Chael Sonnen on next months Colby Covington vs Jorge Masvidal grudge match: “Those guys do not know each other, whether they think they do or not”

Chael Sonnen has weighed in on UFC 272’s grudge match between Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal.

Covington and Masvidal previously trained together for years. The two were friends and even roommates for a long time. However, the friendship between the two is over, and the two men have been gunning for a fight for some time.

UFC 272 will be the destination of their grudge match, and both are seemingly confident going in. Most of their confidence stems from the fact that they used to be close training partners. However, Chael Sonnen believes that their training doesn’t matter a whole lot in the context of a fight.

“Those guys do not know each other whether they think they do or not. Teammates, workout partners, cornering each other, roommates, has nothing to do with it for two reasons: They were different weight classes. Whatever you think you know about a guy’s strength or his speed or the positions you’re able to give his problems in, it doesn’t matter when they change weight classes.”

Sonnen continued: “Secondly, neither one of them was main-event quality when they were training. They were both up-and-comers. Masvidal wasn’t Masvidal until three years ago. Masvidal wasn’t Masvidal until he hit a flying knee which parlayed him right into Madison Square Garden and a championship.. Colby Covington was in an even worse spot when they trained together. He was an up-and-comer with a lot of promise, but he was nowhere (close to) closing out the night. ”

Chael Sonnen is drawing reference to the fact that Jorge Masvidal has spent the majority of his career at lightweight. ‘Gamebred’ only permanently moved up to welterweight in 2015, and broke into stardom in 2019. He broke into title contention with wins over Ben Askren and Nate Diaz but failed in his title bids against Kamaru Usman.

Colby Covington, on the other hand, has fought at welterweight for his entire career. ‘Chaos’ is a former interim UFC welterweight champion, capturing the belt in 2018. However, like his former teammate, he also came up short in two fights against Kamaru Usman.

What do you think about Chael Sonnen’s take on the Colby Covington vs. Jorge Masvidal fight?