Colby Covington has revealed the reason for his growing rivalry with Dustin Poirier, claiming that the lightweight star was the main reason he was booted from the American Top Team gym.
“We have a history that goes back almost 10 years,” Covington told The Daily Wire. “We used to train at a gym in South Florida. We trained blood, sweat and tears for 10 years together, I helped him so many times.
“I remember I used to help him out with his contract all the time, ‘cause I was a little ahead of him and I’d won a world title and he was like ‘Hey, how much is your pay?’ Like, ‘How much you gonna make here?’
“So, I help him be a well rounded fighter and then one day he just decided to turn his back on me,” Covington said. “He’s like ‘I’m not training with you. I’m not gonna help you.’ I was gonna fight this guy Robbie Lawler, who’s a legend in the UFC. It was one of his friends. He’s like, ‘I’m not training with Colby, I don’t want nothing to do with Colby. I don’t like his act, his character. I want him kicked out of the gym,’ and like he started putting his feelings into the gym owner and was like ‘Hey I want him out.’ Like, ‘I don’t want him here.’
“So, he was kind of one of the reasons I was forced to leave my old gym. So we just have a very bad history. I mean, I don’t have any nice things to say about him.”
It’s interesting that Covington pinpoints Poirier for his departure from ATT as what he doesn’t mention here is the fact that there were multiple people at the gym who he was not on good terms with – including Jorge Masvidal, while even Amanda Nunes made it clear at the time that she had no desire to interact with the outspoken welterweight star.
Either way, with Poirier now a big draw thanks to his back-to-back victories over Conor McGregor, it seems that he is firmly in Covington’s sights, even though the two being in different weight classes makes the chances of them actually fighting any time soon seem fairly remote.
