Tyron Woodley is evidently not a fan of interim titles.
At UFC 236, not one but two interim titles will be on the line.
In the main event, reigning featherweight champion Max Holloway will move up in weight to take on Dustin Poirier for the interim lightweight title, and in the co-main event, Kelvin Gastelum will battle with Israel Adesanya for the interim middleweight championship.
Why are two interim belts on the line? Because divisional champions Khabib Nurmagomedov and Robert Whittaker are out of competition for the foreseeable future.
UFC lightweight king Khabib is out nine months with a suspension, and middleweight champ Whittaker is recovering from a collapsed hernia.
What does reigning welterweight champ Tyron Woodley think of the matter? It’s the biggest ‘joke’ on earth.
“This is the funny thing to me,” Woodley said during a media lunch in Los Angeles on Monday, per MMA Junkie’s Simon Samano. “The interim belt is the biggest joke on earth.”
Woodley thinks Holloway should be fighting for the official lightweight title and claims that having two interim belts on the line in one night is just a gimmick.
“Ooh, a stacked card! A double interim belt,” Woodley joked. “I’m not trying to hate, because I’m not trying to get my ass back in the dog house. … But when you think about it, you’ve got a current champion, which out of all champions, Max Holloway may be our favorite champion. If you ask all the champions who their favorite champion is, we might all say Max Holloway. He don’t have to go up to fight for an interim belt. Unless he’s fighting for an actual lightweight belt, it doesn’t make sense.”
The Roufusport standout went on to claim that fighting for an interim title is like competing for second place.
“In my situation, there was no need for an interim belt,” Woodley said. “I hadn’t even been out eight months, and I would’ve fought the person maybe the next month. I think when you do an interim just to do an interim, it takes away the juice from having a real belt.”
“When you just got guys asking to fight for an interim strap … it’s like saying, ‘Well, let me fight for second place.’ It’s just weird to me.”
Woodley is currently making final preparations for his title defense versus Kamaru Usman, who he will fight in the UFC 235 co-main event. The highly anticipated PPV, which features a headlining light heavyweight championship tilt between Jon Jones and Anthony Smith, takes place this Saturday, March 2 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
UFC 236 takes place the following month, April 13 at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia.