Tyron Woodley had big plans for the future until the present came back to bite him.
The former UFC welterweight champion was coming off three consecutive title defenses including one of his most dominant
performances to date when he dismantled and submitted Darren Till in 2018. In the aftermath of that victory, Woodley plotted out some very ambitious career moves that would have added two more title defenses to his resume before making the move up to 185 pounds with hopes of pursuing a second UFC title.
But then the bottom fell out from under him and Woodley admits he has no one to blame but himself.
“A lot of people don’t know this, I was the first and maybe the only fighter to negotiate three fights on one call,” Woodley told MMA Fighting. “I negotiated fighting [Kamaru] Usman and then in victory with Usman, I was supposed to go and fight Colby Covington and defend the belt. If I beat Colby Covington, I was going to be allowed to go up in weight and fight for that belt. That was my game plan.
“At that time in my career, I lost focus and I was focusing too much on the lifestyle and too much on the things that came along with it. Women, partying — not like drinking and drugs and stuff — but just being at the Maxim 100 party. I was invited everywhere and I just became a socialite. I feel like that took the place that the focal point should have been in.”
Of course, Woodley is far from the first high profile athlete in any professional sport, let alone combat sports, to allow outside distractions to complicate a career.
But looking back now, the 43-year-old veteran just couldn’t resist embracing the lifestyle that being a UFC champion afforded him. In many ways, Woodley says he was effectively rewarding himself after a rough upbringing didn’t guarantee he’d live to see 30 much less have the opportunity to bask in the glow of celebrity.
“I grew up in the murder capital of the world,” Woodley said. “I’m a street baby. I’m the only one that did it legit so I never saw someone actually do it legitimately. Everybody’s dead or going to jail or still currently in the street. So what I was able to do was do something different, show my family, show people in my city that it was possible. Show them that something positive could come from this environment.
“I was fueling and I was feeding and I was basically sponsoring the 10-year-old Tyron that couldn’t get a pair of name brand shoes, that the girls wasn’t trying to talk to him. I was giving myself everything that I didn’t have when I was younger. I’m like why am I being the goody-two shoes? Why am I doing all this other stuff and all these other champions are doing whatever the hell they want to do and still being blessed and still having success?”
Bathing in opulence eventually started to tear Woodley apart at the seams as he struggled to maintain a stranglehold on his position as UFC champion while still attempting to balance all of that with his home life.
“I just started living two different lives,” Woodley said. “I was a great father. I was a great athlete. I was terrible husband and I was living a rockstar life. But nobody was outworking me, nobody was out training me and nobody was out parenting me.
“Them things I was better than a fighter but when it came down to the other spots, I thought those things were separate. They’re not. They’re all combined together. I fooled myself into think they were separate and they weren’t.”
Woodley never used the word regret when addressing his past successes and failures because through it all, he still managed to accomplish a lot as a UFC champion.
In a perfect world, Woodley would have completed his grand design that culminated in claiming a second UFC title but that doesn’t take away from his biggest wins.
“Robbie Lawler’s a great,” Woodley said. “Darren Till, he was an up and coming guy that had all the things saying he was going to be great. Carlos Condit was a great. I beat those guys and some of those guys I beat in dominant fashion.
“I feel Darren Till, after that fight it changed him. He was on a path to be that. They were talking about him, he sold out the O2 Arena, saying he’s the next Conor [McGregor], he’s big, he’s strong, he’s got KO power, he’s undefeated, he’s hard to hit, he’s got the talk, the gift of gab as well. I pumped the brakes on that hype train real quick. I feel like that changed him. He didn’t bounce back.”
Obviously, Woodley can’t rewrite history but he also knows that his career isn’t over yet so he’s still hoping to add a few more accolades before it’s all over.
That’s exactly why Woodley was so excited to receive and accept an offer to face fellow former UFC champion Anderson Silva in a boxing match on the Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua card on Friday.
It won’t make up for missing out on winning a second UFC title but Woodley knows beating an all-time great like Silva still matters when it comes to his biggest accomplishments.
“He’s a legend and I’m chasing legendary status,” Woodley said. “Beating him, I feel like puts me in the category of being a legend. When you look at fights, that people would ask what would be a legacy fight for you? I’d be like Georges St-Pierre. I never even thought about Anderson. I definitely was thinking about moving up weight classes in the UFC and going up and fighting for a second belt. Several times, me and [Michael] Bisping wanted to fight. We ran that by Dana White. That was my plan to fight and defend the title, vacate the belt and then go up to middleweight but I never thought about Anderson because at that time I was thinking about going up, it was different guys in that division, different contenders.
“Now I think this is a fight where people are going to be like ‘godd*mn, this is a fight we didn’t know we needed.’ I feel like I think it’s going to be the best fight on the card.”
