Tyron Woodley: Till We Meet Again…

In a sport where it feels like it keeps getting harder and harder to find reasons to pay attention to it, especially since Conor McGregor has the audacity to want to train for his UFC return next month and not go on TV to call people peaheads while throwing around cans of Monster Energy Drink and talk about the racial diversity inherent in the lower half of his body (ladies…), at least the major UFC events can still produce something worth talking about.

So…how badly do you feel about Brandon Davis’ nuts after Zabit Magomedsharipov (or Zabit “Maria Sharapova” as I’m probably going to start calling him now) stretched them out on live Payperview? At least I know where my $65 are going…

Overall, UFC 228 was a good event. We got to see Aljamain Sterling surprise fans by finishing a fight, Diego Sanchez and Jim Miller surprise fans by winning a fight, and Jessica Andrade cause every man in the crowd to shrivel up at the sight of her legit KO’ing Karolina Kowalkiewicz. She’s got some scary power in her hands.

One thing we didn’t see was Nicco Montano finally defend the UFC Flyweight Championship she won last December via the greatest MMA proving ground circa 2006, The Ultimate Fighter. Instead, she went to the hospital after experiencing complications due to her weight cut and will now watch Valentina Shevchenko fight someone else for the vacant title after getting stripped, a move I agree with not because of any alleged accusations of faking or milking injuries to avoid defending the title but because a champion’s job is to make weight and if she can’t even make it to the scale because she can’t cut the weight in a safe manner, she shouldn’t be champion.

Maybe if Daniel Cormier would have let her borrow his towel…

At least the one weight controversy that had everyone talking for lack of any better narrative turned out to be a non-issue, as Darren Till successfully made weight for his main event shot at UFC Welterweight Champion, and a man who is probably a bigger fan of Snoop Dogg’s newer material than most, Tyron Woodley.

The road to this fight was a bit of a random one as Till, who was certainly deserving of a shot after earning (or being gifted, depending on your relationship with reality) a unanimous decision win over Stephen Thompson back in May, was given the next shot at T-Wood more out of timing and desperation on the UFC’s part than on actual merit.

UFC’s whole handling of the welterweight division this year has been baffling, creating an Interim Welterweight Championship because they didn’t know when Woodley was going to be able to fight again, even though he was consistent in saying he’d be ready by late summer/early fall, only to take the interim belt away from the fighter who won it, Colby Covington, because he wasn’t going to be healthy enough to fight when the UFC wanted him to and the September Payperview was in dire need of a main event.

And I’m not using this space to defend Covington or any of his recent or past actions, even though I’ve had no issue with him other than the fact he’s trying way too hard to be the bad guy (if he goes on Twitter and spoils the ending to Little Women, I am going to be soooooooo pissed). The UFC are the real bad guys here, dangling a golden carrot in front of the man’s face only to take it away because he’s refusing to kiss the ring.

I guess Dana White was willing to move on from Colby as soon as the fight between Conor and Khabib Nurmagomedov was signed, meaning he knew Woodley vs. Covington wasn’t going to be the biggest potential moneymaker of the year so he didn’t need to rely on it if it wasn’t going to fit his timetable.

And he took the man to see President Trump and everything.

Seriously, regardless of your politics, those pictures of Colby with Trump are adorable, like the faux republican equivalent of a three year old going to Disneyland and meeting Mickey Mouse for the first time. Too cute.

Either way, however we got to Woodley vs. Till, we got there and the fight more than lived up to expectations. How did it do that? Because Woodley and Till actually fought each other instead of circling each other for 25 minutes. What a pleasant surprise that was.

After a somewhat competitive first round that saw Woodley control the action with his grappling, he turned the fight lopsided in the second by dropping Till with a right hand early, pounding on him for the next few minutes, and tapping him with a D’Arce choke before the horn sounded to end the round.

The fight was certainly an example of the “What have you done for me lately?” mentality that exists in a sport where you only see the athletes perform a handful of times a year at most. After a string of performances that lacked in the action department, Woodley has fired up the masses in a way that he hasn’t since he knocked out Robbie Lawler to win the championship two years ago.

I’m sure that goodwill will last until he starts demanding money fights with GSP or the Diaz brothers again. Or he reminds people what color his skin is.

At least we know what is next for him, as there’s no other option that makes sense right now beyond now former interim champion Covington. Woodley can say he doesn’t feel Colby is deserving but, whether he’s saying that because he means it or because he’s selling the fight, it’s still the biggest fight that’s realistically available to him at the moment, so he better start getting ready, whether it happens at UFC 230, an event two months away that’s still in need of a main event (maybe if UFC promoted its fighters, it wouldn’t be such a struggle to find Payperview main events…), or at a later date.

So should Kamaru Usman. I mean, getting paid to cut weight and be available to fight in case one of the fighters falls out, knowing full well he’ll more than likely not receive any fame or glory or recognition for all the work he put in and instead have to watch the action from the camera well a few seats down from Anthony Kiedis and Sean O’Malley?

For a “Nigerian Nightmare,” he sure knows how to live the American Dream. Oh yeah…

Evan Zivin has been writing for 411 MMA since May of 2013. Evan loves the sport, and likes to takes a lighthearted look at the world of MMA in his writing…usually.