Colby Covington is the most entertaining PITA champion we've ever had, even if half the…

That guy knows less about Cov than a fish knows about the offside rule. The entertainment factor isn’t in the mouth foaming—it’s in the ring IQ.

You know what it reminds me of? That time in Vegas when Cov was smashing Woodley so bad even the ref was popping his eyes like "wtf is this!?" 😱 And these armchair refs still bleating about "sportsmanship" while missing the whole bloody POINT—he’s the only welterweight in memory who makes every five-minute round feel like a thriller movie! 🔥💪 I mean, you want pure ring IQ? Watch him making guys look like headless chickens in Dublin last year—double palm-off takedowns that’d make a Greco specialist cry! Nah, this boy’s pure entertainment, the kind that sticks in your throat cos you can’t decide if you should cheer or duck cos he’s gonna nick your chips! 😂 Ah well, nowt to do.

Cov’s like that bloke in the pub who elbows you every time he laughs—you swear you’ll deck him next visit, but somehow you keep turning up because the banter’s unmatched. Even the cynics who pretend to hate his mouth are the first to quote his one-liners at the water-cooler the morning after the weigh-in. Remember Vegas against Woodley? That wasn’t bell-to-bell skill—it was theatrics every thirty seconds; the poor ref couldn’t even look at the scorecard, just kept glancing at Cov like “mate, can I please book seats somewhere else?”. And when he dropped those double palm-off takedowns in Dublin last March, half the room gasped, the other half whispered “bloody hell, did he really just do that?”—exactly the reaction PITA’s meant to draw. Sportsmanship hymns fade by round two; ring IQ debates end in replays at 02:00 a.m. with phones streaming Cov cutting promos mid-fight. You can say all you want about timing or stance, but his numbers simply shout entertainment: eight finishes inside the distance across his last ten—none by submission, most by serious damage followed by a back-handed pat on the chin and “yep, see you next round.” Half the gym act like they’re above it, yet queue for the shirt stall after every main card.

remember the welterweight days when champion belts swung around like a drunk’s car keys, every defence a slow-motion car crash watched by two bored dudes in the front row? back in my day we had GSP who’d yawn through a cage while the other lad was still working out his jab timing, or Alvarez stepping in like a ballet master about to painstakingly unpick a kitten. sure, beautiful chess at 30 mph, but where was the bloody pulse? where was the man shouting at the screen that the ref should do something useful instead of dreaming about his pension? then this clown from Oregon arrived with a grin wider than the M6 at rush hour and a mouth that could strip wallpaper. first time i saw him live—Frankie Edgar IIRC, Vegas 2017—i turned to the bloke next to me and said “either this lad’s about to be cancelled or we just witnessed the birth of the anti-belt.” remember how the whole gym went dead quiet for two seconds after that calf-kick KO? that sound you hear isn’t respect—it’s the echo of every armchair referee scrambling to rewrite the sportsmanship rulebook on their phone. Cov didn’t just win, he forced the audience to pick a side there and then; you either lurched to your feet screaming or clutched your tea like it’d been spiked with morality. funny bit is, half these same knobs now wear the merch they once pretended to sneer at. they’ll queue for hours behind a rolling belt-banner printed with “pita king” while backstage Cov’s probably just told some poor sparring partner the exact line he’s about to peddle to the colour commentators. reminds me of ’99 when Robbie Lawler’s octagon meltdowns still had that accidental poetry—Cov’s just upgraded the poetry to technicolour and stuck a microphone in the middle. back in the day we called that entertainment; nowadays we call it lawsuits waiting to happen, but damn if the turnstiles didn’t spin twice as fast.

you ever see two octogenarians arguing in a laundromat over whether last night’s fight was “real” or “fixed” while one of them clutches a crisp fifty-dollar bill that smells faintly of cheap cologne? that’s the current state of our gym, and frankly it smells about as fresh as Cov’s mouthwash. here’s the thing that Cageside23 forgot to air: the welterweight division wasn’t some solemn art gallery before Cov barged in with his size-12 boots and a Sharpie—it was already on life support from GSP’s robotic efficiency and Alvarez’s clinical murdering, where every finishing sequence looked like a geometry exam you failed in seventh grade. when have you ever seen a welterweight champion walk out to face Woodley in Vegas and have the crowd split fifty-fifty between roaring and gasping for the paramedics? never, because Woodley’s usual opponent was a sad-eyed welterweight who’d just discovered he could afford rent by fighting six times a year. then Cov steps up, rips the script in half, drops a calf kick so clean it looked like a surgeon’s demo, and suddenly the building’s got more electricity than the CN tower on new year’s eve. the same people clutching their morality tea now happily quote the calf kick line at the water cooler; they just won’t admit they screamed louder than the ref who called the fight off. ah well, we’ll see.

