Covington Denies Turning Down Woodley Fight
Colby Covington claims he did not turn down a fight with Tyron Woodley at UFC 249.
Both Covington and Woodley were open to the idea of headlining UFC 249 on April 18 after Khabib Nurmagomedov had to pull out of his lightweight title fight with Tony Ferguson.
Woodley went on to state that he had agreed to a fight with his management revealing they were waiting on Covington. In the end, it wasn’t to be as Woodley later announced that Covington turned down a fight for the fifth time.
But that’s not how it went down according to “Chaos” who still very much wants to fight “The Chosen One” — and his ideal scenario is battling his former teammate on UFC president Dana White’s private island.
“We’ve been talking with the UFC. … I offered my services,” Covington told MMA Fighting in a recent interview. “I really wanted to fight Tyron Woodley on six days’ notice to save the UFC London main event. Because I thought they were coming to the U.S. and I thought it would be a great opportunity to save that fight and do it on ESPN for the people. While the people are stuck at home, I can be the one, the savior to save sports.
“Sports is dead, everybody’s dying for something and they’re dying for this fight because this fight is multiple years in the making. This fight is beyond personal. There is a serious beef between me and Tyron Woodley and it needs to be settled. And the only way it’s going to be settled is we’re going to do it on Dana White’s fight island. I’m going to end that b*tch. He’s going to be dead and then they can just throw his dead body to the sharks on the private island.”
So if Covington is so intent on fighting Woodley, why didn’t a fight come together? The former interim champion believes it was a logistics issue as by the time the parties came to an agreement, UFC 249 already had a makeshift card in place.
“To be honest, I don’t think there was a fight offer. We came to an agreement — we were ready to fight him,” Covington added. “They couldn’t get the logistics right. I guess Sean Shelby and Hunter had a full card already for April 18 so ‘we’re just going to go ahead with this.’ And they also recognize and realize, that me vs. Tyron Woodley is a bigger fight than Justin Gaethje vs Tony Ferguson, and if you look at the numbers any way you crunch it, that’s true news. That’s not fake news.”
.@ColbyCovMMA wants "beyond personal" fight against @TWooodley on "Dana White's fight island" this year:
"I'm going to end that b*tch. They can just throw his dead body to the sharks."
𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙀𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬 𝙂𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝙇𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙏𝙝𝙪𝙧𝙨𝙙𝙖𝙮 𝙖𝙩 10𝙖𝙢 𝙀𝙏. pic.twitter.com/l2B3phuzau
— MMA Fighting (@MMAFighting) April 7, 2020
