Colby Covington Needs ‘Serious’ Surgery For Cut, Details Training Accident

Colby Covington

Colby Covington put on a tremendous performance this past weekend in Newark. “Chaos” outclassed Robbie Lawler with such relative ease, even his adversaries had to give him props.

However, Covington had a minor setback heading into the contest. Covington revealed he suffered a nasty cut above his eye prior to the fight, which almost forced him to pull from the bout. Luckily, Covington was able to stitch it up and cover the cut with makeup so the athletic commission wouldn’t pull him from the fight.

Speaking on “The Ariel Helwani MMA Show” today (Mon. August 5, 2019), Covington detailed how the cut happened. Covington revealed he suffered the laceration due to an accidental head-butt during a sparring session.

“Yeah, when I was training, a little boxing sparring, we were just doing some body sparring that day,” Covington said. “I didn’t wear headgear, it was stupid. The guy leaped in and he head-butted me – it was nasty man. I honestly wanted to pull out, I was getting negative thoughts. I was like, ‘Yeah man, I got to pull out.’

“And then, the worst part is like, it was three weeks before the fight so we still had a manageable time to get it healthy, but we do stitches and they mess up the stitch job. They did them really loose, they didn’t do them tight, they didn’t do them from the muscle to the skin.

“So they were really loose and there was still a big gash in it, but it didn’t matter man, nothing was going to stop me from getting my hand raised and going out there. It didn’t matter if I was fighting King Kong that night. I was gonna put on a show for the President and the first family sitting front row.”

Covington noted that he might need some “pretty serious” surgery for the cut. It could sideline him anywhere from a couple of weeks to one or two months.

READ MORE:  Wanderlei Silva faces toughest fight yet: battling CTE symptoms post-UFC career

“Yeah, I honestly, I really do think I need to get it re-stitched,” Covington said. “And they’re going to have to do a pretty serious surgery where they have to cut back open the eyelid, and they’re going to have to stitch the muscle to the skin. I could be out for a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two.

“That’s why December in Vegas might work out better. So we’ll see when I get back to Florida next week. I talked to Dan Lambert, I go to the doctor and see. I don’t want this nasty gash that I have right now that covers my whole eyelid, I don’t want to have to fight with that like that the rest of my career because it’s going to get opened easy and I don’t want to risk taking a loss in a fight because of a doctor stoppage.

“That would be the worst way to lose. So I want to make sure my body is healthy, my face I completely healed, we get this stitched properly, and then we’ll be ready to go.”

What do you think about Covington needing surgery for his cut?

READ MORE:  Carla Esparza drops decision loss to Tecia Pennington in retirement fight - UFC 307 Highlights