MMA Fighting - Reaction: Jorge Masvidal vs. Colby Covington Rivalry Boils Over In Alleged Miami Street Attack

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

Jorge Masvidal's rivalry with Colby Covington has allegedly boiled over into the streets following Covington's unanimous decision win over Masvidal earlier this month at UFC 272. MMA Fighting's Mike Heck and Jed Meshew react to the news of an alleged incident involving the two rivals, the police report MMA Fighting obtained, whether or not the UFC could use this alleged moment in time to promote a second fight, and more. Follow Mike Heck: @MikeHeck_JR Follow Jed Meshew: @JedKMeshew Subscribe: http://goo.gl/dYpsgH Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/u8VvLi Visit our playlists: http://goo.gl/eFhsvM Like MMAF on Facebook: http://goo.gl/uhdg7Z Follow on Twitter: http://goo.gl/nOATUI Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. Mike Keck here for MAAfighting.com reacting to some news. We had heard about on Monday night, confirmed through a couple of sources on Monday night, that there was an incident at a restaurant in Miami Beach called Poppy Steak involving UFC welterweights, Jorge Mazudal, and Colby Covington. Now, earlier today, myself and Damon Martin,

both confirmed with the Miami Beach Police Department that an incident involving Mazadol did in fact happen, and it did get physical. Now, under Marcy's law, the victim in the incident's identity was not made public, but Jorge Mazadal's name, along with three other men, were listed on the police report. Now, according to the documents that I have in front of me right now, the victim says he was, quote, attacked by Jorge Mazadal. The victim left the restaurant, started walking northbound, when Mazadol ran up from the victim's left side,

in quote, without notice, punched him with a closed fist two times to his face. One punch to the mouth, the other to the left eye. The report continues stating Mazadol was heard saying, You shouldn't have been talking about my kids. The victim then observed three or four other unknown males approaching him in an aggressive manner where the victim pushed one of the males away, separated himself from the attackers, ran back into the poppy steak restaurant where he went on to contact. police. The victim suffered a fractured left tooth and an abrasion to his left wrist. As of now,

no arrests were made, but there was quite a bit of boasting from the Mazadol side with this, from not only Mazadol himself, but his management team, some of his friends as well. And the investigation is still ongoing. Of course, no love loss between these two gentlemen, Covington and Mazadol finally met inside the Octagon after years of going back and forth in the main event of UFC 272 earlier this month. Covington picked up a one-sided unanimous decision victory. A lot to unpack here. A lot of speculation as well with this police report, Jedmishu,

as we welcome you in. I guess my first question is, to the best of your ability, how do you react to the story since last night and what we have allegedly learned since? I have two reactions. The first being, wow, is this dumb? just not a great showing here from Rory Mospital for any reason. And I have a lot of questions about what prompted this.

And I'm sure we'll get into that in a little bit. And the second is I'm trying to figure out what this is going to mean, assuming that the allegations against Hori Mospadol proved true here. And Colby Cunnington wishes to proceed with charges. Obviously, there's a lot of speculation, a lot of things are up in the air. And while it would appear, based on his own efforts on social media, that Mastodal is claiming credit for this incident, we can't say that definitively, right? Like, he is not convicted of a crime at this point in time. So bears keeping in mind.

But all signs seem to be pointing towards Rory Mastral having done a very, very dumb thing. So, yeah, that's kind of where I'm sitting right now. Yeah, I mean, whether it's Covington or whoever else this is, by the report, it's pretty much saying that the victim's walking on the street, mining his own business, and Mazadol just ran up and punched him in the face twice without any provocation whatsoever. So we'll see what happens. I mean, you're into the legal world a little bit, like not professionally, not. I was at one point in time an attorney. Okay, so according to this police report, which you're also reading right now, No charges, but if the victim decides to go forward with this,

Mazdo would be facing a felony battery charge. Is that how you read it as well? I think so. I have a little bit of, I mean, it's listed as a battery slash felony on the report. So that, you know, I never worked in Florida. I want to make that clear. But kind of my initial reading is here, though my reading of the Florida statutes makes this seem a little.

like on paper this looks like it should actually just be a misdemeanor battery based on my reading of Florida statute unless a couple of other extenuating circumstances are occurring here but based on what the report's saying I'm willing to look at this as a potential felony battery charge so now we look at it from like an MMA perspective because for over two decades Jedmishu, myself, you other MMA fans, those running the UFC, those trying to defend this sport, these are the things that everybody was worried about. We always said they keep it in the cage. None of the stuff happens on the outside. Yeah, you might see a skirmish here and there.

