciding league policies and protections.

UFC fighters have none of that right now. If the UFC decides fighters need to wear a certain kind of shoe to the cage, they’re wearing it. If the UFC wants to completely change the drug testing in the sport, fighters have to dance to that tune too. They get nothing that the UFC doesn’t willingly give them.

That’s also somewhat true for fans. There are plenty of fights that fans want to see but the UFC just won’t make if there’s a cheaper alternative. Ngannou vs. Jones was a prime example. The UFC just doesn’t have much incentive to offer fans the best possible experience, since it gets paid guaranteed broadcast rights fee money whether we watch or don’t.

Would stronger competition change that? Maybe. Or maybe it would just result in more barriers restricting which fights we get to see. (Why can’t some promoter shell out the money to book Ngannou vs. Jones right now? It’s because UFC and its one-sided contracts are standing in the way.)

I think the best solution for fighters and fans would be some (read: any) restrictions on what kinds of contracts the UFC can sign fighters to. That’s a protection that could come from antitrust cases or from an expansion of the Muhammad Ali Act or just from some bold collective action by fighters (lol, right). All of these approaches have their own limitations, but right now the only side with zero limitations is the UFC. That’s great news if you’re a shareholder. If you’re a fan who wants to see the best fights or a fighter who wants to make a living without ending up unable to pay the inevitable medical bills later in life, not so much.