Tyron Woodley Says he Never Ruled Out UFC 233 Fight

Following Dana White’s claims last week that Tyron Woodley “never wants to fight”, the UFC’s welterweight champ’s saying he never outright, turned down a January 26th bout with Colby Covington.

Recently it was reported that the UFC wants to booked Woodley – Covington for the Anaheim event, but since Woodley’s still recovering from an injured hand, he reportedly couldn’t fight that soon. As a result, the promotion started exploring other possibilities, like Kamaru Usman vs. Covington, and so far, nothing’s been signed. All this discussion about UFC 233 led to White being asked about Woodley last week, and the UFC President proceeded to argue that the champ “never wants to fight”.

Well, more recently, Woodley appeared on Ariel Helwani’s “MMA Show”, and the powerful wrestler relayed the following (quotes via MMA Junkie):

“I don’t want to be remembered as a guy that lost a fight to Colby Covington, or anybody else, because he knew he wasn’t 100 percent, or wasn’t given the chance to at least go through the physician that performed the surgery on his hand to get his clearance,” Woodley said.

“…I’ve agreed to fight Colby,” Woodley reportedly added. “I’ve agreed to fight really anybody – that’s the funny part. I just asked for a little more time before I can confirm (my hand is cleared). I’ve never said no to Jan. 26. Let’s get that on record. I actually want to fight in Anaheim. I’m undefeated in Anaheim. I’ve got a lot of strong roots in California, so it would be silly for me not to want to fight there.”

Sounds reasonable no? Guess we’ll see what happens. Considering today’s December 10th, however, it’s getting down to the wire, in terms of putting together a complete camp for a January 26th bout.

Woodley is coming off a one-sided, submission win over Darren Till in September.