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Colby Covington puts the UFC on blast for ‘slave labor negotiations’

Colby Covington was set to fight Kamaru Usman for the welterweight title yet the talks fell over.

Now, ‘Chaos’ has taken aim at the UFC for the way they handle negotiations.

“That’s how UFC does business, they do the bully tactics,” Covington said on BJPENN.com Radio. “They do the slave labor negotiations. It’s sick man. They don’t want to pay any of the fighters because they want everybody to be poor, so they keep back coming back and fighting all the time, and fighting six times a year.”

He also says he is tired of helping out the UFC yet they do not help him out and give him what he wants. For example, if he stpped in on short notice against Robbie Lawler he would get a title shot if he won. Which now is unknown if he will get it.

“The UFC always makes promises, they’ve made me so many promises,” Covington continued. “[They say] ‘Oh, do this and we’ll give you a favor here. We’ll throw you a bone next time.’ They never end up throwing that bone back, man. They just use you even more next time. So it’s just… I’m not going to be played for a fool anymore, man. They want to do business like that, then they’re not going to get any business. That’s that.

“They said, ‘Oh, show up for the Robbie Lawler fight,’” Covington continued. “And needless to say, Robbie was training for 12 weeks for that fight. He was getting ready for [Tyron] Woodley, but Woodley was scared and he pulled out with a sore pinky. So Woodley didn’t want to get knocked out by Robbie, he was scared. He knows he got lucky the first time [they fought]. So I showed up on four weeks’ notice, without a training camp because I got a nasty cut from a head butt in the first week in training camp.

“I couldn’t even train. Pretty much had to run on the treadmill every day, that’s it. That’s not training timing, accuracy, all that. So I showed up with no camp, to save the UFC, to save the main event, to bring the First Family, to get the President Tweeting about the UFC. To get all the troops all over the world watching in their bases because I’m America’s and the troops’ favorite fighter.

“The UFC still doesn’t do good for me,” he concluded. “I make them millions and millions and they just continue to just pocket all that money, and they don’t want to pay me a fraction — not even 5% of any of that money. It’s ridiculous how they can pocket 95, 98% and not give the fighters anymore than the 2, 3%.”

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Cole Shelton
Cole Shelton covers MMA for BJPenn.com, MMANews, and MyMMANews.com while also being the lead MMA odds writer for Sports Betting Dime