Covington has both his fans and detractors, but those detractors allegedly want Usman to kill the former interim welterweight champion.
“I’ve been deleting messages for the past two days from Instagram,” Usman told TMZ Sports (via Simon Head of MMA Junkie). “I’ve just deleted, deleted, deleted messages – thousands of messages on Instagram – of people saying: ‘Bro, you’ve gotta kill this dude.’ It’s not ‘beat him,’ it’s ‘kill this guy,’ ‘kill him for us,’ ‘I want him done worse than Askren was.’ People have malicious intent for this guy, myself included, and I’m just blessed to be able to go out there and do it.”
Usman and Covington did go face to face during the UFC Fight Night Newark post-fight show, with security stepping between them before things got physical.
The welterweight champion also believes that many fans don’t like the WWE-type aspects that Covington brings to professional MMA.
“When you get a guy like Covington, who’s bringing the WWE aspect of entertainment into it, it rubs a lot of people the wrong way,” he said. “People don’t like that because they know the basis of what mixed martial arts was built upon. So that’s the big hang-up of why people hate this (guy) so much. And, all around, he’s just a big douche – let’s just be honest … He not only rubs everyone the wrong way, it makes people want to punch you in the face now – and I’m talking women and children, grandmas, not just fighters.”
There is no word yet when Usman and Covington could possibly meet in the Octagon, as Usman hasn’t competed since winning the title at UFC 235.
