An eyebrow-raising twist during the announcement that Tyron Woodley will be stepping in as a short-notice replacement for Tommy Fury to rematch Tyron Woodley in the boxing ring on December 18th.
During his video post YouTube superstar Paul revealed that he’s offering Woodley a $500,000 bonus if he manages to knock him out or TKO him – a bold claim that has since been confirmed is actually written in to Woodley’s contract – and he’s since explained why that’s happening.
“You know me. I like to make things more interesting all the way across the board,” Paul said at a virtual press conference yesterday. “There’s been this rumor going around about a ‘no knockout’ clause in my contracts. Someone started it and everyone else ran with it. People are like sheep. They believe everything they read or see and they go which way the crowd is going.
“That’s been a rumor that’s completely untrue. I’d be in jail for rigging fights. That’s illegal. We just wanted to squash that rumor right away and from now on we’ll be giving bonuses to my opponents if they can knock me out. We want to incentivize them and prove to the media and the world that all of these rumors aren’t true.”
Paul also spoke about why he sought Woodley as a late replacement rather than just cancel the event or postpone it until a later date.
“It was an option [to postpone the fight], a thought, and I was like no. We have to do this December 18,” Paul admitted. “I’m ready to fight. I’ve been in training camp for almost three months now. I’m not going to let this slip through the cracks. Tyron is still a huge fight. It’s still a harder fighter and I didn’t knock him out. For me, it’s just as exciting because I get to go in there and prove to people that I can make corrections based off my last fight. Because I had a good fight, whatever, I won, but there’s a lot of things that I could have done better.
“That’s what we worked on this camp, changed up a lot of things. We brought in a nutritionist. So I just have been elevating my game with every single fight. I’m excited to show that. I wanted to make sure everybody on the undercard was still getting paid. A lot of these fighters are living paycheck to paycheck. Amanda Serrano was there as the co-main event. A ton of other amazing fighters. I wanted the show to go on and was willing to do anything to make that happen.”
