Tyron Woodley, UFC welterweight champion reveals his dislike for the sport of MMA and how it turned out over the years.
Tyron Woodley is the best welterweight in the world, but it turns out he doesn’t really like fighting all that much.
Woodley appeared on Joe Rogan’s MMA podcast recently, where he went on record by saying said he’s actually not a really big fan of fighting but it just so happens that he excels at the sport, which is why he’s held around for so long.
“I don’t even really like fighting to be honest,” Woodley said. “I’m just good at it.”
Though, Woodley’s reasons for his feelings towards fighting is more deep-rooted. He said that his disdain towards fighting has nothing to do with the long hours he puts in at the gym or even the competition inside the cage, but how the culture had changed over the years.
“I don’t like the politics behind it, I don’t like the martial arts aspect that’s been taken away from it, I don’t like the disrespect to the sport,” Woodley said. “Guys that are not really training hard. They don’t look the part – I think a professional athlete should look a certain way.”
“I really just don’t like this generation of fighters that watch a move on TV, on YouTube, and they go in and try to do it. They don’t drill repetitions; they don’t want to actually put in the work.”
He added, how other fighters are behaving doesn’t necessarily influence Woodley directly but he points out how it does hit his bottom line when it comes to the contestants he faces and how matchups in the UFC are determined these days.
Also, it seems like contenders are being defined more by outside the octagon antics rather than inside the cage performances.
“It affects me because our sport is also the fans and the fans actually the culture who gets the fight. If a guy talks enough shit and starts wearing fly suits, then this day and age, that’s good enough for a title shot,” Woodley said. “And I think that’s disrespectful to everybody that came before when you had to go 10-0 to get the f—ng call from the UFC. (Today), if Conor McGregor wanted Artem Lobov in the UFC, he’s gonna be in the UFC.”
The overall trend with matchups being made in the UFC based on verbal war rather than who has actually earned an opportunity will always rub Woodley the wrong way.
“It’s ways that the sport has taken the love out of it, but I just find a way to dominate my opponents, taking all their tools away from them, and Din Thomas and Duke Roufus are f—ng masterminds,” Woodley explained. “So, I take pride in that, I take pride in going in there and not getting hit, dominating and knocking people out.”
“I love training; I don’t like what the sport has become.”
woodley is sidelined due to of his shoulder surgery and yet has to determine his next fight.