You might get into like a way and scurfuffle, or I think that's a word, but that we're going to go with it here. But very rarely does it happen on the street like this and very rarely to this extent. So regardless of who's involved in it, is this a bad look for the sport? Like, is this going to pass the mom test in a strange way where people are going to be like, see, I told you, this is one of those, you know, violent, silly sports and I can't believe you like it. Is it going to get to that point? Or are people going to start questioning what we do for a living because of something like this? No, I think, look, I want to be extremely clear.

I think this was really, really dumb. Horace-all had 25 minutes to punch Colby in the face. and he couldn't really do it. So this reads, you know, from our perspective, or certainly at least from mine, this reads like a cheap shot and just not like, just really not cool and anathema to all of the things that Horamasa has tried to portray himself as being.

But this ultimately isn't going to come back in like a grander sense. This is actually like, if you're going to go about doing a very dumb thing that could arguably get you arrested, this is a better way to do it than like Connor McGregor allegedly punching whoever whatever celebrity he did in the face I honestly don't remember which one at this point in time or random civilian

like that leaks over into the broader public consciousness a lot more and it's like ooh Connor McGregor punched an old man in a bar like that becomes this big news hoary Mossadol allegedly punching colby covington who they just fought and hate each other like that's this is probably just going to stay neatly in the the MMA bubble for the most part and no one's no one's really going to think twice about it if

and that's assuming charges even get pushed like it's very possible that this just kind of goes away maybe it goes away and maybe the UFC should come out and say something about this but maybe actually probably definitely they're in the war room right now thinking how can we put this fight back together how can we run these two guys back because that's

as silly as it sounds my first thought was they're going to try to rebook this fight and do it again because now you have a story, now you have a police report. Both guys are going to come out and claim different sides of the story, even though it's in a police report. What are the chances, scale one to 10, that the UFC is about to make a fight offer to both of these guys to run it back? I think it's a lot higher than I would have said yesterday or I guess, or this past weekend. I am a little, normally I would say this is, is just 100% where they go. The fact that Colby, I mean, assuming it's Colby, I guess, again, we can't say this for certain.

But the fact that probably Colby enacted Marcy's law and didn't want his name to come through this reads really weird to me and doesn't read like he's all that interested in running it back. But I think the UFC certainly is viewing this as, you know, I doubt we're even going to get the Dana White doing the, oh, this is it terrible like he did with the Connor McGregor bus incident and they're just going to go directly to using the bus footage to promote a fight between Connor and Habib. They're going to skip that, skip that first part of feigned indignance and just go right to, well, these two men, they couldn't settle it over 25 minutes. Let's give them another 25.

I'm thinking exactly that right now. They're sitting in the room thinking about this right now. They're like, do we want to rush to Columbus, Ohio on this Tuesday? or do we want to sit in the war room and try to put Mazinol, Covington 2 together? It makes sense because we've been talking about it for the last couple of weeks. There aren't any super clean lines for Colby or Jorge next. Realistically, like, Colby has tried and failed to get a fight with Dustin Porre. Porre has no interest and isn't going to bite on that one.

And so now Colby's, like, trying to get Israel Dissina. That's obviously not, that's probably not going to happen. We've talked about that. And Jorge, I mean, there are fights you could do, but there's nothing jumping out since Nate Diaz is again focused up on Dustin Porre. They both don't have any clear next opponents, and they had a fight of the night, and they're still beef. So it makes sense for them to want to push this. And I think they will certainly try to capitalize on this, if nothing else. Now, if this is, in fact, Colby Covington, and you just fought this man,

two and a half weeks ago, and it went the way that it did. Again, I scored a 50-43 for Covington. This is one-way traffic outside of one right hand. And Colby has said, if the UFC wants to do it again, he'll gladly fight Mazadol again because the money is going to be there. And I mean, why not? He feels like it's a very winnable fight for him. And we just saw it over 25 minutes.

