Outside Source
Rashad Evans has offered Tyron Woodley some sage advice.
Woodley and UFC president traded barbs recently over the welterweight champion’s comments about a fight between Nate Diaz.
The former light heavyweight champion described himself as “the original Tyron Woodley” and insisted that T-Wood can gain nothing from falling out with White. He urged the welterweight champion to stop publicly acknowledging any differences of opinion he has with the UFC boss.
“Some of the fans might not know this, but I was the original Tyron Woodley as far as my relationship with Dana,” Evans told Ariel Helwani on the latest episode of The MMA Hour.
“I understand where he’s coming from, but he’s going to learn what I learned. It reminds me of something someone told me when I got married, they said, ‘do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?’ — because if you’re right you’re not going to be happy.
“At this point, he can’t win this because he fights for the UFC. Dana is the president of the UFC, there’s no way he can win this. Feel the way you feel, but you gotta know whenever the conversation comes up that Dana said this — don’t even address it. Don’t go down that road.”
Evans revealed that he took years off his career by being embroiled in disputes with White. He also suggested Woodley could be risking his legacy if he remains at loggerheads with the UFC president.
“It’s a hard thing to do because your ego gets involved. You know he’s (White) wrong and you want to prove it. You might feel it’s because of this or because of that and you want to expose the truth, but at the end of the day at what expense? Your legacy, your chance to be remembered for what you love to do. At the end of the day, these are the things that make you hate fighting,” he said.
“I took too many years off my fighting career arguing with Dana: trying to fight Shogun, trying to get a fight with this guy, trying to do all this stuff, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter that much. I just lost time.
“I get what Tyron is saying and he’s right to feel the way he feels, but you’ve got ask yourself is it really worth it? Now here he is saying he wants a separate meeting with Dana just about how they can handle being around each other or how they should speak about each other — that isn’t a conversation that should be happening.”
“Suga” has offered Woodley advice in the past but believes the welterweight king will only understand the situation fully by going through it himself.
“Yeah, I’ve talked to him, but here’s the thing about talking to someone about something that you went through, they don’t understand it until they go through it. I can tell him, but these are things he has to go through himself. He has to ask himself, ‘How much energy am I going to devote to this?’
“What do you gain from being right to Dana White? Nothing, you lose a lot. Whether you’re right or wrong you lose. Why even play with it if you want to be a fighter — especially when two of your revenue streams are tied to things that he controls?”
This article first appeared at MMA Fighting – All Posts
