Stephen
Thompson doesn’t see a clear path to victory for Colby
Covington in his upcoming welterweight title challenge against
Leon
Edwards.
Covington (17-3) is scheduled to headline
UFC 296 on Saturday opposite the champion at T-Mobile Arena in
Las Vegas. Thompson (17-6) recently explained why he believes
“Rocky” (21-3) will successfully retain his strap against
Covington.
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This is Covington’s third and probably last opportunity to become
undisputed champ, having come up short against former ruler
Kamaru
Usman via technical knockout in 2019 and then a unanimous
decision in 2021. Meanwhile, Edwards dethroned Usman with a
last-minute comeback upset in August 2022 before convincingly
defending his strap via a decision in a rematch this past
March.
Looking at both of their performances against Usman, Thompson
believes Edwards will have a size advantage over Covington. He
further noted that while “Chaos” struggled to wrestle Usman on both
occasions, Edwards took “The Nigerian Nightmare” down in the first
outing and stuffed his grappling game in the rematch.
While Covington’s best skillset is arguably his relentless pace,
“Wonderboy” believes it could prove to be dangerous against someone
like Edwards, who has proven knockout power for 25 minutes.
“I like Leon. Colby Covington, we saw what happened with Colby
Covington and Usman. Of course, Colby Covington is not coming off
of a severe knockout from this guy, but if you look back at the
fight, I feel like Leon Edwards is the bigger welterweight,”
The 40-year-old said on The MMA Hour. “I feel like the
fight is going to stay standing. Even Usman couldn’t hold him down,
he got right back up. And the first fight, Leon took him down,
something that Colby couldn’t do. Something Colby had much
difficulty doing [against Usman],”
“Leon is definitely the better striker. The only thing that I think
Colby has is the cardio. If he stays in his face and stays
relentless, but that’s very dangerous with somebody like Leon
because he can throw. [Edwards] is very dangerous from the very
beginning all the way to the very end of that fight as we saw the
very first [title fight with Usman]. He’s just as dangerous as he
is in the first as he is in the first round and that’s scary… I
think he’s going to keep the fight standing, I think he’s going to
win the fight standing up. He’s definitely the better striker.”
Thompson will also appear on the UFC 296 card opposite surging
Kazakh standout Shavkat
Rakhmonov (17-0), who has finished all of his 17 career outings
so far. Thompson is coming off a TKO win over Kevin
Holland last December, that saw him bounce back from
consecutive decision losses against ace grapplers Gilbert
Burns and Belal
Muhammad.