EXCLUSIVE | Colby Covington feels Conor McGregor is too “coked up” to do UFC 229 promotion

In the main event of UFC 229, which goes down on October 6 in Las Vegas, Nevada, former UFC lightweight and featherweight champion Conor McGregor will make his long-awaited return to the cage opposite reigning UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov. The fight is inarguably the biggest of the year for the UFC, and one of the biggest in the promotion’s history outright. For some reason, however, the fight has been grossly under-promoted. It’s now just three weeks away, and we’re still waiting on the first official press conference.

Former UFC interim welterweight champion Colby Covington believes he knows why that is. On the one hand, he understands why McGregor is unwilling to travel across the Atlantic to participate in a distracting media circus. He is, after all, gearing up for one of the toughest fights of his career. Yet Covington also thinks McGregor’s partying might also be deflating his will to promote the fight.

Colby Covington gave his take on the situation on the latest episode of BJPENN.COM Radio.

“I completely understand where he’s coming from,” Colby Covington explained. “He’s over in Ireland, so to come from Ireland, to come do promotion in America, that’s a little tough. It takes out of your training schedule. You want to be training hard, and preparing for your style matchup. I get where he’s coming from. It gets a little tough when you’re cutting weight to travel all over the place, when you want to focus on really getting yourself ready to peak for your fight.”

“But the thing is, he’s gotten a little soft, over the years,” Covington added. “He’s doing his little cocaine, and he’s partying a lot with his hookers. He’s getting a little soft. He’s a little, he’s a coked up little leprechaun who’s getting a little soft, so I completely understand why he doesn’t want to do promotion.”

What do you think of Colby Covington’s theory on Conor McGregor?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 9/16/2018.