Kenny Florian is not Colby Covington’s biggest fan. He made that clear a little over a week ago when he and Covington did some verbal sparring over social media.
Well, it doesn’t look like there’s any love lost between the controversial Colby and Florian, who as a guest on Submission Radio.
“I definitely respect the marketing aspect of it, right?” Florian said of Covington’s trash talking. “I think you can be confident and you can call out guys, you could say certain things, I think there’s just a certain level of respect. I think that when you start getting into like the bully-type mentality and you start really insulting, when you’re using things like gay slurs, when you’re using racist remarks, when you’re insulting countries and groups of people, that’s too much. We have enough of that going on in the world. And I think like we should kind of show a much more respectful side. That’s myself and that’s what I think.”
Some people have compared Colby Covington to Chael Sonnen, considering both had a penchant for ripping on Brazil.
Florian, however, doesn’t think the two deserve to be compared.
…I think Chael had a certain charisma about him and I think he had a certain wittiness about him, whereas Colby’s just… there’s not a whole lot of, I don’t know if there’s a whole lot of slickness to what he’s saying. It kind of just sounds like an angry 15-year-old, you know what I mean? Chael at least had knowledge of how to play the heel in a relatively intelligent way.
I think Chael had a certain charisma about him and I think he had a certain wittiness about him, whereas Colby’s just… there’s not a whole lot of, I don’t know if there’s a whole lot of slickness to what he’s saying. It kind of just sounds like an angry 15-year-old.
Even though Kenny can respect the “marketing aspects” of trash-talking, he still thinks it is poisoning mixed martial arts:
It’s something that I think is kind of poisoning the sport a little bit, and Colby is kind of one those guys who hasn’t shown the most respect to people. And at the end of the day, I think we are martial artists and it’s… you know, people already have a certain perception of cage fighters and I think that he’s not helping that perception, let’s put it that way.
You can hear all of Kenny Florian’s interview with Submission Radio below:
