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Kamaru Usman believes there was no controversy during his title defense against Colby Covington in the headliner of UFC 245. The 'Nigerian Nightmare' broke Covington's jaw with a bomb of a right hand en route to a TKO victory on the night.
Immediately after the fight, Covington was seen leaving the Octagon in a hurry and refrained from commenting until recently when he spoke to MMA Fighting and claimed that the referee made an unfair and early stoppage.
“I went out there and I beat up ‘Marty Fakenewsman’ for 24 minutes until the ref had to stop the fight on a fake stoppage – a bullsh*t stoppage. [A stoppage] where I was completely coherent and still in the fight, and [Goddard] just blatantly stopped the fight, after there was a foul, too. He’s hitting me in the back of the head four times and he blatantly calls the fight, because he knows he doesn’t want it to go to the judges’ scorecards cause I could win.”
In an interview with MMA Fighting, UFC welterweight champion Usman disagreed with Covington's comments and said that the referee was only trying to save him from suffering further damage, having already had his jaw broken in the fourth round.
“I hit him with some big, big shots in there. Hitting him with the right hand that hurt him. That clearly hurt him. Hitting him with a series of punches against the cage that definitely hurt him and then the big right hand that just sat him down really bad. So he’s hurt really bad, he got up, I let him up trying to fight back up and then hit him with another shot that just dropped him. For a referee looking at all of that, at the end of the day, you’re sprawled out and I’m beating on the side of your head, the referee’s got to protect you from yourself sometimes.”
While Usman is set to face Jorge Masvidal in the near future, he is open to a rematch against Covington as well.
"That was a fun fight. Not just myself but I think the media, the fans, everybody believed that was a fun fight.”
