Kamaru Usman: Colby Covington is the one guy I have ‘malicious intent to hurt’ inside that cage

Top welterweight fighters Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington have been ribbing at each other for months now. Their rift further escalated at the UFC’s 25^th Anniversary press conference, bothduring the actual media event, and at the backstage area.

Covington has been in the crosshairs of “The Nigerian Nightmare” since February, but a fight never materialized. Now, Usman has made it a little more personal between him and “Chaos.”

“Four times I’ve been offered that fight and he said no,” Usman said of Covington. “They tried to make that fight again for Nov. 30th. They offered me the fight and I said, ‘Absolutely, I will wait for that fight’. They actually offered me RDA for that main event in Brazil that Glover Teixeira andJimi Manuwa just got announced on. I said, ‘Yes, I’m ready, I’ll take the fight’, but he said he was dealing with something… he turned it down or he wasn’t ready to fight.”

“If they had have offered me Covington on Nov. 30th, I would’ve said, ‘Absolutely’. That’s the one guy that I really have malicious intent to hurt inside that cage. Of course, they did offer me that and I did jump on that, but then [Covington] went to the White House and came back and was like, ‘I don’t want that fight.’”

Because he is seemingly running out of options, Usman now has his sights set on Rafael dos Anjos.

“If I do fight anybody, besides winning the title on Sept. 8, it will be RDA,” Usman said. “That’s really the only fight that makes sense. He just fought for an interim title, that’s the fight that puts me right there.”

“I’m not getting Darren Till, which I wanted. Covington, four times I’ve been offered that fight. He’s declined each and every one — I’m not getting that fight. The only guy left to put me right there is RDA.”

From his end, Covington is more interested in fighting Nick Diaz, Conor McGregor, Khabib Nurmagomedov, and “syrup sucker” Georges St-Pierre.