Colby Covington ripped Leon Edwards following the Nate Diaz fight at UFC 263, saying it “was definitely not of importance to the division.”

Edwards won a unanimous decision over Diaz at UFC 263, but he had to survive a frantic fifth round after he got rocked and wobbled with a Stockton slam followed by a Diaz straight left. Edwards managed to hang on and win the fight, giving him a 10-fight unbeaten streak at the moment, and he wants to fight for the title in his next fight against UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman. But UFC president Dana White has already said Covington is next in line, and “Chaos” agrees that he’s the rightful No. 1 contender.

Speaking to MMAFighting.com, Covington criticized the Edwards vs. Diaz fight, while also suggesting Edwards should have been more active over the past two years.

“That fight was definitely not of importance to the division. You’ve got a lightweight, Stockton soy boy Nate Diaz. I don’t know if he’s ever won at fight at welterweight, and if he has, he’s definitely got a losing record. I don’t know the last time he won a fight in general. Five years ago? So it’s on course for the fight that [Leon Edwards] gets,” Covington said.

“There was people fighting during the whole pandemic during COVID, and he didn’t want to fight. He was turning down every single fight that got offered to him. Meanwhile, everybody in Europe is flying and fighting during COVID, and he’s just sitting on the sidelines, trying to wait and pick and choose his fights. He did it to himself. The UFC knows that he turned down a lot of fights and wasn’t ready to fight. I stayed ready.”

Do you think Colby Covington deserves the next title shot against Kamaru Usman or do you think Leon Edwards should slip past him in the rankings?