Issue 155

June 2017

Undisputed welterweight champion. Unbeaten in his last five fights. Won the UFC title with an electrifying first-round knockout. Doting father. Dedicated athlete. Community leader. Role model. So why is Tyron Woodley the most lamented champion in UFC?

Tyron Woodley is a great guy. He’s a committed father, husband and community leader. He’s popular with his teammates and his coaches. He’s diverse in his approach to mixed martial arts, always championing the sport and representing his peers with pride. He looks great and talks well on TV, boasts the shape of a supreme athlete and delivers, more often than not, when it truly matters in the cage. He even gets vocal when he needs to and, unlike so many others, he isn’t afraid to butt heads with Dana White and the rest of UFC’s top brass. 

Yet for all of these character traits, 'The Chosen' can't seem to catch a break with the fans. it might make you question what fight fans actually want from their champions? It also raises another question: why do we so often champion spots' underdogs, rogues and renaissance men, yet have little to no admiration for the straight shooters.

What is it about 'T-Wood' that makes fight fans have a mental block in embracing him as a hero or even a deserving champion? Why do the majority of fans save their adulation for the likes Nick Diaz, ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, Robbie Lawler and Matt Brown, who also make up the UFC’s welterweight roster, when on any given Saturday the current undisputed champ could obliterate them all? 

Reality bites

Joe Rogan struggled to be heard as the boos rang around the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas in March. The main event at UFC 209 had just limped to a conclusion. 

It was one of the most uneventful championship fights in recent memory. The fans inside the arena were letting 170lb kingpin Tyron Woodley know it.

He wasn’t solely to blame for the lacklustre majority-decision success, of course. Stephen Thompson hardly did enough to warrant taking the belt at the second attempt. But it was Woodley who bore the brunt of the angst. He had promised to deliver conclusively second time around after being outraged when their first fight at UFC 205 ended in the draw. The champion had vowed to prove a point in the return. Yet for 25 minutes he circled the cage, offering little more than feints and posturing rather than prompting the action.

“Tyron Woodley came out and said he was going to destroy Thompson and there would be no question he was the champ,” UFC president Dana White said afterwards. “Well guess what? There’s questions again.” The fans agreed.

And it poured fuel on a fire that’s been smoldering away under the 170lb champ’s feet for a long time.

Despite a 7-2-1 record in the UFC, featuring five knockouts, Woodley has never truly been popular, despite the fact he entered the UFC as one of the leading 170lb’ers on the planet as part of the Strikeforce buyout. Thrilling first- round knockouts of Jay Hieron and Josh Koscheck sandwiched a forgettable three- round loss to Jake Shields at UFC 161.

Woodley never even really got much credit for the way he handled Carlos Condit at UFC 171, dropping bombs on the former interim champion before buckling his knee, and was then rushed into a late- notice fight against Rory MacDonald in Canada, which he lost on points.

Woodley bagged another performance bonus in Macau, China, when he starched Dong Hyun Kim in the summer of 2014. Yet once more the quality of his points victory over Kelvin Gastelum was overshadowed by his opponent failing to make weight the day before. Meanwhile, Condit – fresh from a win over fringe contender Thiago Alves – jumped over Woodley for a title shot.

“There was a time when I really thought it wasn’t ever going to happen,” Woodley says. “I asked to fight Carlos Condit, I pushed to fight Johny Hendricks, I took the fight against Rory MacDonald at short notice in his hometown. I did everything I could to get the title, and yet there were times when the fans wanted me out of the rankings.”

Eventually, Woodley would get his shot. But it came at a price, especially in the eyes of MMA’s loyal fanbase. Not only would he be fighting a teammate for the title, but that teammate was also one of the most beloved fighters on the planet. Robbie Lawler’s title success in the aftermath of Georges St-Pierre’s departure from the sport was embraced by fans. After a lifetime in the Octagon and beyond, when ‘Ruthless’ took the belt from Johny Hendricks the MMA gods repaid him for his years of toil and exciting style. Planet MMA rejoiced.

“People love Robbie, hell, I enjoy his fighting style myself. I was a fan long before I became a teammate of Robbie’s at ATT. But the fans don’t get that. They just saw me as the bad guy in that fight,” Woodley adds. “It gave the fans another reason to hate me.”

