At UFC 235, Kamaru Usman unseated Tyron Woodley to become the new welterweight champion in a dominant and one-sided performance. In the aftermath of the event, Tyron Woodley has struggled to explain what exactly took place. One thing Woodley has said definitively is that he was not himself in the fight against Usman. And the last man to share the Octagon with him, UFC London headliner Darren Till happens to agree with him:
“To me, and this is no disrespect to Usman in no way: I actually sent Usman a message after the fight congratulating him and saying I can’t wait to fight,” Till told MMA Junkie on Wednesday. “I know Usman was chasing me a while back, but now it’s obviously me chasing him. But it just didn’t seem to me like the Woodley team turned up to fight like they did (against) me.”
Darren Till has pinpointed the biggest difference between the Tyron Woodley he faced and the one that was dethroned by Kamaru Usman to the difference between fear and comfort:
“I know when he was fighting me, he was scared,” Till said. “When you’re fighting a guy like me, you have to be scared. You know what I bring to the table. And he said that openly. I could feel fear, but that fear drove him on. He was so powerful and quick and aggressive.
“As much as Usman looked so, so good in there like a top-level fighter, Woodley just didn’t seem like the same Woodley as we’ve seen previously. And he’ll still go down as one of the best ever. He just didn’t seem like the guy we knew. And that’s not to take anything away from Usman. He perfected that strategy. But it was a weird fight.”
Do you believe the outcome of Tyron Woodley vs. Kamaru Usman at UFC 235 would have been different if Tyron Woodley was as aggressive as he was in the Darren Till fight?
