Colby Covington Says UFC 228 Will Be a Failure Without Him Headlining

Colby Covington is at it again, suggesting that the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s next pay-per-view event, UFC 228, which features a title bout between welterweight champion Tyrone Woodley and Darren Till, won’t generate much interest without him.

Covington is the UFC’s interim welterweight champion after dominating Brazilian Rafael dos Anjos back in June. “Chaos” underwent nasal surgery after defeating dos Anjos and when UFC matchmakers called him for the title unification bout with Woodley on Sept. 8 at UFC 228 he rejected the offer, stating he wouldn’t be ready. Rather than wait, the UFC elected to strip his title and book Woodley against Till to avoid holding up the welterweight division any longer.

In a recent appearance on BJ Penn Radio, Covington said without his presence on the UFC 228 card, it will fail to generate many PPV buys as he feels fans aren’t interested in watching either man.

“They don’t sell f*cking pay per views in the UK [where Till is from], and obviously no one cares about Woodley,” Covington said. “He always has to piggyback off Jon Jones, and piggyback off Conor McGregor, to make his money. So we know he can’t sell pay-per-views, so let’s be honest, this isn’t gonna do over 100,000 buys. They should have just waited for me. I would have easily got them 500,000 buys [if they had waited for me]. I’m a seller. I can promote. I know what I’m doing now, and I think they rushed it.”

UFC 228, which takes place on Sept. 8 in Dallas, Texas, will also feature the first time the women’s flyweight title will be defended when champion Nicco Montano takes on Valentina Shevchenko.