Joanna calls out ‘ugly guy’ Covington

4:22 PM ET

ESPN.com staff

Joanna Jedrzejczyk scored a big win for American Top Team on Saturday by beating Michelle Waterson, but she wasn’t sharing that celebration with ATT teammate Colby Covington.

Covington will challenge welterweight champ Kamaru Usman on Dec. 14, and his public feuds with ATT teammates Jorge Masvidal and Dustin Poirier have not gone over well with Jedrzejczyk.

“No, no focus on dumb people,” she said during Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show on Monday. “Colby is something else. We let him be. We let him be.

“I never wish any fighter to get like hurt, I wish that Usman will beat his ass. I shouldn’t say this because you always should support your people, but Colby is not a friend, he’s just acting weird. He’s an ugly guy. You never talk bad about your teammates, doesn’t matter if you like them or not.”

Jedrzejczyk said Covington is trying to act like another controversial UFC character.

“He’s acting like he’s Conor McGregor, trying to show on the video that people open the door for him, that he’s driving fancy cars,” Jedrzejczyk said. “He’s in show guys, he’s in show. He’s a hard worker. I don’t buy it.”

McKee surprised by ranking in ESPN’s Top 25 under 25

Bellator’s A.J. McKee was chosen No. 1 among the top 25 MMA fighters under 25 by a panel of ESPN insiders, and he admitted it caught him off guard.

“I wasn’t expecting it, just because I know how some people think UFC is more superior than Bellator, and I think one day I’ll show that that’s not the case,” he said.

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AJ McKee says he was surprised to be named ESPN’s top fighter under age 25 because some people think UFC is superior to Bellator, but he plans to change that narrative.

Davis delivers on short notice

Mike Davis‘ life has been a whirlwind of chaos over the last month. He was supposed to fight Danny Henry in Copenhagen on Sept. 28, but Davis was sidelined by a bad staph infection that hospitalized him and temporarily hindered the mobility of his right arm.

With the infection cleared up, though, Davis was enjoying his 27th birthday on the night of Oct. 7 when he got a call asking if he could step in for Brok Weaver and fight Thomas Gifford at UFC Fight Night in Tampa on Oct. 12.

“That whole weekend was just food binging with my family and a couple of my friends (and) my manager,” said Davis. “I got this call and I was like, ‘Oh, dang.'”

Fighting on four days’ notice is a daunting task, but with the work he put in preparing for Copenhagen, Davis ultimately felt he was up to the challenge.

“I was getting ready for Copenhagen two weeks prior, and I felt great, so I took it,” he said.

He was 173 pounds when he accepted the fight at lightweight, but Davis called it an easy cut. On Tuesday, he dropped nine pounds and woke up at 161 pounds on Wednesday — and Davis was on his way. He ultimately dropped Gifford late in the third round and earned his first career UFC win.

With $1M within reach, Michaud remains grounded

“It’s more exhausting than those two fights were, honestly.” — David Michaud on the panic attacks that he used to experience because of his fear of flying. Michaud, fresh off Friday’s PFL victories over John Howard and Glaico Franca, will be driving the 2,400 miles from Phoenix to New York City for his $1 million welterweight finale against Ray Cooper III on Dec. 31.

Adesanya’s coach remembers the confidence from Day 1

Israel Adesanya‘s coach Eugene Bareman recalls how confident his prized pupil was even in his first amateur MMA fight.

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Israel Adesanya’s coach, Eugene Bareman, tells the story of Adesanya’s first amateur MMA fight and how he tested him by telling him to train elsewhere.

Bareman recalls nearly walking away from MMA

For all the success Eugene Bareman and his team have had in 2019 — their fighters are 10-0, and include newly crowned champion Israel Adesanya, rising star Dan Hooker and featherweight title contender Alexander Volkanovski — the success story of this small New Zealand gym almost never happened. Bareman, who took Adesanya’s belt to Tahiti, where he once trained and fought, recalled a time he considered walking away from the sport.

“In (2012), I took one of Israel’s close friends, one of my students, to Tahiti for a boxing fight,” Bareman said, “and unfortunately he passed away in my arms in the ring that night.

“Where that belt is, is where the ring was.

“After that fight, after that tragedy, I didn’t really want anything to do with this sport, to be honest. I thought, ‘If this is the sort of tragedy that a sport like this can bring someone, and bring a family, and bring loved ones, then what’s the point in it?’ There’s no point.

“It trumps everything. It’s not worth the risk. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the sport, I just wanted to fade away and take my life in a different direction.

“A great teacher of mine, many months later, explained it to me like this: ‘All of your students are still going to fight. Israel’s still going to fight. Dan’s still going to fight. Everybody’s still going to continue their career.’ Then he looked at me and he said, ‘Is there anybody on this planet that you trust to look after their lives more than yourself?’ And I’d never thought of it like that.

“I thought about that question, and that question just resonated with me and I kept going over it in my head. And at the end of the day, the answer was no. There was no one else on this planet Earth that I would trust more than myself to look after those guys and make sure they get in that cage and then back out safely. And so I knew I had to continue this journey.

“I believe in some sort of way that my boy, Willman’s his name, that passed away, was influential in me making that decision to stick with the sport, and so this was a little bit of a paying homage to him and bringing the belt back to the place where we lost him. Because I believe if it wasn’t for him, then none of this would have happened, because I would’ve left the sport.”