Former UFC champion Tyron Woodley faces Jake Paul in a rematch later this month.
Woodley will have plenty on the line, including a big bonus if he stops Paul.
For Woodley, though, there is more to the fight than just the money, as he told Submission Radio.
“He’s just adding a little bit, couple more courses of cheese to the macaroni,” Woodley said. “So, he was going to get knocked out anyway. And of course I’m gonna accept that anyway. Because at the end of the day, that was my plan. Does that five hundred thousand would make me want to do even more? I don’t know, cause I already wanted to do it anyway.
“I just let people talk, you know what I mean? Because I know one thing in our sport, people, if they’re talking about you good, if they’re talking about you bad, they want to see you fight. So, I didn’t feel obligated to alleviate some rumor, to correct it, to say it was right, to say it was wrong.
“All I’m saying is I’m going to knock his ass out December 18th, and they’re going to give me another $500,000 to do so. So, I appreciate them. Thank you for putting a bag on your own head. He ain’t the sharpest tool in the toolbox for doing so, but I’m not going to say no to it.”
As for Hardy, Woodley called him a “sidepiece.”
“Dan Hardy’s a sidepiece. He sits there trying to utilize my credentials,” Woodley said. “Basically, it wasn’t one person that made that fight big, it was me and Jake. Me and Jake did something historical. We made a huge fight. We got people involved to watch. He’s trying to utilize that to try to put himself in a position to fight. You haven’t fought in 10 years.
“So, if I wanted just a little easy walk-through fight, if I feel like just walking in and beating somebody up, maybe I’ll entertain it. But I never signed a contract to fight him. Some people on Monday were talking to my management team about me fighting him, and I listened, but I didn’t commit.
“So, at the end of the day I’m focused more on this. This is more exciting. More people care about this. Nobody even knows who he is. Even as an analyst. He’s a decent analyst, but he’s not the top. I was the top analyst. So, when you just separate what he did in the sport, his best attribute is lasting against GSP without being finished. He’s not the best analyst, he wasn’t the best fighter, nobody really worries or cares about a colored Mohawk anymore, and he’s trying to piggyback off of me and clout chasing as a grown man.
“So, it’s kind of embarrassing. But I’m not against anything in 2022. But when it comes down to boxing, if this trilogy with Jake goes the way I plan, it’s more like Apollo versus, uh, what’s the one dude from Rocky? The one taking all the steroids? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. I need something that excites me.
“When you see Dan Hardy’s name on a piece of paper, it don’t make me go ‘ohhh, I gotta do this’, you know what I mean? Avenging a loss, or fighting somebody big, or super fights, or something like that at this point in my life right now, that gets me out of bed, get’s me training. So, Dan Hardy, take a ticket, take a number.”
