We had a star-studded and action-packed night at UFC 272 in Las Vegas over the weekend. Not only did we start off with a worthy co-main event, but we witnessed the first fight between Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal. These former friends, roommates, and training partners are now bitter rivals. Read below for the results.
Recap
In case you missed, we wrote a preview article for the grudge match that you can find here. If you don’t want to go back and read it, no worries. I’ll give a brief recap of the history between these two right here.
Covington was a college wrestler that turned pro immediately after graduating. He moved from Oregon to Florida and joined the famed ATT gym, where Miami native, Masvidal, was already training.
The two hit it off right away. Covington had a lot to learn from Masvidal about striking, and Masvidal had a lot to learn from Covington about wrestling. The two helped each other out and strengthened each other’s game.
Off the mats, they spent a lot of time together, sharing many hobbies and eventually an apartment. However, as they both rose to fame, the arrogance and the tension grew between them. Covington’s fiery personality made them butt heads and things turned sour.
UFC 272
That brings us to today. Over the past year or so, the two have been spewing insults at each other. Fabricated? Probably. But these fighters know what gets them the big fights, and they both landed themselves a pay per view deal thanks to Dana (White).
Let’s just start off by giving a brief nod of honor to the co-main event between countrymen Rontao Moicano and Alejandro dos Anjos. These two entered a total 5-round slugfest with blood spraying all over the mats.
At one point, Moicano got elbowed so bad in the face that he had a cut open up above his left eye, which was already swollen enough that the medic wasn’t willing to let him continue fighting. The ref allowed Moicano 30 more seconds to turn the match around, otherwise he would stop the fight.
Moicano showed what he was made of and landed some good rear hands on dos Anjos to draw some blood back. The victory eventually went to Dos Anjos via split decision but it was an entertaining match up.
Ok, now on to the main event. Weigh-ins were a little bit more charged than the actual fight. Don’t get me wrong, it was a decent fight. But not quite as full of the daunting, heckling, and teasing you would see based on the past year.
When the match began, they (obviously) didn’t touch gloves. Covington made sure to come out sprinting to get to Masvidal before he could get to the center of the Octagon. This is because Masvidal is the better striker–this is where he would be most comfortable and in charge. Covington needed to back Masvidal up to the fence for the take down, since he is the best wrestler.
And that he did. Covington stayed in control for most of the match. Most take downs resulted in a rear naked choke attempt, but Masvidal is good enough to not let him get the submission and wrestle his way out, but had no successful take downs of his own.
Masvidal did land some good strikes and had Covington off balance for a couple of rounds, but it wasn’t enough. The win went to Covington via unanimous decision. In his post-match conference, Covington said he just took out the Miami trash, and now he’s ready to take out the Louisiana swamp trash.
In case you don’t know who he is, that’s code for Dustin Poirier. Poirier took out McGregor in their last trilogy fight (you know, the one where McGregor totally snapped his leg). Poirier currently sits at #2 in the UFC Lightweight rankings, behind Denver-based Justin Gaethje, and belt-holder Charles Oliveira.
