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There have been questions about whether the animosity between the two is real or not, but there is nothing fake about the heat between the UFC 272 headliners.
“I think their rift got so deeply personal for two reasons,” said Dan Lambert, owner of American Top Team, where the two men trained alongside one another and forged their initial bond. “(One), Masvidal doesn’t really play like that.
“People like to say, ‘Oh, this guy’s an OG. That guy’s an OG.’ Masvidal’s the OG, and you’re either with him or against him, and if you’re against him, he’s going to want to hunt you down for the rest of his life. And I think the other part of it is just how close they were. Those guys were really tight. They did a lot of things and spent a lot of time together. It’s not like somebody new at the gym just came and rubbed you the wrong way and you’re like, ‘Screw that guy.’
“These guys were really close and, sometimes, the more deeply you feel about each other, the harder you take it and the worse it goes, and so it just went south pretty quick.”
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Neither side has denied the closeness of their bond or the genuine nature of their friendship during those years when things were going well. Each has acknowledged they were tight and spent a great deal of time together, inside and outside of the gym, which is why it’s as real as it gets.
The fact that they have differing views on what caused the friction and eventual fracture between them underscores that, as well. So too does the fact that Lambert had to create rules the duo needed to follow about leaving their tensions outside the gym, only to have them break those rules in less than a week, prompting him to prohibit both Covington and Masvidal from training at the gym any longer.
Covington saw the writing on the wall and took the banishment in stride, quickly setting up shop with the team at MMA Masters.
“It became such a distraction for the team that we had to tell both guys they couldn’t train here,” Lambert said of the simmering feud between the two. “And Colby said, ‘Yeah, I understand. That makes sense. I get it. I’ll go train somewhere else.’
Masvidal? Not so much.