UFC veteran Rashad Evans offers Tyron Woodley some advice on how to communicate with Dana White.
Rashad Evans has been around the block once or twice, and the former UFC light heavyweight champion felt obliged to offer Tyron Woodley some veteran advice on how to make the most of his career.
Woodley, the reigning welterweight champ, isn’t happy with the way UFC president Dana White has been speaking about him in public and the 35-year-old feels his reputation has been damaged by White’s latest remarks.
White recently told the media that Woodley was ‘full of sh-t’ for suggesting a welterweight title fight against Nate Diaz, and ‘The Chosen One’ wants to iron out his differences with the head promoter in private.
Evans, who described himself as ‘the original Tyron Woodley’ on a recent edition of The MMA Hour, told the champ to quit arguing with White because it only serves to elevate a defeatist mindset.
“Some of the fans might not know this, but I was the original Tyron Woodley as far as my relationship with Dana,” Evans told Ariel Helwani, per MMA Fighting’s Peter Carroll.
“I understand where he’s coming from, but he’s going to learn what I learned. It reminds me of something someone told me when I got married, they said, ‘do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?’ — because if you’re right you’re not going to be happy.
“At this point, he can’t win this because he fights for the UFC. Dana is the president of the UFC, there’s no way he can win this. Feel the way you feel, but you gotta know whenever the conversation comes up that Dana said this — don’t even address it. Don’t go down that road.”
‘Suga’ claims that arguing with MMA’s top promoter took years off his career and he doesn’t want to see Woodley fall down the same path.
“It’s a hard thing to do because your ego gets involved,” Evans continued. “You know he’s (White) wrong and you want to prove it. You might feel it’s because of this or because of that and you want to expose the truth, but at the end of the day at what expense? Your legacy, your chance to be remembered for what you love to do. At the end of the day, these are the things that make you hate fighting.
“I took too many years off my fighting career arguing with Dana: trying to fight Shogun, trying to get a fight with this guy, trying to do all this stuff, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter that much. I just lost time.”
Evans, who has been competing under the UFC banner for thirteen years, told Woodley that his ongoing feud with White will never amount to anything good – even if he’s right.
“What do you gain from being right to Dana White? Nothing, you lose a lot. Whether you’re right or wrong you lose. Why even play with it if you want to be a fighter — especially when two of your revenue streams are tied to things that he controls?”
Woodley, who trains under Duke Roufus at Roufusport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is currently nursing a shoulder injury and expects to be back in action in the coming months.