Tyron Woodley still can’t quite put his finger on what went wrong in his title fight against Kamaru Usman at UFC 235.
While he was favored to win going into the night, Woodley ended up losing a lopsided unanimous decision to Usman, who was then crowned the new UFC welterweight champion.
Woodley has given Usman nothing but praise for her performance but he’s still trying to figure out what exactly happened to him to have such a bizarre outing after defending his title on several occasions on the biggest stages in the sport.
“I haven’t really been able to pinpoint what happened,” Woodley told TMZ. “When I fought, I felt good in the warm up. I felt good on the walk on the day of the fight. Felt good in the locker room, felt good on the walkout, felt good when I dapped gloves with him. Something happened when we got close it was just a draining moment like I can’t even explain it.
“A lot of people just say you have an out of body experience where I wanted to swing hard but I couldn’t. I wanted to punch him and I didn’t. I wanted to kick, I wanted to not move back, I knew he was trying to take me down and when I watched, I watched a small clip, I’m like ‘who the f—k is that? That ain’t me’. It may not even do me justice to watch the film because that’s not me out there.”
“I watched a small clip, I’m like ‘who the f—k is that? That ain’t me’” ~ Tyron Woodley
Unfortunately there are no off nights in mixed martial arts so Woodley’s error cost him the welterweight title and a lot of plans he had in the mix before he stepped into the cage against Usman.
Woodley has now said everything else in his fighting career is going on hold until he gets back that welterweight title.
“I was kind of in a funk for the last couple days,” Woodley explained. “Because I was so excited about my album release, so excited about my release party, so excited about all the things that were coming after this. I had already negotiated a fight against Colby [Covington] in June, thinking about going for the middleweight belt at the end of the year but I’m asking god, am I about to lose to this dude?
“This was during the fight. It’s so weird. I’ve never had a moment like that. The only thing I can do is go back to the drawing board and become a better Tyron.”
Woodley is still taking some time off before booking his return to action while Usman is expected to face former interim champion Colby Covington in his first title defense later this year.
