Tyron Woodley Piles on Colby Covington For Missed World Title Fights

As this is being written, it’s not clear if and when Colby Covington will finally fight for the UFC’s world welterweight title. Recently Tyron Woodley was asked to weigh-in on the situation, and the former champ fired several verbal shots in Covington’s direction.

Covington’s missed world title fights

After Covington defeated Rafael dos Anjos last June and secured the interim belt, a showdown with the champ at the time, the aforementioned Woodley, seemed inevitable. The UFC wanted to book the fight for September, but since Covington had nasal surgery scheduled, he didn’t take the fight. After Woodley defeated Darren Till, talk about him fighting “Chaos” resumed again, but the bout never materialized. More recently, Covington reported that he turned down the UFC’s first “challenger offer” to face the current, reigning champ, Kamaru Usman.

Woodley’s take

Well, Woodley was in Vancouver this past week for the UFC’s latest card, and he attended a Q&A. While talking about Covington specifically, the heavy-handed fighter had this to say (quotes via MMA Fighting):

“Colby does a good job of putting his own foot in his mouth,” Woodley said. “I know people say that about me, but he’s a complete dumbass. He’s talked himself out of three world title fights. He was supposed to fight me before I fought Till, he bitched out of that fight. He was supposed to fight me before I fought Usman, he bitched out of that fight. You guys can do the math as to what he did with the Usman fight.

“My goal is to get my belt back, so obviously (current welterweight champion) (Kamaru) Usman is going to be my top priority. If Colby want to get that ass whupped, he can get whupped up too.”

“To be honest, I don’t hate him,” Woodley said about Covington. “Hate is a very strong word. I don’t hate anybody. I definitely don’t like him. If he was on fire, I wouldn’t pee on him. The thing about it is I think sometimes we run away from our emotions. You’ve got to use those emotions. I think a lot of time my emotion might take me out of what I do best, which is figure out my opponent, take away their weaknesses, and leave them to deal with me.”

It will be interesting to see what happens next with the 170 crown. There’s no question Covington deserves to fight for the belt, but obviously he’s not in sync with the UFC, in terms of compensation. Hopefully Usman – Covington goes down before the year is up, and in the interim, maybe Woodley should fight Leon Edwards?