Coach on Why Tyron Woodley Will be More Dangerous Than Ever in Next Bout

Tyron Woodley is coming off a one-sided loss to Kamaru Usman in his last outing. But, according to one of the former champ’s coaches, Duke Roufus, the welterweight’s powers have never been greater…

Woodley faced Usman at UFC 235 in March, and the latter ended his reign as the welterweight king via a clear cut, decision win. Woodley was booked to fight Robbie Lawler last month, but the hard-hitting fighter had to withdraw due to a hand injury.

Well, recently Roufus spoke with MMA Fighting, and while discussing Woodley, the renowned striking coach said this:

“The nice thing about injuries is if you have the right perspective, you take an injury and it actually help you grow as an athlete,” Roufus said. “What I like, everyone knows that he has an incredible right hand, well he’s been really focused on mastering his left hand. He spends a lot of time in L.A. with his film and music career and broadcasting, then he goes to a lot of training at Wild Card Boxing with coach Eric Brown and I noticed a substantial difference in his skill set when we got together during training.

“…I want to reiterate about Tyron, a lot of people don’t realize, we soldiered through back-to-back-to-back-to-back fights, right out of injury into short training camps,” Roufus said. “A lot of people sometimes don’t give Tyron his due credit. He fought four title fights in 364 days. The only guy to break that record is Jon Jones. Those were back-to-back fights, we were doing six-week training camps for five-round fights, which is kind of an anomaly in our sport. Most people want to take a longer training camp for a longer fight and I’m very proud of that body of work that we put together through Woodley, coach Din (Thomas), and myself.”

This is really interesting to hear, and it certainly adds to the backstory that will accompany Woodley’s next bout. Not every fighter does, or can, do much training when they’re injured,  and Wild Card Boxing is one of the most famous and accomplished boxing gyms on the planet.

Duke’s comments about Woodley’s reign as champ are also spot on. After Woodley won the title in July 2016, by taking out Robbie Lawler, he proceeded to defend the title three times in the next year. That’s a rare thing in today’s UFC, and Woodley never really received the credit he was due for doing so.