Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Middleweight champion Luke Rockhold suffered a one-sided defeat at the hands of Colby Covington in the main event of RAF 05 last night (Sat., Jan. 10, 2026), getting completely shut out and eventually tech-falled 10-0 inside Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida (watch highlights).
Despite the dominance shown by Covington from start to finish, Rockhold offered little in the way of explanation or reflection afterward. Instead, the former UFC titleholder issued a brief, almost tongue-in-cheek response on Instagram in the comment section of RAF’s post highlighting the loss.
“Happy to help the sport,” Rockhold wrote.
It has been a frustrating stretch for Rockhold in the post-UFC phase of his combat sports career. Since stepping away from MMA, the former champion has struggled to find success across multiple disciplines.
Outside of a highlight-reel knockout of Joe Schilling at Karate Combat 43 (watch highlights), Rockhold has come up short in nearly every competitive venture he’s pursued. That includes a bare-knuckle boxing loss to Mike Perry (watch highlights), a high-profile grappling defeat to Pat Downey at CJI 1, a knockout loss to Darren Till in boxing (watch it), and now a decisive wrestling loss to Covington.
For what it’s worth, Rockhold teased retirement following his knockout loss to Till last year, suggesting that his days of competition might be over. Clearly, that sentiment didn’t stick.
Whether Rockhold continues bouncing between combat sports remains to be seen — but at this point, nothing would be surprising. Then again, maybe Power Slap is next.
