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Tyron Woodley explains why loss to Colby Covington hurt more than others
Tyron Woodley was upset to lose to Colby Covington due to this act and persona.
Every since Covington made his shtick, he adopted the MAGA platform and Woodley was hoping to shut him up when he was the champion. However, that didn’t come to fruition but they ended up fighting in September with Covington winning by fifth-round TKO.
For Woodley, he says losing to a guy who has that act as well as someone who he used to pay to be a training partner hurt him.
“Well, he wasn’t really disrespecting me, he was doing an act. I knew about the act, I even talked to him about it. I told him, ‘There’s a different way to do it, you’re going to look stupid and silly,” Woodley said to TSN (h/t BJPENN). “But if that’s what you want to do, go ahead and do it.’ He’s like, ‘Man, I’m just trying to get money and build this up and we can make money at the end.’ I gave him attention one time on a FOX episode and that was it. I told him I wouldn’t say anything else. So for the longest, he was able to go along with it freely. I never said anything about it, I was a champion. I didn’t have to address him.
“It hurt to lose to him just because he was willing to use an act to stir up some negative controversy with some things that are very sensitive. Whether it was with Brazilians or if it was the political debate, whatever he was doing, it was all a game. I think certain things you shouldn’t play with,” Woodley continued. “For someone I used to pay as a training partner who never thought about winning a second against me in any training format in life. To lose to a guy like that when I had a chance to go out there and beat him, send a strong message to the division, send a strong message to America that we should start together, and also just to kind of silence him a little bit. Yeah, it kind of hurt for those things more than anything else. But looking back, I never lost an opportunity to reach out to those people to send a positive message. In victory or defeat, it’s still the platform.”
Tyron Woodley is looking to snap his three-fight losing in the co-main event of UFC 260 as he faces Vicente Luque.
