Tyron Woodley is more than willing to face Colby Covington at UFC 249, but if the fight doesn’t come together this time, the former welterweight champion is done chasing him.
A few weeks ago, Woodley tried to put together a short-notice bout with Covington after Leon Edwards was ruled out of their main event matchup at UFC London. In the end, the entire card was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, and Woodley continued to wait for his next opportunity to compete.
This week, UFC 249 fell into peril after lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov revealed that he traveled home to Russia to finish his training camp for his upcoming fight against Tony Ferguson, but new travel restrictions likely will prevent him from getting out of the country in time to fight on April 18.
So Woodley once again called out Covington, who almost simultaneously issued a similar offer in hopes of saving UFC 249.
There’s still no word if the UFC is seriously considering the matchup, but Woodley promises this is the last time he’s chasing this fight.
“This is my last time saying I want to fight Colby,” Woodley said during an Instagram Q&A on Tuesday. “If Colby don’t fight me this time, I’m moving on. Like think about it, why am I even talking about fighting Colby? He’s never won an undisputed title, he’s never been a champion. I’ve won five world titles. I’ve fought in seven [title fights]. For me to even have his name in my mouth is stupid. This sh*t is mucus. I should just spit it out in the grass.
“But at the end of the day, this is his last opportunity for me to even mention him. If he don’t fight me at this time, you’re never even going to hear his name, cause it doesn’t solidify my legacy to fight him. I just want to beat his ass cause y’all need to see him get whooped.”
The rivalry between Woodley and Covington dates back several years when both fighters were training out of American Top Team in Florida.
Covington has claimed time and time again that he constantly got the better of Woodley in their sparring sessions, but the former welterweight champion has a much different recollection of those days.
“I don’t know if he’s tripping on acid or whatever the f*ck is going on that he won any second of any exchange at all in those weeks – never happened,” Woodley said. “He never took me down one time. He may have landed his glove to my head maybe three times in three weeks and he literally ran from me the whole time.
“He made me make the choice as a training partner, do I knock this motherf*cker out? Do I actually break his arm? Do I put him to sleep? Cause all he did was get put in submissions, get put in holes, get put in bad situations, and he made me make the choice as a fighter do I f*ck this dude up? And I didn’t want to make that choice to do so.”
Despite their history together, Covington eventually took aim at Woodley when he started climbing the welterweight ranks and wanted a shot at the title.
Covington routinely bashed Woodley in public whenever he got the opportunity, trying to taunt his way into a fight. Woodley said when the trash talk first started, Covington wanted to get him involved in order to build a bigger fight.
“He used one complete year to talk about me,” Woodley said. “One year where 99 percent of his handle was me. Cause I text him, (and) I said I gave you your one little moment of shine. If you want to say whatever you want to say, you can do what you’ve got to do, if that’s what you feel you need to do, you don’t have to build yourself like that, you’re looking stupid. But I ain’t gonna reply back.
“He’s like, ‘Oh man, I’m just trying to build up the fight with us, we both can make money at the finish line,’ so he’s like trying to get me involved with this sh*t, but I’m like, ‘No, I’m cool.’ Then he knew I wasn’t going to say nothing so he went HAM. The second he won the interim belt, I’m like motherf*cker let’s go, let’s fight. Now you’ve got to live up to it. Mute, deactivated his Instagram account for a week. So that’s what he is, he’s all cap.”
If Covington is serious about fighting this time around, Woodley is ready to accept but he says based on past experiences, the former interim welterweight champion will set a price for his services so high that the UFC will never accept the offer.
“He asking for astronomical amounts of money,” Woodley said. “Conor McGregor ain’t making that kind of money. Why do you gotta make that much money to fight me? You fought [Kamaru] Usman for what you was scheduled to make. You fought [Rafael dos Anjos], you fought Robbie Lawler, but when it comes to Tyron Woodley, you want five, six, seven million bucks, because you scared and you gonna get smashed and it’s going to be so embarrassing that you may want to retire after that.
“So he’s trying to ask for the amount of money that he can go retire on his trailer home in freaking Florida with all his B-level, C-level, D-level strippers that he hires to come walk around him. So that’s what it is.”