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Colby Covington's former training partner Josh Silveira has opened up on the former interim UFC welterweight champion's tumultuous relationship with members of the American Top Team gym. Covington was a member of the ATT team from 2011-2020.
He left the gym to join MMA Masters in 2020 after reports of rifts with several ATT gym members, including Jorge Masvidal, Dustin Poirier, and Joanna Jedrzejczyk. According to his former training partner, the change in Covington's personality following his win over Demian Maia back in 2017 started rubbing people the wrong way.
Silveira claimed he was one of the few who agreed to train with Covington during his final days at ATT. He also revealed that there were those who wanted to train with Covington so that they could hurt him during training sessions. During an interaction with Ariel Helwani, he said:
"I was training with him a lot and for the simple fact because a lot of guys don't want to train with him... some guys did want to train with him but it was [like] 'Should we?' because they might want to hurt him in training [so] there had to be trust. He rubbed a lot of people off wrong..."
Watch the interview below:
Josh Silveira claims ATT members were "happy" about Colby Covington leaving the gym
Silveira said that the atmosphere inside ATT was very tense during Colby Covington's final days in the gym. Once he left, however, Silveira claimed that most people were happy, and the atmosphere inside the gym became normal again.
He added that while Covington displayed a brash persona in front of the media, he was mostly quiet and largely kept to himself at the gym. Silveira said:
"It would be kind of weird to see how nice he was when we were training together and stuff and then I would go see an interview and you know he's telling Joanna to f**k off or something like that or talking about like kids and people's wives, that's the part that kind of like, 'Ah, you know I prefer the other stuff.'... people were definitely happy that he left."
Colby Covington's next fight in the UFC is yet to be announced. In his last fight, 'Chaos' picked up a lopsided unanimous decision win over friend-turned-foe Jorge Masvidal in the headliner of UFC 272.
