GRUDGE MATCH
Jorge Masvidal vs Colby Covington CONFIRMED in huge UFC 272 main event on March 5 after years of rows between pair
JORGE MASVIDAL and Colby Covington will finally get to settle their long-running feud later this year.
The two-time welterweight title challengers will collide on March 5 in the main event of UFC 272 in Las Vegas.
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The pair's long-awaited clash will be the first time a non-title fight not involving Conor McGregor has headlined a pay-per-view event in over SEVEN years.
Masvidal vs Covington, a bout that pits two of the UFC's biggest names against one another, has been a fight several years in the making.
The pair have been at one another's throats for nearly three years following a stunning fallout.
Masvidal, 37, and Covington, 33, were friends for the better part of a decade and room-mates during the early days of the latter's UFC career.
But their bromance turned sour in June 2018 after Covington allegedly didn't pay one of Masvidal's coaches for training him for his interim welterweight title fight with Rafael dos Anjos.
The former pals' feud got so heated that Covington - who irked a number of his former team-mates with his antics - had to leave American Top Team.
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The 170lb standouts have yet to see one another in person since their infamous bust up and will no doubt provide fireworks at their pre-fight press conference.
Last year, Covington told MMA journalist : “We were best friends, inseparable, lived together for a couple years, just friends for almost a decade.
“You think we would really be saying these things about each other in the media?
"Like, if I see him in the streets, he’s for sure getting dropped on his head and he’s going to the hospital.
"He’s not going to be able to afford his hospital bills. I want the UFC to pay for them when I beat him in the octagon.
"So I don’t want to have to do it in the streets. “
“But this is a personal fight, James. This is as real as it gets, like the UFC’s saying goes.
"And anybody that thinks we’re still friends, man, I don’t know what they’re thinking, man.
"They must be smoking some good weed or something.”
POLICE CALLED
Earlier in the year, Masvidal told ESPN: "Colby is that one person, and I always say this, that wherever I see him it's a free pay-per-view right there.
"And he knows that. I got kicked out of the gym for trying to assault him one time.
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"And then I used to go to the spots he used to frequent a lot and got the police called on me."
Both men will enter their eagerly-anticipated grudge match on the back of losses to welterweight king Kamaru Usman, who stopped Masvidal at UFC 261 last April and registered a unanimous decision over Covington at UFC 268 the following October.
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