Colby Covington (15-2) certainly paid the price in his quest for UFC gold after an X-ray revealed the extent of the damage to his broken jaw.
The California native suffered the gruesome injury during the early stages of UFC 245 main-event defeat to Kamaru Usman (16-1) on Sunday morning.
After the third round, Covington told his coaches he believed he had suffered significant damage to his jaw, with the UFC later confirming via a medical report that he had a non-displaced midline mandible fracture.
X-ray says your jaw being strong is fake news pic.twitter.com/Y4u1d2tpMo
— The realest Skin (@Icecoldant) December 18, 2019
Despite this, he battled bravely to the final round, where he was dropped twice by the ‘Nigerian Nightmare’ before the referee called a halt to the bout with 50 seconds remaining.
And judging by the image of the X-ray, there can be no questions about the out-spoken Covington’s toughness with a clean crack from the top to bottom of his jaw clearly visible.
The 31-year-old American received a medical suspension of 180 days yesterday which means he’ll have enough time to recover.
Source: www.talksport.com