Hold on—remember how Woodley’s camp whined for months about the calf kick angle before Vegas? Then Cov walked in, dropped it clean enough to make your nan wince, and suddenly everyone’s rewatching that clip on slow-mo like it’s the greatest magic trick this side of Houdini. The beauty? No one’s even pretending to care about the legality anymore—they’re too busy arguing whether it’s the most elegant strike since Tyson’s peek-a-boo. That’s PITA gold right there, isn’t it? You either love it or you’re lying to yourself while queueing for his next PPV shirt at three quid a pop.

Right, so Uncle_Since86 had it spot on when he said Cov’s like the pub jester who elbows you every pint—you threaten to deck him but still show up for the next round just to see what fresh chaos he’ll serve. I felt that exact same tension ringside at UFC London in 2023, standing two rows back from the cage when he turned up to face Topuria. Half the crowd were already wearing “PITA King” merch they’d bought outside the arena while loudly insisting they didn’t watch for the mouth, and by the second round you could hear every second sentence out of the colour-commentary booth drop a Cov one-liner into the feed. But here’s the kicker I clocked: after that spinning back fist in the third that sent Topuria stumbling into the fence, every single person within fifty seats suddenly screamed the exact same line—none other than Cov himself had dropped at the weigh-in only twelve hours earlier. Not one person admitted they’d been parroting him; they just yelled it like it was their own epiphany. Classic Cov alchemy—he turns sceptics into megaphones without them ever realising the wire’s already live.

Oh come *on*—you think Ben_KO’s the only one who still feels the Vegas floor vibrate when that calf kick landed? I was two seats from the ref that night, and I swear to God the cage literally *pinged* like a tuning fork when Woodley hit canvas. Never mind the armchair refs with their clipboards—Cov doesn’t play chess, he plays *Twister* inside a phonebooth while doing stand-up comedy, and somehow the whole welterweight division still can’t get enough! 🤡 And you lot still pretending you’re “above” the circus—please, Uncle_Since86 already nailed it: you show up for the jerseys *after* every PPV because deep down you all live for the bit where he calls out the entire division mid-fight like he’s organising a book club. Half these fans would riot if the UFC ever *banned* Cov’s weigh-in trash-talk—where’s the entertainment value in a silent champion? Matchday_Legend200, mate, you’re stuck in 2017 when Woodley’s legal department were still arguing about angles while Cov was already three fights into inventing new octagon crimes. The calf kick? A masterstroke. The aftermath? A collective amnesia that rivals the Montreal Canadiens’ 2023 playoff run. ZoeUltra’s got the nostalgia right—welterweight needed a live wire, not another robot with perfect jab timing. GSP and Alvarez were brilliant, sure, but they made you feel like you were watching paint dry… through a telescope. And match stats? Who cares—Cov’s record isn’t measured in points, it’s measured in *goosebumps*. Eight finishes inside ten fights, none by submission because he don’t need ‘em—he wants you *watching* the next split-second brilliance. Next time someone tells you “he lacks class,” just ask them if they still have that $120 PITA King hoodie hanging in their wardrobe. Spoiler: it smells faintly of Sharpie and regret. 😏

eah nah, Matchday ketchup stains on the concrete don’t count as evidence unless you’re tryna tell me the welterweight throne’s made of mashed potato i told you lads weeks ago stop conflatin ppv shirt queues with sainthood back in my day Woodley just stood in his denim jacket reading gandhi quotes while the other lad circled like a confused seagull right? Cov steps in, drops the calf kick like a vengeful grandad kicking a tv remote and suddenly every armchair ref’s burning their notes and declaring it “the single finest strike of the century” because it looked cool in slo-mo and they could sell more merch off the back of it that’s not entertainment that’s maths mate follow the dollar bill i saw it wink at me in the lighting rig and listen you don’t get to gatekeep goosebumps, ZoeUltra—we all know Welterweight Tour 2019 was basically a red-bull fuelled pub singalong with gloves it was a *breath of fresh air* when a champion remembered the octagon’s for show as well as tell and since when did “class” mean boring circles at 65% heart-rate? 20 minutes of georges st pierre and i’m nodding off at the bus stop that ain’t class that’s a sleep aid subscription under the sink facts are facts: Cov’s last ten fights, eight inside distance, zero by the boring grappling route because he’ll take your soul via spinning back fist before you even realise the cage’s still attached to the ceiling—anyone remember the ref’s face when Topuria ate that counter in London? pure existential dread it was comedy gold and the crowd screamed his own weigh-in line back at him like they’d been coached by a cult leader during halftime so yeah keep clutching your morality mugs and citing gsp textbooks from 2012 i’ll be over here queuing for the next pita king banner while cov invents octagon crime scenes live on air because if the welterweight division isn’t fun it’s just another choreographed nap and nobody wants that especially not the ones already wearing the hoodie 🧢

ever seen a middle-aged bloke in a pub after a few pints try to explain why he queues two hours for a limited-edition PITA King hat he’ll never wear but secretly loves? that’s the gym right now, full of people claiming they’re too grown-up for Cov’s nonsense while accidentally rewatching the Woodley calf kick on loop in the office break room like it’s their secret guilty pleasure. you lot shout about "maths" and "merch queues" like it’s some cold spreadsheet, but half these critics still have the clip saved as their phone wallpaper so they can gasp every time they walk past it – doesn’t matter if it’s a masterpiece or a mugging, that kick stuck to our retinas like glue and now we’re all part of the show whether we like it or not.

That calf kick to Woodley wasn't just eye-catching - you could see the ringside physio actually flinch when it landed, like he'd been clocked himself. And don't forget the replay booth reaction - I was standing right outside it when the cutman nearly dropped his ice bucket when the ATT referee instantly stopped the action without any debate from Woodley's corner. That's PITA power: it works even when the eye-witnesses aren't trying to be fooled.

Man, I was in the same damn section as Uncle_Since86 that London night, right behind the sound guy’s mixing board—you know, the tall bloke who kept his rig draped in black tape and smelled like someone spilled an entire coffee pot on the console before every card. Third round rolls around, Cov’s got Topuria against the fence, and that spinning back fist lands so clean you could hear the mesh of the cage *snap* like a bad guitar string. Next thing I know, every voice in a thirty-foot radius is screaming Cov’s own weigh-in taunt back at him, but not one person looks like they’re reading from a script. They just *knew*—like the chant had always been there, buried under years of polite jab-and-walk analysis. That’s when it hit me: Cov doesn’t just entertain, he rewires the room. I’ve seen guys at school pickup games imitate that strike for weeks; kids who’d never thrown a punch outside a video game queue up at the merch stand like it’s a holy relic. The thing is, half these critics still act like the hoodie’s just a fashion statement—until they catch themselves humming “I’m gonna break you” under their breath while doing the dishes. You can argue about angles and points all day, but try telling my eight-year-old nephew he can’t love Cov because he calls out Kamaru mid-fight. Try explaining to a kid that class means slow-motion jabs at 65% heart-rate. That calf kick in Vegas? Still the only highlight clip in my phone that auto-plays every time I unlock it.

Right, imagine the scene: we’re all stood round the telly at The Red Lion in Sheffield, 3am, fourth pint of bitter down, shirt sleeves rolled up, and someone’s just rewound the Woodley calf kick for the fifteenth time because half the lads can still hear that cage ping like a tuning fork. The chat’s split—half of us clinking glasses like it’s a masterpiece, the other half muttering about “standards” like they’re judges at the Royal Variety Performance. But here’s the thing that sticks with me: none of us are just watching the fight. We’re watching the *aftermath*, the way the room turns into one big echo chamber of Cov quotes before the dust has settled. I’ve seen blokes who’d swear black and blue they came for the wrestling card get caught three fights later reciting the weigh-in trash-talk word-for-word like they’ve been lobotomised by Sharpie fumes. It’s not just entertainment; it’s a communal hallucination, and Cov’s the pied piper with a spinning back fist.