A defeated Covington almost didn’t compete at the event due to suffering from a bout of food poisoning.
“I’m not making excuses,” Covington said on the It’s All About Who You Know podcast (via Tom Taylor of BJPenn.com). “I haven’t really told anybody, but the UFC was preparing meals for me all fight week, and I ended up getting really sick of one of their meals. I think they didn’t cook the chicken very good, and I got food poisoning two nights before the fight. I puked like 30 times, literally like 30 times. I told my manager Dan Lambert ‘I’m going to have to pull out of the fight, man.’ He’s like ‘no, you can’t pull out man, you’re the main event. You can’t do this to the UFC, you just need to go through with it.’”
Covington suffered his second professional MMA loss at the event, with the fighter’s only other defeat coming to Warlley Alves at UFC 194.
The former interim welterweight champion said that he still beat Usman at UFC 245, despite the result saying otherwise.
“I ended up going through with it, but I didn’t feel my best. That kind of played into the decision not to wrestle [in the fight] because I didn’t feel strong,” he said. “It’s like I was holding back a little bit because I knew I was puking, my liver and intestines were all messed up and I wasn’t at full strength. So what I’m trying to say is I was on my worst day and ‘Marty Fake Newsman’ was on his best day and I still beat him.”
It could be awhile before Covington gets another crack at Usman, as Usman is expected to face Jorge Masvidal this Summer during UFC International Fight Week.