With his heavy hands and all- encompassing ground game, Woodley had a clear edge over aging Lawler’s brawling assaults. Breaking hearts of fanboys around the world, his opening- round knockout should have heralded a new dawn for the weight class. Instead, it turned fans against him even more. 

Money talks

One man who doesn’t agree with all the Woodley-bashing is many people’s pick as the best fighter in the world, Demetrious Johnson, who even named his son after ‘The Chosen One’. “He’s a huge inspiration to me in my career, just the way he carries himself,” Johnson told The MMA Hour. “He just says whatever he wants and I respect that. And you have to respect his opinion and how he feels about things.”

Outspoken throughout his career, Woodley didn’t bite his lip once he had the belt. Rather than wait for the leading contenders to line up he had his own ideas on who should challenge for the belt next, and they were all names with dollar signs attached. With Conor McGregor changing the game with his approach, Woodley’s far from the only fighter and champion to follow suit and start demanding more power in what or who comes next.

Shrugging off calls to face Thompson and Demian Maia, Woodley turned his attentions to Nick Diaz, McGregor and the returning GSP, even middleweight kingpin Michael Bisping. In his eyes, why should he fight the challengers based on the rankings when there are much more financially beneficial matchups to be made outside of the top 10.

After all, Woodley had been a rankings contender for some time but was made to wait. Plus, chasing pay-per-view fights was only what McGregor had been doing, and he’s bringing more dollars to the table than anybody has ever done before.

“Fighting St-Pierre or Nick Diaz made sense to me. Financially they’re just bigger fights and attract more pay-per-view dollars. It wasn’t that I was trying to dodge anybody. It was just I’d worked damn hard to get to the title and once I got it I wanted to cash in. I believed I deserved that,” Woodley says.

But while fans overlooked the fact that McGregor jumped ahead of Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson to get to Eddie Alvarez and carve out his own piece of history and cash in along the way, when Woodley went public with his desires for the belt, the industry lost its mind, labelling him a “coward” and “greedy”.

He adds: “It’s one rule for one I guess.

In the end, I had no choice but to fight ‘Wonderboy’, but I still maintain there were bigger fights and bigger pay checks out there. And there still is.”

At UFC 205 in New York in November, Woodley and Thompson fought to a five- round draw. The judges officially scored it 47-47 twice and 48-47 once for Woodley. But that was only after the fight was originally announced as a split-decision victory for Woodley. The whole thing, like everything MMA related in New York it seems, was a mess.

Blame game

Things only got worse in March’s Las Vegas rematch. At least, from the champion’s perspective, the belt didn’t change hands. “I fought to keep the belt. That’s what champions do,” Woodley says. “Thompson failed to fight, he never tried to take the belt from the champion, like I did against Lawler. Yet I was the one vili ed for the fight. I kept my belt against an opponent I never pushed to fight in the first place. Me against Bisping or Diaz doesn’t play out like that, I can tell you that much.”

White though is still seething. “When you have a performance like you did at 209, and you get booed for five straight rounds and then people are booing so loud you can’t even do your interview, you 

should probably just take your lumps and move on. Get your next fight as fast as you can and try to put that performance behind you.”

Woodley hopes to do just that. Yet he refuses to play the game just to win over White and MMA’s fanbase for that matter. “People can bill me as the bad guy all they want but the people that really matter, my family and teammates, they know the type of person I am. I never took any shortcuts to get where I am in this sport. I’ve never taken a shortcut in my life. I work hard, I’m committed to my family and my team and I represent mixed martial arts with integrity. If the fans aren’t down with that, that’s cool. I didn’t need them before and I don’t need them now.

“Listen, MMA is f**ked up in a lot of ways. Myself, DJ and Daniel Cormier take a lot of s**t even though we’re all champions in this game. Whether that’s because of the way we fight, the way we walk or talk or simply down to the color of our skin, it’s not our problem. It’s your problem if you don’t appreciate what we’ve all done to get where we are.

“But I’m done playing games. I know what I’m worth. I know what I’m capable of. I’m going to do my thing from now on. And I’m going to be a tough dude to deal with. I’ve been making this easy for everybody, but now I’m going to be making it easy for me. I’m the champion, the belt is going nowhere, and people should remember that.” 

*This interview took place in 2017.