Tristar’s Firas Zahabi Has Some Interesting Plans For Tyron Woodley

Recently Tyron Woodley reported that he and Firas Zahabi clicked while training together, so much so, he’s planning to head north to train at Tristar in Montreal. Well, as it turns out, Zahabi has a pretty interesting take on what he thinks the team can provide the former welterweight champ.

Woodley’s comments about training with Zahabi

During an appearance on Ariel Helwani’s “MMA Show” in August, Woodley revealed that he had some training with the Tristar leader, Zahabi. Woodley said it was a “phenomenal session”, and because he was so impressed, he intends to travel to Montreal to train with Zahabi and the legendary, Georges St-Pierre.

Zahabi’s plans for Woodley

Well, more recently Zahabi spoke with MMA Junkie. While talking about how his training with Woodley went, and how he believes he can augment the former champ’s game, Zahabi this said:

“…We had a good time training with him and Duke (Roufus). We hit it off. We had a great time. Then we trained in Edmonton, and we hit it off again. We had a great chemistry forming, so we’re like, ‘Look, let’s keep it going.’”

“When you’re champion for a long time, people are getting to know your style,” Zahabi said. “I think what happens is everyone is always watching the No. 1 guy, the champion, so they start figuring him out. Not as many people are watching the guy who is No. 10 or No. 15 or No. 4. They’re all watching the No. 1 guy. So the No. 1 guy has to keep reinventing himself.

“With Tyron, we’re going to try to add a new wrinkle that nobody knows so that, when he goes back in there, he’ll be at the same level, of course, but he’ll have new tricks in his bag, new surprises for his opponents. Things that he’s comfortable doing that’ll work and they’re going to have to figure him out on fight night, not before fight night because he’s going to be having a new wrinkle, a new dimension to his game.”

It will be really interesting to see how all of this plays out. There’s no question that Woodley has several, very dangerous, offensive tools to work with. So, if Zahabi develops different ways for the powerful wrestler to use those, it could produce some big results.

After all, before Woodley lost the belt to Kamaru Usman this past March, he had gone undefeated in seven straight fights, and was widely considered to be (and still is), one of the greatest welterweights of all time.