Having defended his welterweight title against both Jorge Masvidal and Colby Covington on two seperate occasions, Kamaru Usman is perfectly placed to give his take on the recent altercation between the two, which saw ‘Gamebred’ attacking his rival outside a restaurant in Miami Beach, leaving him with a broken tooth, before later being arrested and charged.
“One, it’s unfortunate because it’s taken itself, it’s growing legs now out of just sports to actuality and reality,” Usman said on Instagram live. “That’s what’s the danger about what you say trying to build a fight or leading up to a fight. You have to watch your mouth. You can’t just run off at the mouth and say what you want or do what you want and expect the opponent to still keep it sport-related.
“Of course some people, i.e like myself, I am just wise enough to understand that you could say whatever you want to say. At the end of the day, I will do my talking with my hands inside once we step in there because that is what I’m there for, is to compete. So you can say and do whatever you want to try and throw me off my competitive edge, which is my mind, but at the end of the day, you can’t. I will go in there and I will still handle business. But in this case, you said a lot of things that crossed the line and some people are not wise enough to not risk it all outside.”
“Now (Masvidal is) facing counts, and now you could potentially go away. So that’s the unfortunate nature of the situation. I don’t like it. Both guys, I believe, are in the wrong. You can’t just do what you want and say what you want just because you want to sell something, and I feel that’s wrong – very wrong.
“But also, you can’t go as an athlete – as an elite athlete, you’re one of the best athletes in the world – you can’t just go attacking somebody in the street. Yeah, I understand it’s another athlete, but you can’t just do that when it’s outside of competition. So both guys took a big ‘L’ on that one. (I) pray for both, though. (I) hope they’re OK.”
