Jorge Masvidal explains why he won't shake hands with Colby Covington at UFC 272

Jorge Masvidal has said he will not shake Colby Covington‘s hand after their UFC 272 main event on Saturday night because ‘he’s going to be headed to the hospital’.

The former friends turned rivals finally get the opportunity to settle their long-running feud this weekend.

Masvidal and Covington hit it off after training together at American Top Team in Florida and went on to be room-mates for roughly eight months.

But their relationship quickly soured after Covington won his interim title fight against Rafael dos Anjos in June 2018 with Masvidal in his corner.

And now Gamebred has said he will refuse the post-fight handshake following Covington’s verbal attacks on his family and religion.

“I can’t respect him in any way, shape or form,” Masvidal told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday.

“Kind of like Ben Askren. I don’t care for Ben Askren.

“If Ben Askren were in a place and he said something to me then s***, we can even fight or not. If he’s cool, I’ll be cool or we can fight.

“But with Colby, it always – for as long as we live – be a problem.

“Just because he talked about my religion and he mentioned my kids. My kids mean a lot to me. My daughter’s 13 years old, she’s online.

“I can’t control her every second of the day, so she goes onto her phone, she sees things, like, ‘Why is this person talking about it? Why are we getting brought up?’

“Those type of things, I’ll never let that slide in my life, man.

“We could be, both of us, in a very bad situation where we could maybe help each other to get out of that situation, and I would say, ‘Nah, we’re both dying here.’

“Like you know in a sinking ship, I’m causing a fist-fight right there with him and we’re both dying, you know?

“He’s not going to come shake