Coach Longo goes on tirade about Covington: 'Total f-----g misfit in life'
One of the most respected and longest-tenured coaches in MMA is fed up with Colby Covington.
Ray Longo, the head of Serra-Longo Fight Team who trains the likes of Aljamain Sterling, Merab Dvalishvili, and Chris Weidman, believes Covington crossed the line with his trash talk aimed at welterweight champion Leon Edwards' late father ahead of their title bout at UFC 296 last weekend in Las Vegas. Covington went on to lose to Edwards in a fairly lackluster and lopsided unanimous decision and was booed after the fight.
Longo slammed Covington in a two-minute rant earlier this week on the "Anik & Florian Podcast."
"I got absolutely no use for the guy at all. I just don't. ... What he did with Leon Edwards I think is atrocious," Longo said. "There's promoting a fight, and then there's being a total f-----g misfit in life. That's the way I see it with that guy.
"First off, Leon Edwards, with his father, that was heartbreaking to listen to Leon talk. Leon's a sweetheart of a guy. I really like Leon Edwards a lot, man. To see that - I'm tearing up as he's doing that. And it's anger, it's anger toward Colby. That's what it does to me."
At the prefight press conference last week, Covington said he would take Edwards to the "seventh layer (of) hell" and that they could "say what's up" to Edwards' father, who was murdered when Edwards was 13 years old. After the win, Edwards said the fight was "very emotional" because of what Covington said.
"This guy used my dad's death as entertainment. He used my dad's murder as entertainment," Edwards said Saturday.
Covington also made a crass remark at the presser about Stephen Thompson, another welterweight on stage.
"'Wonderboy' is doing something (where) at least he gives back to the community," said Longo, who has worked with Thompson in the past. "Colby, you're sucking the f-----g life out of the community. You're just like a leech on society.
"It's just too much for me," Longo continued. "I don't care for it, and man, talk about karma, because what a piece of shit that fight was. I mean, (Covington) did absolutely nothing. To be able to take a pro-Colby crowd and by the end of the fight have the crowd against you - good luck, my man, I hope it was worth the money, the extra 25% or whatever. I've been around a long time, I can promise you that you will regret a lot of shit for the rest of your life. I think he cost (former U.S. president Donald) Trump the election, how's that?"
Covington said after the loss he did not regret the comments about Edwards' dad.