It’s been a pretty sharp fall from grace for Tyron Woodley, who went from being the UFC welterweight champion for two years to immediately hitting a four fight, 16 round losing streak. The last loss, a first round submission loss to Vicente Luque in March 2021, marked the last fight on Woodley’s UFC contract. And with that the former champ is no longer with the UFC.
On the plus side, this gives him more time to devote himself to his music career, which he clearly still enjoys. More than cagefighting after a 10+ year career? Hey, there’s nothing wrong with following new passions. Woodley has been putting out new raps and collabs and music videos alongside friends and partners for a couple of years now.
In May of 2020 he released a UFC comeback track called ‘Revenge,’ which he said was ‘a reflection of struggle. The highs and lows. Tragedy and Triumph!’ Now he’s done talking about fighting and just playing eye candy for a new video from St. Louis-based pop/R&B singer Mai Lee. Woodley is heavily featured in her video ‘Redd (Swim)’ and gets to be the lucky man Lee crawls all over for three and a half minutes.
I’m sure we can expect more music from Woodley now that he’s no longer stuck trying to regain the glory he held at welterweight during his career peak. But can we expect more fighting? Woodley is clearly willing to compete again for the right kind of paycheck, and set himself up as a viable contender in the Jake Paul freakshow fight sweepstakes when he instigated a confrontation with one of Paul’s boxing coaches, J’Leon Love, on the night of the Ben Askren bout.
We doubt Paul is willing to step in there with Woodley, who still has that piston of a right and is about a million times more dangerous than Ben Askren. But a match between Woodely and Love? Now that’s the kind of undercard bout that could draw in a couple extra eyes and integrate another of Paul’s crew into the money making process.
Really, we’re just hoping Woodley gets himself a couple more juicy paydays out of his combat sports career. The more money, the more baller music videos and slick studio productions we can expect! Win, win, right guys?