Tyron Woodley isn’t buying Dana White’s excuse for not pitting him against Georges St-Pierre.
The UFC welterweight champion was promised to fight GSP if he defeated Demian Maia at UFC 214. Woodley did just that, but White changed course and offered the GSP fight to Michael Bisping because the UFC president wasn’t a fan of Woodley’s tactical and defensive fighting style which drew boos from the crowd on Saturday night.
But in an interview with TMZ, Woodley said the reason why he’s not fighting St-Pierre is because GSP is “scared.”
“Georges don’t want to fight me,” Woodley said. “He doesn’t want to come in and take the concussion. If Demian Maia would’ve won, he would’ve fought him. If Stephen Thompson would’ve won, he would’ve fought him. He’d want to want fight Nate Diaz, he’d want to fight Conor, he’d want to fight Bisping.
“What do all of those guys have in common? They’re probably not going to concuss him, they’re probably not going to submit him, they’re probably not going to take him down. It’d be a tough, competitive fight, but it won’t be something that’s going to hurt him. I’m going to hurt him. He doesn’t want that to happen.”
Woodley also defended his defensive fighting style, which aided him in stuffing 21 takedown attempts from Maia.
“I think the fans are spoiled by the few times you get those blood wars and they expect every MMA fight to be like that. I’m not apologetic for it. My coaches said it was a brilliant performance.”
St-Pierre hasn’t fought since UFC 167 when he defeated Johny Hendricks via split decision. Although he successfully defended the welterweight belt nine times, he hasn’t had a finish in seven consecutive fights, when he knocked out B.J. Penn at UFC 94 eight years ago. Woodley used that statistic in his defense when backing up his argument about St-Pierre being scared.
“Remember when Georges left? Remember how they were saying he was boring? How he was laying on guys? How he was controlling? How he hasn’t had a finish in “x” amount of time? Remember how negative they were about Georges? People have a short term memory. Now he comes back and he’s old, holy GSP. No. He’s scared that’s what he is.”
Thumbnail photo via Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports Images
