mma / Columns
Tyron Woodley Is Not a Moneyweight Fighter
So after a lot of back and forth and posturing, the main event was finally announced for UFC 209 in March. At welterweight, champion Tyron Woodley will once again defend his title against “Wonderboy” Stephen Thompson in a rematch from their fight at UFC 205, which ended in a draw. But before that, Woodley was out trying to set up a fight with Michael Bisping; a catchweight super-fight that no one was really asking for or wanted to see at all (see a video of the encounter Bisping posted on his Instagram below). Woodley is a champion and a great fighter, but he still doesn’t seem to understand he’s not a moneyweight type of fighter.
In a post-Conor McGregor/WME-IMG sale era, fighters are not just searching for titles and validation. They are searching for biggest paydays possible. It’s completely understandable. MMA fighters and combat athletes are fighting at great risk to their bodies and livelihoods. They destroy their bodies in training, making weight and the damage they take in the fights. With the UFC sale to WME-IMG being at $4.2 billion and the organization’s value being priced higher, they now sort of some hard numbers of what the promotion is worth. However, they also see the paydays the likes of Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey, two of the biggest money-drawing superstars in the sport, and of course they want to try and get a piece of that.
Regardless of what you think about Conor McGregor, he didn’t just happen overnight. McGregor still had to fight and claw his way to the top. Also, no matter what anyone says, he wasn’t protected and given easy match-ups either. McGregor was matched up against tough veterans. When McGregor fought Poirier, Poirier was legitimately a top five featherweight. Dennis Siver was a top 10 featherweight when he fought McGregor, and Siver was also a standout performer in a higher weight class. So, McGregor was granted a title shot after going 6-0, which included five first-round knockouts. However, the title fight was put off due to Jose Aldo’s injury, and instead McGregor fight what was arguably one of his worst physical matchups in Chad Mendes, who himself had just knocked out Ricardo Lamas. People said McGregor would be given hell by a tough, heavy handed wrestler, and that’s exactly what Mendes was at the time. McGregor knocked him out as well. McGregor didn’t really emerge as a PPV draw until 2015. In 2014, his only PPV fight was the main card bout with Poirier, which did a reported buyrate of about 205,000. The point is, it still took time for McGregor to develop into the main event superstar that he is. He came in and made a big impact very quickly, and his rise to stardom was meteoric. But it still took a couple years before he would headline PPVs that would make over a million buys or more. With Ronda Rousey, it took a while before she became a PPV draw as well. In fact, many of her critics would bemoan how she doesn’t draw money on PPV, which all changed in 2014. But her critics basically said she couldn’t draw and didn’t deserve the attention or main event spotlight that she was getting.
Before UFC 209, Tyron Woodley’s sole PPV main event title fight was UFC 201, where he was the challenger fighting then champion Robbie Lawler. There aren’t any official numbers for how many buys that PPV did, but the number that’s out there (via MMAPayout and The Wrestling Observer) is 240,000. Based on the reported numbers for PPV buyrates, that’s the second lowest PPV buyrate for a UFC numbered event in 2016, behind only UFC 206, which lost its original main event at the last minute.
Tyron Woodley is a great fighter, an elite welterweight, and he was able to prove how good he was by knocking out Robbie Lawler and winning the title. He fought a very competitive, tough and close fight with the top contender, Stephen Thompson. No matter what anyone says on who should’ve won the fight, it was a competitive fight, and Woodley did hurt Thompson multiple times in that fight. At the same time, Woodley is not at a level where he can start demanding catchweight, moneyweight super-fights. No one is asking or interested in seeing him fight Michael Bisping or Conor McGregor right now. Of course, he was already trying to plant seeds for a fight with Conor McGregor. Case in point, look how Woodley made it a point to have these weirdo confrontations with McGregor during fight week for UFC 205 (via MMAFighting). Yeah, no **** Woodley wants that fight and wants to goad McGregor into asking for it.
