For the most part, Jorge
Masvidal was fighting an uphill battle against the relentless
grappling and wrestling of Colby
Covington in the
UFC 272 headliner.
That changed briefly in Round 4, when “Gamebred” buckled his rival
with a right hand late in the period. Instead of pressuring and
pursuing a finish, Masvidal backed off, which allowed Covington to
eventually force his way into the clinch and stall the action. In
hindsight, Masvidal regrets not doing more in that instance,
especially after Covington concluded the bout with a dominant fifth
round.
“I didn’t pounce on him after I dropped him. I wasn’t surprised
that he bounced up. I was just surprised that I didn’t take his
head off,” Masvidal said at Saturday’s post-fight press conference.
“I thought he was going to shoot immediately, so I was just
thinking of wrong s—t instead of going to take his head off. I was
tired. He was tired and hurt.
“That was my chance right there. That was my window of like five or
six seconds to give it all I got, make a sprint, make a big change.
Maybe I could’ve made that round 10-8, 10-7, who knows? But I
didn’t take that opening.”
Other than a few positive moments in the second frame, the rest of
the fight was all about Covington’s ability to impose his will
through wrestling. Masvidal spent a large amount of time with
Covington attached to his back near the fence, defending against
chokes while absorbing ground-and-pound.
“I wrestled like s—t,” Masvidal said. “I lost a lot of exchanges.
If I were to won them, on a technical level, things could’ve gone a
little bit differently if I made him expend more energy on certain
takedowns. That first takedown I gave up, he took my back. He rode
me pretty good. That got me pretty flat going into the next round.
I felt like I won a lot of the exchanges. I felt like on the feet,
I definitely did the more damage. But it’s a fight. I mean, s—t,
man.
“If I could’ve done it all over again, I would’ve gone to college
and wrestling my ass off and got my grades up to be able to stuff
all these guys up, then just keep it on the feet. I was just flat
on the wrestling, brother.”
Masvidal is now mired in the first three-bout skid of his
professional career, and all of those defeats have come against
dominant wrestlers: Covington and reigning welterweight champ
Kamaru
Usman (twice). The Miami native knows he needs to shore up his
skills if he’s going to make another run.
“If I fight another wrestler, I need to make sure I can deal with
this thing,” Masvidal said. “It’s all been tough fights with me
with the wrestlers. Thinking, ‘Is he going to shoot on me?’ so I
don’t open up as much on the feet as I should. Then, I get in big
scrambles and I get out-scrambled, so I need to fix the wrestling,
man.”