I wonder if former UFC welterweight champion, Tyron Woodley, walked out of T-Mobile Arena in the wake of his UFC 235 drubbing and thought, “Shit, I probably should have taken that fight against Colby Covington.”
He didn’t, opting to defend his 170-pound strap against Kamaru Usman instead and “The Nigerian Nightmare” not only won all five rounds against “The Chosen One” last month in Las Vegas, Nevada, he made it look relatively easy.
Not only did he lose his championship title, he lost the opportunity to capitalize on what may have been a more lucrative feud with “Chaos.”
“Yeah, it’s unfortunate. I told TyQuil Woodley, don’t fuck it up,” Covington told Submission Radio. “All he had to do is wait three weeks for me the first time, but he didn’t want to do that, he wanted to dictate the terms and when he wanted to fight, not when we were both ready to fight. He was faking injuries and then I had a fight and he was trying to get me on a short camp. So, it’s unfortunate, man. It’s a built-up fight, it was the biggest blockbuster fight at welterweight.”
After defending his title against Demian Maia in July 2017, Woodley (19-4-1) spent more than a year on the sidelines. In addition to pursuing outside projects, “The Chosen One” opted for flip-flopping surgery to repair some nagging injuries.
And even mocked the top contenders for complaining about it.
“You know, I’d been calling that fight for two, three years now, it sucks it’s not gonna happen,” Covington said. “There was such a feud there, being old training partners at American Top Team, and you know, just the political angle. He’s a liberal snow flake, he’s a soy boy, I’m a MAGA, I’m the great American winning machine. So, there’s a lot of different angles that fight could have went and it’s too bad it’ll never happen.”
Covington captured the interim strap while Woodley was sidelined, but then had it taken away after turning down the UFC 228 main event on short notice. Woodley went on to lose to Usman, and now “Chaos” will get his 170-pound title shot anyway.
Woodley, meanwhile, will try to rebound by rematching Robbie Lawler at UFC on ESPN 4.