Josh Thomson believes Colby Covington has never been the same fighter since parting ways with American Top Team. Covington split with his longtime gym in 2020 after multiple rifts with then-teammates Jorge Masvidal and Dustin Poirier . Covington (17-5 MMA, 12-5 UFC) has since been training at MMA Masters, but his coaches, Daniel Valverde and Cesar Carneiro, were not in his corner this past Saturday as he suffered a third-round doctor stoppage TKO loss to Joaquin Buckley in the UFC on ESPN 63 headliner at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Fla. Thomson believes Covington is no longer getting high-level training and that his recent performances have reflected that. “I’m not going to take anything away from Joaquin Buckley,” Thomson said on his “Weighing-In” podcast, “but when you train at a prestigious gym like American Top Team, and you’ve found your way out of it, and now you’re running your own camp and doing your own thing in a smaller facility without a whole lot of people to train with that are at the top level, when you just left the gym that had a plethora of world-class fighters there – you saw it (at UFC on ESPN 63).
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Did American Top Team breakup ruin Colby Covington’s UFC career? Analyst believes so. – MMA Junkie