Tyron Woodley responds to some negative comments about him from UFC president Dana White.
UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley has made as many headlines for his statements outside the cage as he has for his work in the Octagon since he won the title last year. Woodley has been very outspoken about the treatment he has received from the UFC, believing that race may have played a part in it. This led UFC president Dana White to respond, who called him “a bit of a drama queen” and compared his personality to Conor McGregor, saying if he had Conor’s attitude he’d be a massive star.
Today, as a guest on The MMA Hour, Woodley, who rematches Stephen Thompson in the UFC 209 headliner this weekend, called White out on his words. In fact, he said that White himself was the drama queen (via MMA Fighting):
“How is Dana White gonna call me a drama queen?” Woodley said. “He’s the biggest drama queen. I learned from the best.”
“I just think that we’ve seen Dana, if you get Dana mad, he gets really mad,” Woodley said. “And then really quickly — I think he’s mad at so many people, I think he forgets he’s mad at you. And he almost just wipes it from his memory. I thought it was actually kind of funny when he called me a drama queen.”
He went onto clarify that he didn’t take it personally, then addressed the comparison in attitude to McGregor, which he didn’t agree with:
“I didn’t take it personal,” Woodley said Monday. “I think what he was saying is that he feels as if some of the treatment that I was talking about and some of the buzz, he thinks that if I was more like Conor I would be a bigger star. Well, guess what? I will never be anything like Conor. So if that’s what it takes to be a star, then I will never be a star. You can’t tell a man to be like another man. That’s just not who I am. I just will never be it.”
With that being said, he also stated that he has spoken to the UFC about his statements of being mistreated, and the promotion has addressed it and tried to improve.
Things still seem a bit touchy on both sides though. UFC 209 goes down in the T-Mobile Arena in Vegas this Saturday night.