Welterweight champ Tyron Woodley isn’t shy about speaking his mind and some future forecast musing from the hard hitting fighter on ESPN’s Five Rounds might raise eyebrows with a certain returning legend’s camp. (Or maybe not.)
Chatting on the podcast, Woodley laid out the scenario in which he sees Georges St-Pierre coming to reclaim the welterweight gold relinquished in 2013. He predicts that GSP might go after the belt if Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson beats Woodley at Saturday’s UFC 209 main event. If Woodley wins this weekend’s rematch? Expect something different.
“Let’s not get it twisted, part of the reason he left the sport was concussions,” said Woodley. “He doesn’t seem to be extremely thrilled to get in there with somebody that can punch him to the point of getting dropped and suffering a concussion — an ugly, grueling fight.”
To be fair, there aren’t too many people that enjoy being socked into brain damage. Still, we see Woodley’s point.
“I think they want to see how this fight plays out,” he explained. “If ‘Wonderboy’ comes up with a victory, I think we’ll see him try to fight ‘Wonderboy.’ [Thompson] has a crazy style and he has knocked guys out, but how many times has he stood in the pocket and just thrown heavy leather [and] let them damn UFC gloves fly and knock somebody out? Never.”
Speaking of worthwhile Woodley soundbites, the former Strikeforce fighter addressed a Dana White jab on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani. Responding to White labelling the promotion’s welterweight titleholder a “drama queen,” he shared that he doesn’t take the UFC president’s comments personally.
“How is Dana White gonna call me a drama queen?” he said. “He’s the biggest drama queen. I learned from the best.”
Woodley noted that Dana’s an angry fella. Something that can kinda work to your advantage based on your position in the rage cycle.
“I just think that we’ve seen Dana, if you get Dana mad, he gets really mad,” explained Woodley. “And then really quickly — I think he’s mad at so many people, I think he forgets he’s mad at you. And he almost just wipes it from his memory. I thought it was actually kind of funny when he called me a drama queen.”
It should be a real interesting work environment for UFC 209.
(Via ESPN & MMA Fighting)
