If Colby Covington defeats Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 225, he will become the UFC’s interim welterweight champion. It’s Covington’s belief that capturing this interim title will leave undisputed welterweight champ Tyron Woodley with no choice but to accept a fight with him.
Covington explained this feeling on the latest episode of BJPENN.COM Radio.
“There’s definitely no way for him to weasel out anymore [if I win],” said Covington, who evidently feels Woodley has been avoiding him. “Woodley’s already weaselled out as much as he could. We were supposed to fight December 30th and he turned it down. He said he was good to fight Nate Diaz and [Georges St-Pierre] but as soon as the UFC offered him a real contender like myself, he went running for the foothills like the little gossip bitch he is.”
“He’s too busy gossiping about the Kardashians on TMZ,” Covington continued, referencing Woodley’s gig on TMZ’s The Hollywood Beatdown. “He’s got nowhere to run. This is for the undisputed title, make no mistakes about it. ‘Tyrone’ Woodley has a little fake belt, a little paper belt. When I beat RDA, that’s the undisputed title and if he wants to come get some, he could say something but I don’t think he’s got anything to say. I think he’s going to run to Hollywood and hide from me forever.”
While Covington seems to have his doubts that he and Woodley will ever share the cage, Woodley recently shared his goal of clearing out the welterweight division by thwarting all of its top contenders.
“I kind of want to legitimately clean the division,” Woodley recently told MMAjunkie. “I wouldn’t mind fighting [RDA], Colby, [Kamaru] Usman, [Darren] Till, and at that point, unless another prospect emerges, I’ve cleaned out the division. And I’m the greatest welterweight of all time at that point. And then it’s time to go up to 185, and I want that belt. I want to finish off my division. When it’s all said and done, I did everything I could do there. I want to go up and challenge myself once again, and I want to try to win the belt at ’85 and defend there and pretty much retire as a middleweight.”
From the sounds of it, we could see Colby Covington and Tyron Woodley in the cage together in the near future.
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 6/5/2018.