Colby Covington won the UFC’s interim welterweight title with a unanimous decision win against Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 225 last month and is now anticipating a title unification bout against Tyron Woodley later this year, but it seems that the UFC may have other plans.
The promotion reportely wanted to have Covington fight Woodley at UFC 228 in September, but Covington has indicated that he wants to push it back until later in the year instead.
“We’re looking at doing it in November, December,” Covington told Submission Radio. “You know, I need a little time off, I need to do a little recovering,. I’m only human, man, I gotta get a little vacation. I just can’t keep running my body through the ground, going through training camps. You have to be strategic, and you know, November, December works for me. I had little health issues after my fight, so I’m getting those taken care of and by the year’s end I will unify my belt and retire Tyron Woodley for good.”
However, according to ESPN’s Ariel Helwani, the UFC aren’t happy about this timeline and are now discussing the possibility of stripping Covington of the belt and having Darren Till fight Woodley instead.
However, there’s another spanner in the works as Till has claimed that Woodley turned down the fight.
“I don’t know what’s happening with Colby, whether he’s injured or not, but I’ve been offered Tyron Woodley and he turned the fight down,” Till told MMAFighting.com.
“That’s what it looks like to me and I’ve been on the UFC’s case about it. UFC want me to fight him, but he will not accept it. [UFC] didn’t mention a date or anything, but that’s the fight they wanted to make and he obviously isn’t into it.”
Till also wrote to Woodley imploring him to take the fight, but it seems like Woodley still expects to fight Covington instead.
“What fight? Ain’t nobody offer me shit,” Woodley wrote. “Thought Qweefington was getting smashed next. Y’all challenger need to coordinate y’all ass whipping better!”
Till is coming off a victory over Stephen Thompson, so he is in a position to step into a title fight, but it’s possible that the UFC are just trying to put pressure on ‘Chaos’ to take the title fight with Woodley sooner rather than later.
