UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley is confident that he could beat Covington even with limited use of his shoulder
Covington called out the champion following his decision win over Demian Maia in Brazil last weekend.
Woodley recently spoke on the Anik and Florian Podcast, dismissing Covington as any threat whatsoever (transcription via BJPenn.com):
“My shoulder’s not what it should be, but this past weekend there was a couple of people bumping their gums about fighting and I was like, you know what? I could actually beat this person with my shoulder the way that it is. So, could I fight and compete? Yes. Would it be very smart especially with your belt on the line, you know, with several figures on the line? Probably not. So, I was trying to go the route of maybe doing a stem cell, doing a PRP [platelet-rich plasma injection] instead of the surgery and just kind of rehabbing it, seeing how strong I can get it first so I can make that decision.
“As I’m strengthening the shoulder and I’m getting to that point, I gotta’ make a decision pretty soon. I’m leaning towards not doing a full-blown reconstruction, but maybe a smaller version of it where they just scope out the parts of the labrum that were torn that are stuck in-between. That’s causing it to catch, that’s causing it to click, that’s causing it to pop. I think they’re just going to take that portion out, anchor it down, inject stem cells, inject PRP on the way out of the surgery, and hopefully, I’m back in three or four months.”
