Not for the first time this year, Dana White has talked himself into a shitstorm with one of his champions.
While watching Dana White’s presser following UFC 214, it was obvious that the comments he made about welterweight champion Tyron Woodley were going to come back and bite him in the ass.
The UFC president was unhappy with how Woodley defended his belt against terrifying jiu-jitsu threat Demian Maia, citing the fact that the duo broke the record for least number of strikes in a five-round title fight.
“It’s easy to say that a win is a win, but when you get booed out of an arena that means people don’t want to watch you fight. That’s how you make a living. It’s not good if people don’t want to watch you fight.”
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White used the opportunity to rule announce that middleweight king Michael Bisping would be getting the nod to welcome welterweight great Georges St-Pierre back to the Octagon. His reason being that after that performance, he doesn’t believe fans would want to see ‘The Chosen One’ fight again.
“No. You asked fans if they want to see Woodley fight again. I think that would be a flat out no. Who wants to pay to see Tyron Woodley fight again?”
Woodley stuffed every single takedown attempt, snapped a streaking finisher’s seven fight win-streak and he achieved all this with a shoulder injury he suffered in the first round. He outstruck Maia and caused more damage, yet White blames him for the boring fight.
It’s no wonder Woodley is so pissed off.
The undisputed welterweight champion of the world appeared on Monday’s MMA Hour and let rip at White. He laid it out in plain English why he wasn’t as explosive with his striking as White would have wanted. He was injured.
“I don’t care so much about the fans, but when your job title is promoter, promote your fucking fighters. Promote your champion. Don’t demote your champion. I threw my shoulder out in the first round, I wasn’t able to throw any damaging shots — for you guys who don’t understand what a labrum tear is, go get on Google or Wikipedia and figure it out — and I still stayed the course, I stayed on path, I stayed on point, I executed the gameplan. I had to reduce all of my shots from overhands, uppercuts, things that were hurting my shoulder, to straight punches.”
Woodley revealed that he took the phone call from host Ariel Helwani while he was in the car after visiting the doctor’s office to have his shoulder checked out. He claimed that he had the paperwork to back up this claim and demanded that White apologise to him.
“I’ve done nothing but good stuff for the sport. I’ve done nothing but be a good model for the fucking organization. I go out there and I fight with integrity. I covered your sport from the FOX desk a week before my fight. I always uphold my responsibilities to the organization. It’s timeout for that. The word behind ‘business’ is ‘man.’ You need to be a man, you owe me a public apology. And if I don’t get that, I’m going to start leaking some shit that people don’t want to be out in the wind. I’m not even kidding about that.”
As for what exactly he was threatening to leak, Woodley remained coy.
“They know what I’m referring to. I’m due a public apology,”
The ball’s in Dana’s court now. It will be interesting to see how he responds to this threat.