One some level, I totally understand what Woodley is doing. MMA fighters have a very short window with which they can make as much money they can off their athletic talents. When fighters hit a certain age, they start slowing down. Their bodies start to break down, or they lose their chins. They can’t handle the rigors of training camp as much as they used to. It seems to already be happening to some degree to former champions such as Cain Velasquez and Chris Weidman; neither of whom are 35 yet. Now, Woodley has a belt and he wants to cash out and likely have a nice nest egg by the time he will likely start slowing down, which could be in a few years. It’s very rare for fighters to continue fighting well into 40 at a high level. The reason Woodley gets dissent from the fans is because of his attitude and the way he goes about trying to make his cash.
In the past, Woodley has been open about not wanting to go on a run where you have to win a bunch of fights to secure a title fight. He’s always been strategic about picking and choosing his fights and turning down fights in order to put himself in the best position to win some type of title eliminator. For UFC 192, he was booked to fight Johny Hendricks. Hendricks failed to make weight for the fight, and it was cancelled. Dana White did the song and dance of Woodley getting the next shot. The UFC and White had made such promises and claims before, only to forget about them a short time later. Ask Miesha Tate about that when UFC opted for Holly Holm getting a title shot against Ronda Rousey instead of her, when Dana White said she would get the next shot. It temporarily strained their relationship, and Tate was furious. The UFC brass didn’t seem to care too much when fighters get upset about the organization not keeping its title shot promises. So for whatever reason, that promise was kept here, and Woodley was granted a shot against Lawler. That was despite having only won his last two fights: a knockout win over perennial top 10 fighter Dong Hyun Kim; and a split decision over Kelvin Gastelum. By comparison, Stephen Thompson went on a seven-fight winning streak to earn his title shot; including wins over former title contender Rory MacDonald and former champion Johny Hendricks. Hendricks and MacDonald are two fighters Woodley never had to beat in order to become champion.
Right now, Woodley has a stacked division of contenders. After Stephen Thompson, there’s Demian Maia. Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone is also emerging as a strong welterweight contender as well. Lorenz Larkin is a potential title threat down the line, if the UFC seeks to keep him on the roster. Instead of looking at McGregor and Bisping, Woodley should be looking at his own division. It’s good to have long-term goals and people you want to fight, but it doesn’t make any sense to hold up the division with a pointless fight with Bisping that no one is really interested in seeing anyway. Similarly, Bisping has his own list of guys he should be fighting as well. After Yoel Romero, there’s the likes of Jacare, a rubber match with Luke Rockhold, a fight with Chris Weidman, Gegard Mousasi, and the surging Robert Whittaker. Bisping and Woodley’s dance cards are both full right now.
If Woodley drops the entitled attitude and starts smoking his opponents, then people will start talking about how he matches up with fighters from other divisions. People wanted to see a super-fight between Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva because for years they were conquering their divisions and they were virtually untouchable as champions. It grew out of the fact that GSP was the most dominant welterweight ever, and Silva was the most dominant middleweight. Woodley hasn’t set his career and resume apart in a similar way yet. So far, he has one title defense that ended in a draw. It doesn’t matter if it’s either a draw or people thought he won. The fight was a draw. If he can somehow beat Thompson in the rematch, beat the likes of Maia and other guys put in front of him, then people will start wanting to see him fight out of his weight class. Regardless, super-fights are mainly just silly fantasies anyway. No matter how good a champion is, there’s an up-and-coming, young and hungry stud around the corner who can beat him. Look at Dominick Cruz. After his dramatic comeback last year, he was also mentioning wanting to fight McGregor at lightweight, despite bantamweight being his weight class. Guess what UFC roster? Not everyone gets to fight Conor McGregor to make Conor McGregor money. And just because you’re a champion with a considerable record, doesn’t mean you’re up for a fight with McGregor either. Focus on your weight class and smashing the contenders of your weight class. That’s how you will make your money instead of imaginary super-fights that aren’t going to happen.
Now, watch Conor McGregor come back and challenge Tyron Woodley for the welterweight title, making me look foolish.
