Jorge Masvidal dismisses Khamzat Chimaev and Colby Covington as potential opponents and focuses on his upcoming fight against Gilbert Burns.
Jorge Masvidal’s distaste for Colby Covington is well documented. However, just because fellow UFC contender Khamzat Chimaev is also a card-carrying member of the anti-Covington club, it doesn’t mean that Masvidal and the undefeated Chechen see eye to eye. “I don’t give a f***. They’re both p******,” Masvidal said on The MMA Hour when asked who’d win a potential fight between Covington and Chimaev.
Masvidal, 38, is referencing Chimaev tipping the scales at 178.5 pounds for his scheduled main event against Nate Diaz at UFC 279, 7.5 pounds above the legal limit for a non-title welterweight bout. Chimaev’s dramatic weigh-in miss prompted a last-second reshuffling of UFC 279’s card that ultimately led to him fighting Kevin Holland in a 180-pound catchweight bout, which Chimaev won via first-round submission. Chimaev is one of many UFC contenders who expressed frustration at UFC president Dana White’s insistence that Covington deserves to be the next title challenger at 170 pounds.
Chimaev recently told that he verbally agreed to face Covington on multiple occasions over the past year, however the matchup never came to fruition. White said the UFC expects Chimaev to move up to middleweight for his next bout following his weigh-in miss. Masvidal, meanwhile, is just sick of hearing Chimaev talk. “Like the rest of us, put your hard hat on, put your mouthpiece in and get to work,” Masvidal said.
Masvidal has his own battles to worry about as well, as the 38-year-old veteran is slated to face Gilbert Burns in a high-stakes affair on April 8 in the co-headlining bout of UFC 287. “Gamebred” enters the contest having dropped three consecutive fights to then-champion Kamaru Usman and, most recently, Covington on March 2022 at UFC 272. With current UFC welterweight champion Leon Edwards already openly campaigning to fight Masvidal next if he gets past Burns, Masvidal is confident he’ll be able to change the UFC’s mind about Covington’s place in the championship pecking order. At UFC 287, he also plans to remind anyone who may have hopped off the “Gamebred” bandwagon about why they became a fan of Masvidal in the first place.