Colby Covington Denies Owing Money to ATT Coach; May Fight Jorge Masvidal in the Future

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Colby Covington has denied claims from American Top Team gym teammate and fellow Ultimate Fighting Championship welterweight Jorge Masvidal that he owes money to an ATT coach and believes that one day he might end up squaring off against “Gamebred” inside the Octagon.

Masvidal has recently gone on record stating that he and Covington no longer see eye-to-eye, claiming that “Chaos” owes money to a coach of his at American Top Team.

Covington, who is set to fight the current champion Kamaru Usman at UFC 245 in December, was a guest on Submission Radio and vehemently denied those claims before suggesting Masvidal’s allegations stem from a deep jealously of his success (Transcript via MMA Fighting):

“No, there’s no truth to that. Jorge is drawing at straws right now,” Covington said. “He has nothing else to say about me because he knows he can’t attack my fighting skills because he knows my fighting skills speak for themselves. And to be honest, he’s never won one second of any type of rounds we’ve ever trained together. And he knows that deep down inside. So he’s just looking for something to promote a future fight.

“We may have to fight each other. Former best friends turned foes. And that’s how this sport is. There’s no sports; there’s no friends in this type of sport. It’s an individual sport and it’s business, so we had to part our friendship. And he’s making up lies, man, he’s trying to say that I owe his coach money. And I can show you the receipts. I’ll go get the receipts right now and show you. I overpaid him if anything. The only percentage that I owe is to American Top Team. I pay them five percent every fight, and that’s the only people I have to pay. I have no obligation to pay any other coaches. All the other coaches that I pay is on me if I want to pay them or not, and I always paid his coach, man. I gave him $5,000 to $10,000 per fight, and I have the receipts too. So, you know, he’s lying, man. He has nothing else to say.”

Covington said despite all the talk of a potential brawl erupting inside the ATT gym involving himself and Masvidal his relationship with the coaching staff and owner Dan Lambert is still intact.

The former interim champ did allude to some tension boiling over between himself and “Gamebred” before their much-publicized fall out:

“We were pushing each other in the gym,” Covington said. “We’d yell in the gym, ‘Hey, who’s gonna be the first fighter to get a million-dollar fight,’ this and that. We were competing to push each other to these great limits, and here we are now, and now we have to act like kids? I mean, I’m not acting like a kid, he’s acting like a kid. But here we are, and you can’t be professional and understand this game?

“Yeah, it’s business and we’re not gonna be friends, we’re gonna have to fight each other. But it is what it is, man. Just grow up and let’s not play these childish games where you’re making up lies and you’re saying stupid stuff that isn’t true, let’s just be honest and call things the way they are, call a spade a spade. But apparently that’s hard for him. He’s a Miami little street thug.”