Coach Duke Roufus understands Tyron Woodley won’t be getting an immediate rematch
Tyron Woodley has said he deserves to be recognized as the greatest welterweight of all-time. Although many believed that honor goes to Georges St-Pierre, Woodley was closing in. He just needed to string together a few more wins and have a few more dominating performances.
Well, at UFC 235, that was not the case. Kamaru Usman dominated Woodley from bell-to-bell to become the new welterweight champion. Know for sure, Tyron Woodley and his coach Duke Roufus aren’t making any excuses.
“I talked to Din (Thomas), and we’re going to come up with our assessment. I like to be ‘PCP,’ and I’ll explain: I want to praise what we did, correct what we didn’t do right and then positively,” Roufus said on MMAJunkie Radio. “(Tyron is) hurting. He’s got to feel lower than a curb right now, like he’s playing handball with a curb because he lost the most coveted title in all of fighting. But, you know, we’re just going to assess it and figure out the little things.
“There’s a lot of things that come into play. I was really sick coming into this. We had a tougher weight cut. But those aren’t excuses. If you fight, you have no excuses. You have excuses not to fight, and that’s my belief system. You can cancel the fight because you have excuses. But if you choose to fight – whether you have (an) injury, you have this, you have that – you have no excuses. I try not to make excuses for myself and/or my people. Respect to Team Usman. They won, we lost, and we got to get better.”
Although Woodley has said he wants an immediate rematch, Roufus understands that is probably not the case. With that, they know Woodley will need to get back in there and string together a few wins in a row.
“We all know how the UFC feels about Tyron, and here’s the thing: I’m friends with everybody. I love Tyron, I love them, I get along with everyone. That’s between them. I’m always going to stand with my fighter, but I understand what they want him to do,” Roufus. “We have to go stretch and choke out two or three people, and get a title shot. That’s it, that’s just the formula he’s going to have to do – come in, take out someone and get some big performances. That’s just part of it sometimes. … I understand you don’t get an automatic rematch all the time.”
