UFC: Jorge Masvidal says Colby Covington’s trash talk has ‘consequences’ as he opens up on feud

Jorge Masvidal has hit back at Colby Covington following criticism from his fellow American Top Team athlete and former friend.

Former UFC interim welterweight champion Covington has been trash talking “Gamebred” for the past few weeks.

Their teammate Dustin Poirier waded into the row, and was firmly on Masvidal’s side, calling Covington a “sell out”, and now the Cuban-American has told his side of the story.

“He ripped off my coach, that was his coach. We were with him until his title fight [against Rafael Dos Anjos in June 2018],” Masvidal told the Dan Le Batard Show. “After he won the title, he owed [our coach] a certain amount of money, didn’t pay him.

“I said if you don’t pay him I’m going to f*** you up. My coach got in between it, it doesn’t have to be like this, let it slide, since then, I ain’t talked to the dude.

“It’s been about a year and some change. It is what it is. All these words they do have consequences with me because this guy used to sleep on my couch, used to eat off me cause I was the one with the sponsors. He was just still relatively an amateur and I was helping this guy out. It hurts that he would do that in a way just for a like on Facebook, just for a retweet on Twitter, he’s doing that, to get you and me talking about him.”

UFC: The Rock wants to put ‘BMF’ title belt around Jorge Masvidal’s waist if he beats Nate Diaz

Masvidal will fight Nate Diaz in the main event of UFC 244 at Madison Square Garden for the “BMF” belt, after negotiations with Covington for a title fight against Kamaru Usman fell through.

“He’s mad because people don’t care to see him fight. They want to see him lose. That’s what they tune into,” Masvidal said. “He does this whole heel thing because he couldn’t get people to regularly watch his fights, so he said if I create this persona, go over the top, get people to hate me, then people will tune in. People do tune in, but it’s not as much as he would want.

“I don’t think it sells fights. You look at the people who tuned into his last fight [against Robbie Lawler], he has the lowest watched ESPN MMA event. I don’t know if it mathematically translates. We’re making him famous right now, nobody knows who this kid was until we brought him up.”

Covington also hit out at Poirier, saying “The Diamond” was just angry because he picked Khabib Nurmagomedov to beat him. Poirier responded by threatening to settle it at the gym in Florida – and Masvidal gave similar sentiments.

“I’m from Miami, I can’t let my city down, I can’t let this dude talk about me like that,” he said.

“He’ll be in the gym, I’ll walk in the gym, guess who leaves right away through the back door, take a wild guess everybody.”