UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley’s best efforts to entice Nate Diaz into a fight, it’s not happening.
UFC president Dana White told reporters that Tyron Woodley vs. Nate Diaz was never in the works for UFC 219 event.
It seems like some negotiations were going on between Nate Diaz’s camp and Tyron Woodley. The fight seemed to come out of nowhere and then dimmed away almost as quickly.
After White made a statement, Woodley believes that he had a fight with Nate Diaz at UFC 219, now UFC canceled off the reservations. (Via MMA fighting)
“Delusional Dana constantly demotes me as a fighter when the job is to promote his fighters, especially champions,” Woodley said. “Why would I get in camp, and why would Nate give a 15 million dollar purse request if there was no fight? It’s obvious they haven’t found their blockbuster headliner yet. This was a reality, and they know it. The inability to come to financial terms with Nate killed it.”
Champ Woodley hasn’t been shy about calling out Nate Diaz on his unsettled negotiation tactics, even coming up with a $10 million split between them, but it all fell on deaf ears.
White stated that UFC lawyer offered a Nate Diaz Vs. Tyron Woodley fight at UFC 219, but it was not an official proposal.
“One of our attorneys here started playing matchmaker and — he has a good rapport with the Diaz brothers — and he basically said [to Nate Diaz], ‘What if you could fight Tyron Woodley?’ Me and Sean (Shelby) were like, ‘How does he deserve to fight Tyron Woodley? There’s a f*cking list of guys that are waiting to fight Tyron Woodley and this dude’s gonna fight … what are you talking about?’
“So he kind of went off the reservation a little bit and started playing matchmaker. That’s why you started hearing Woodley saying, ‘I got offered a fight with Nate Diaz,’ and we’re like, ‘No, there was never a fight.’ So there was really never an offer for Woodley vs. Diaz. That’s not true.
“ First of all, Woodley’s been talking about, ‘I need shoulder surgery. I need shoulder surgery,’ and then … ‘I’ll fight Nate Diaz’ and then starts calling him out and shit. It was a nightmare. None of that was true.”
Woodley officially says the bout is dead and he’ll be moving on with surgery, and the many other business opportunities are available on his plate, said on recent episode of The Hollywood Beatdown:
“Well, I’m fired up because I know you booked some hotel rooms, and Nate Diaz is obviously scared homie. When someone says, ‘Hey, I want to get paid $15 million’ to fight a fighter, and they’ve never received that — not even to fight Conor McGregor — that’s a nice way of saying no, I don’t want to fight them. That’s like me saying, ‘Hey, yeah. I’ll fight f-cking Stipe Miocic. Just pay me $35 million.’ That’s basically saying no. So, unfortunately, it would have been a crazy card December 30th in Las Vegas, and it would have been a crazy end-of-the-year, unfortunately, it’s not taking place. I’m not fighting Nate Diaz. That’s how the cookie crumbles, man. [He missed out on] a huge payday, man. He can’t run forever.”
It seems like Nate Diaz is not fighting anytime soon and Woodley is moved on with his shoulder surgery. Champ Woodley got movies, his FOX commitments and plenty of other stuff down the pipeline.
“I’m actually going to chill out for a little bit. I got a movie coming up that I’m going to shoot. I’ve got a lot of work on FOX, a lot of opportunities coming up. You know, your boy might be GQ in magazine. Maybe they saw the last episode when I was getting at People Magazine for not making me the ‘Sexiest Man of the Year’. So, you know I got that thing coming up. Things are looking up for me. I am going to go ahead and undergo surgery on my shoulder. i decided a couple of days ago. It is going to be a bummer, but at the end of the day if nobody want to step up and fight somebody that’s not even 100-percent in they one shoulder, then I might as well get my shoulder to where it should be so I can continue [defending] with my belt with a little bit less risk.”
UFC 219 will now headline by Cris Cyborg vs. Holly Holm for women’s featherweight title, on December 30 in Las Vegas.