It was. It was a very winnable fight for him. So, I mean, at this point, you may, Coving doesn't strike me as a guy who's going to, like, camp out on the outside of a Miami beach restaurant and try to exact revenge on the street. No, he's going to try to get it in the cage and do it that way. Now, it won't be what like most casual fans would expect when you see somebody get sucker punched and now we get an opportunity to to fight again. We're not going to get all okay. Maybe we will. But I think there's a very good chance come July. We see these two guys

fight again. Like I'm with you. I didn't think this is something we would see a couple weeks ago. maybe like a year or two down the road we might get it but with the way that this division's looking right now the paths are both guys right now Usman is going to be booked and locked up for a little while here especially if Hamzat Shemayae

beats Gilbert Burns this might just be the one Jed like this is a very possible thing this summer I think the UFC will go ahead and pull the trigger on this fight I find it hard to argue like I think Colby should take it if offered he's we talk about all the time

The goal in fighting is to make the most money while fighting the worst people. And I'm not saying that Jorge Mastral is bad, but Colby obviously can beat him and has done so convincingly not long ago. You know, I think this makes a lot of sense. And especially the buildup to a rematch now is substantially, I don't want to say it's more interesting, but it is more interesting. right like it shouldn't be more interesting that stupid the like baseline stupidity is rewarded with more more interest but by definition their trash talk will be more captivating because Jorge were like yeah well we settled it on the streets and Colby would like you sucker punched me with five of your boys so you can just there's there is a good narrative to push as a continuation

of their first fight and that I think can probably sell a lot of pay-per-views. So probably is where we're headed, if we're being honest. Yeah. There's two paper views in July. This could be an international fight week main event right now with the way that the UFC would push the hell out of this fight because they would. And the police report did state that there are neighboring businesses that have CCTV cameras

that were turning, they're going to turn the video over so they could further their investigation. So chances are we're going to see actual video footage of this ordeal and how it played out and things like that. And we know the UFC. They're going to take this information and they're going to make a promo out of it and they're going to book a big fight between these two guys.

And I just don't know if the fight goes any differently this time around, but at least the storyline is compelling and you can milk a little bit more out of this rivalry because, I mean, this is the real deal. And for anybody who seems to be questioning it, I mean, allegedly, of course, we got to use that word very strongly here.

There is no fakeness. There is no phoniness to this. This is the real deal. And these two guys don't like each other. And Mazadol, better for worse. Seems to be a man of his word, Jedbushu. So more details to follow on this situation. We will update as we see fit.

As of right now, Jorge Mazadol involved in an incident last night where he punched a victim in the face. Two times with a closed fist, allegedly. He allegedly punched the victim in the face. The victim may or may not be. claiming credit for it. Yeah. He's, there is boasting going on,

and the victim may or may not be fellow UFC Welter Ray Colby Covington. So we'll see what happens. Nothing from the Covington side yet in terms of any sort of confirmation or just any sort of statement whatsoever on what's going on. But if there is, we will let you know over on MAAfighting.com. Any final thoughts,

Jedmishu, on something I didn't think we'd be talking about on this Tuesday, getting ready to head into UFC, Columbus? I'm interested to see what Colby does here. I am pretty shocked, assuming again, that it's him, and all signs point to that being the case. I'm shocked he hasn't made some sort of a statement. I'm shocked.

He invoked Marslaw. I don't know if he's going to press charges or not. Like, on the one hand, it would kind of make sense for him to press charges here, given kind of his whole persona. But on the other hand, pressing charges by default sort of jeopardizes a potential payday for a rematch. So it's just a very weird, strange situation. And the fact that Colby has been radio silent is maybe the most interesting aspect to this. And I will be very interested to hear if and when he does make some sort of statement or response from this. I will say I have reached out to Colby.

I have not heard anything back. So be that as a may. But that's not new. That's something that's new. That's not out of the norm at all because oftentimes it takes four or five texts before Colby will respond, especially if there's some sort of fight involved or if there's a build to a fight, you don't hear from it all. Look, the King of Miami is a busy man. He has a lot of things on his time.

He can't always respond to text messages immediately. I understand. Well, that's what we have for you right now. Now, I didn't even think we'd spend 13 or so minutes on this, but here we are. It has been a crazy newsday. We found out Sergio Pettis is injured. He is out of the Bellator Grand Prix, not just the fight. He's out of the entire Grand Prix.

And now Juan Archiletta and Rafian Stats are going to fight on April 23rd for the Bellator interim Bantamway title. And then that title will be defended throughout the Grand Prix. Why? I did not know that part of this. That's true. This doesn't need to be a Bellator sucks reaction pod, but man, that's dumb. Yes, a lot going on. Chale Sunnan back in the news as well.

So head to M.AFighting.com to get the details on this crazy Tuesday in the world of mixed martial arts. So we're done. Jed, we'll see you on Thursday for BTL. But until then, everybody, I am Mike Heck. Thanks for listening.