Colby Covington Fires Back At Ben Askren For “Padded Record”

Colby Covington was among those that came under fire from Ben Askren among reports that the former Bellator champion is headed to the Octagon soon.

Covington, who won the interim UFC welterweight title this past June with a decision over Rafael dos Anjos, has scored six fights in a row. His belt was officially stripped from his waist when he couldn’t face Tyron Woodley to unify the titles.

“He’s a jobber, he has a padded record. He hasn’t fought anybody,” said Covington during an interview with Submission Radio. “If he comes over to the UFC, let him work his way up. He’s gotta earn his way up. He hasn’t done anything worthy. But the guy’s a joke. He’s not on my level. He knows it. He wants to say these things. He’s old, he’s past his time too, man. And this is my time now. All these guys know it. That’s why all these guys wanna fight me now, because they know it’s my time. And when they lose to me it’s gonna be the biggest pay check they ever get, to lose to me.

“So, Ben Askren is a joke. They guy has no skills. He hasn’t hurt a fly in 10 years. He was like in mount on the Russian for five rounds and dint put one scratch on the guy’s face. So, I mean, the guy can’t strike. He’s scared to strike. I mean, it’s an easy fight, but he’s got a padded record so we’ll see what happens.”

Covington also discussed the recent UFC 229 melee involving Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor, confirming that a post he made about the lightweight champion led to his Twitter account being suspended.

“I thought that was a complete joke. I mean, he conducted himself like a filthy animal. He set the sport back 20 years,” he said. “There’s no reason you jump out of a cage. That’s why there’s commissions. And you’re a professional. That guy just made you more money in one fight than you’re ever gonna make for all your fights combined, so you should be kissing that guy’s feet, you should be thanking him for putting all of that money in your bank account. And what do you go do? You shame on the sport. So that’s why I called him a ‘Sheep (expletive).’ And there’s no lie in that. I got banned from Twitter for like two weeks for calling him a ‘Sheep ‘(expletive).’ But 20,000 people agreed with me. They liked that tweet. There were like 6,000 retweets. And then all of the soft liberals that run Twitter, they put me on a ban on Twitter.

“So I had to end up deleting the tweet, you know, which is bullshit. We’re in America. This is freedom of speech. How am I getting my tweets deleted for my freedom of speech? They said it’s hate speech, but we’re in the fight business. I’m building a fight. I’m saying fighting words cause I want to fight a guy. So, it didn’t make any sense. And all the soft snowflake, liberal pussies on Twitter, they need to chill the (expletive) out.”