Tyron Woodley may have fought three times last year and recently relayed he wants to fight Colby Covington soon, but according to Dana White the champ “never wants to fight”.
Recently there’s been a lot of discussion about the UFC’s welterweight division, and it was reported that the promotion was hoping to have Woodley defend the 170 belt against Colby Covington on January 26th. But, since the champ is still recovering from a broken thumb, he’s reported he won’t be ready for UFC 233. The promotion reportedly looked at having Kamaru Usman fight Covington at the Anaheim card, but the latter isn’t expected to take that bout.
Well, White was asked about the state of the welterweight division’s title picture while talking to the media recently, and the UFC President had this to say about Woodley (quotes via MMA Junkie):
“When is Woodley ready to fight anybody, ever? Tell me when. Yeah (he just fought three months ago), and it took us forever to get him to fight that fight. He never wants to fight. You want to be a world champion, but you don’t want to fight anybody. That’s a problem.”
“He just came out on his real job, TMZ, and said that he was looking for February or something like that, and we said no. We didn’t say no,” White said. “When Tyron Woodley wants to fight we don’t say no. So that wasn’t true, and if you notice TMZ took that clip down because that wasn’t true. It was absolutely not true, and they took it down.
“What’s going to happen now are these interviews are going to come out, and he’s going to get all pissed off…That’s what’s going to happen now, and me and Woodley are going to go at it again, and then we’ll see when the guy ends up fighting.”
White’s already taking some flack online for these comments. As noted above, Woodley fought three times in 2017, and he just competed in September and scored a one-sided, submission win over Darren Till. So, even if White thinks Woodley is healthy enough to fight at UFC 233, the fact he’s blasted the champ publicly hasn’t sat well with some observers. Some might point out, however, that we’re not aware of what unfolds behind the scenes.
All this aside, hopefully, we see Woodley – Covington sometime in early 2019. The latter, meanwhile, hasn’t fought since June when he earned a decision victory over Rafael dos Anjos.