Colby Covington lays our retirement plans – “I see myself done in the next year or so”

Former UFC welterweight title contender Colby Covington (17-5) has not competed inside the octagon since a December 2024 loss to Joaquin Buckley.

While the 38-year-old “Chaos” has competed outside the promotion with a win over former UFC middleweight champion Luke Rockhold at Real American Freestyle Wrestling, mixed martial arts competition has taken a back seat for Covington.

“You have no say,” Covington recently told popular streamer N3on. “Hunter Campbell, who is like the UFC lawyer, he kind of just tells you what direction they’re going to go, and it’s either you take it or leave it. So, you don’t really get a choice what you want to do. They just leave you. They ice you. They won’t give you fights. They’ll just let you sit out there. They’ll say, ‘Hey, you turned down this fight, now you’re not going to fight for the year. You’re not going to make money.’ They’ll freeze you out.

“Even if it’s not a good move, and you’re not getting paid what you think you deserve, it doesn’t matter. They say, ‘You either accept it and be a company man, or we’ll just ice you, and you don’t get a fight to make money.’”

Covington, who did not receive an invite to compete on this summer’s UFC White House card, will return to wrestling on March 28 when he meets Dillon Danis at RAF07.

“So, for UFC, I think, probably in the next year or so, I’m going to be done with it, because you don’t want to take too many shots to the head when you’re later in age,” Covington said. “And my body is slowing down; my metabolism doesn’t recover like it used to. So, when I train two or three times, I don’t recover like I used to in my 20s. So, I see myself done in the next year or so.

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