UFC president Dana White was highly critical of his welterweight champion Tyron Woodley following his title defense against Demian Maia at UFC 214 on Saturday night. Unless White publicly apologizes, Woodley is threatening to leak information that his employers wouldn’t want in public.
Woodley has won five of his last six bouts. He drew with Stephen Thompson, but knocked out Robbie Lawler in 2:12 to win the belt during that stretch.
In his fight with Maia, a master of takedowns and submission, Woodley stuffed all 21 of the Brazilian’s takedown attempts on his way to a unanimous decision victory with scores of 50-45, 49-46, and 49-46 from the judges.
Despite routing Maia, fans were left booing what they perceived as a boring fight. White, who also felt that Woodley did little to try and finish the fight, took it a step further.
The UFC president had said leading up to the fight that returning former champion Georges St-Pierre would fight the winner of Woodley vs. Maia after he had scrapped previous plans for St-Pierre to challenge middleweight titleholder Michael Bisping. White reversed course on Saturday night, saying he was so disappointed in Woodley’s performance that he was reinstating the fight between St-Pierre and Bisping.
Woodley can handle fans being critical, even overly so, but he did not take kindly to White tearing him down.
“I don’t care so much about the fans, but when your job title is promoter, promote your (expletive) fighter,” Woodley said on The MMA Hour on Monday. “Promote your champion. Don’t demote your champion.
“I threw my shoulder out in the first round. I wasn’t able to throw any damaging shots — for you guys who don’t understand what a labrum tear is, go get on Google or Wikipedia and figure it out — and I still stayed the course, I stayed on path, I stayed on point, I executed the gameplan. I had to reduce all of my shots from overhands, uppercuts, things that were hurting my shoulder, to straight punches,” he explained.
“I’m owed a public apology. You’re going to publicly scrutinize me, Dana White? You publicly need to apologize to me.”
This article first appeared at News – MMAWeekly.com
