UFC 296 Review – Has It All Gone Too Far?
UFC 296 has come and gone, and it’s fair to say that it was an event that lived up to expectations.
Whilst many were disappointed with the main event (we will be coming back to the two participants in a little bit), the card as a whole was little short of brilliant. Cody Garbandt showed shades of 2017 with a walk-off knockout over Brian Kelleher. Ariane Lipski put on a performance-bonus winning show with a savage second round armbar win over Casey O’Neill. As if that wasn’t enough, Josh Emmett absolutely crumpled Bryce Mitchell with a right hand that came with a sound akin to an atomic bomb.
However, this weekend came with a lot of negatives, too.
Colby Covington: Disgust and Outrage Abounds
Oh, boy. Where do I even start here?
Everybody knew that the main event, welterweight title fight was going to be tense and heated. But not even the most ardent trash talkers imagined that Colby Covington would take it as far as he did.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, the UFC held their traditional pre-fight press conference on Thursday. Colby Covington entered dressed as George Washington (because of course he did). And that’s where the normality actually ended.
Yes, somebody actually told Colby Covington that this would look cool. (Image Credit: MMA Mania)
Whilst on stage, Colby basically started spraying his volley of insults indiscriminately. First, he called Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson (the man who LITERALLY holds the NMF title) a “p*********”. Yes, he actually did that, levelling accusations of vans and karate…I’m not even going to get into it. But that’s not even the worst part. No, it actually does get worse. Much, much worse.
Colby Takes It Too Far
Next, Mr Covington (or should I say, “General Covington?” – No, no I am not. It’s literally as ridiculous as it sounds. And yes, he referred to himself as that) turned his attention to his dance partner for Saturday night; the welterweight champion of the world – Leon “Rocky” Edwards. The Kingston-born native of Birmingham, England was dismissive of Covington, and made the argument that he didn’t even deserve to be fighting for the title in the first place. Covington, being Covington, then interrupted Edwards, and managed to stumble out (at the second attempt) a threat to bring Leon “to the seventh layer of hell.”
Then he added – “We’ll say what’s up to your Dad whilst we’re there”.
Image Credit: BJPenn.com
What you see above is how well that comment went down with “Rocky” – and frankly, quite rightly so.
After getting a bottle launched at his head, Covington managed to instantly turn the entire MMA world against him. In drawing unanimous disgust for this utterly callous and disrespectful comment, Colby also managed to get an entire arena to boo him after cowering away from Edwards for all 25 minutes of their fight. Colby Covington exposed himself as an ugly troll with an even uglier mouth this past weekend. And it will hopefully be the last time he is afforded the bright lights of a championship opportunity.
Dricus And Strickland Scrap After War Of Words
If you thought Covington’s (terrible) trash talk was bad, then clearly we hadn’t seen anything yet.
The following day, the UFC brought back seasonal press conferences, with Sean Strickland and Dricus Du Plessis taking centre stage. You can probably imagine how this went….
I won’t go into all the details, mostly because I would probably get cancelled for giving you all the explicit details, but essentially it went a little like this: Sean went after Dricus, calling him a low-grade fighter that Sean would absolutely run through, and essentially vaporise. Dricus responded by pointing to the example he made of Robert Whittaker (pretty fair if you ask me), and that he was going to dominate Strickland in every area, especially with his wrestling. Pretty tame stuff, right?
Sean then proceeded to make several…homophobic references towards Dricus, implying a relationship of that nature with his head coach. Dricus then decided to go nuclear, and claimed that he would…”abuse” Sean worse than his own father had. Now, if you know anything about Sean’s admitted past, you will understand that that’s a pretty deep blow to inflict. and Sean…didn’t take it well.
And It Doesn’t Stop There…
At the event itself, Dana White (who called himself the “***hole) responsible for sitting the two together, had to deal with a brawl at Octagon side. Admittedly, Strickland did usher Gilbert Burns’ son to the side before attacking the challenger for his world championship, but still…not exactly the best look for a legitimate company, is it?
Sean Strickland decides to take flight and attack middleweight rival Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 296 last Saturday night. (Image Credit: TMZ)
Essentially, the UFC cameras (conveniently perfectly covering the whole thing) panned to Dricus, who naturally played to the cameras. Two rows in front of him was his opponent, Strickland, who had clearly not forgotten the reference to foreshadowed “abuse” from Dricus the day before. As mentioned above, Strickland moved a small child (who happened to be the son of UFC welterweight Gilbert Burns) out of the way, before launching himself into (technically, on to) Dricus, before raining down punches at his head.
Where Does This Past Weekend Leave Us?
Truthfully, not in a good way.
Don’t get me wrong – This is a grown man’s game, with the eternal aim of limiting the amount of brain cells that occupy an opponent’s head after a fight. I completely get that. However, there is a certain line that you simply do. not. cross.
As MMA fans (and media), we have to demand and expect better of our fighters – otherwise, where does it all end? (Image Credit: The Sun)
I get that MMA today is as much entertainment as it is in-ring ability. I get the eternal spectre that Conor McGregor’s trash talk casts over whether you become a star or not. However, not only have fighters gotten less original, they’ve also started having to resort to increasingly base methods of insulting each other in the cheap hope of having a viral TikTok clip.
And don’t get it twisted. Even though we have seen such rounded condemnation of what Colby Covington said, there WILL be others. There will be other fighters with no qualms about hitting (verbally) so far below the belt that they touch the pavement. There will be fighters that live for attempting to emulate Conor McGregor and what he achieved. Ian Garry already put a mug shot of his opponent on a t-shirt for a cheap laugh. we’ve seen the fights in hotel lobbies. The question is – how far do we go before this ends? And what could the consequences of this kind of thing be in the future? More smashed buses?
Thank you for taking the time to read this. We always appreciate your support, and would love to know your thoughts in the comments below!
[Scratches record] Yeah, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up here…or not. My name’s Keelin McNamara, and I am an AVID combat sports fan. Always have been, and probably always will be. I started writing and podcasting about MMA in the Summer of 2020 (yeah, we don’t talk about that here either). I’ve been doing it ever since, and have loved every single minute of it! Thanks for checking out whatever it is you’re reading – I hope you enjoy it!
