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Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight champion, Tyron Woodley, has never been one to keep quiet when it comes to mixed martial arts (MMA) politics, and he’s certainly not going to start now, particularly with Jon Jones running into legal trouble (yet again).
Unfortunately for “The Chosen One,” his opinion carries much less weight now that he’s no longer slinging the strap. That said, Woodley does raise an interesting point about Jones being held to a much different standard that fellow UFC superstar, Conor McGregor.
“We gonna act like Conor doesn’t do that every week? And we still want to put him on every fight card; he’s the biggest star,” Woodley told TMZ (via MMA News). “The second Jon Jones does something… I’m defending the fact that we selectively throw people under the bus. Conor has done way worse things than Jon, and he’s glorified and praised as some ‘Scarface’ of our sport.”
Jones was hit with a battery charge earlier this month in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after an incident inside a local strip-club joint resulted in allegations of inappropriate contact with a female employee (more on that here).
“I’m not gonna give him a pass, either, because it ain’t my job to give the pass out,” Woodley said. “All I’m saying is this: Let’s get all the details first, but let’s not forget there’s a lot of bullshit that go on in our sport that we glorify.”
But we also can’t overlook the fact that Jones had a considerable head start, wrapping his Bentley around a utility pole while McGregor was still trying to make a name for himself in Cage Warriors Fighting Championship in Ireland.
And I’m not sure anything McGregor did is “way worse” than this (yet).
As long as Jones and McGregor can continue to sell pay-per-view (PPV) events, then UFC will continue to move mountains (and fight cards) when needed. The rest of us will have to settle for booty-busting rap videos.