It’s a brave, brave man who’ll walk into another man’s home town and fight him one-on-one.
It’s an even braver man to declare he’ll do it in what could well end up being the biggest fight in UFC history.
Current Welterweight champion Tyron Woodley had quite the strange night a month ago at UFC 205, and it was one that could’ve triggered the something quite enormous. Woodley at first retained his welterweight title over Stephen Thompson via split decision, but the decision was later reversed to a majority draw. Either way he didn’t lose, and retained the belt as a result, but a rematch of the bout is quite obviously now on the cards at some point.
But what happened backstage is what’s gotten MMA tongues wagging. Woodley and Conor McGregor had an encounter that began with an off-handed quip, and ended with a pretty intriguing stare down. But the interaction between the two was not done there: Later in the night, UFC officials had to borrow Woodley’s UFC championship belt so McGregor would have two to pose with after deposing lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez to become a dual-weightclass champion.
Woodley’s belt. On McGregor’s shoulder. HMM.
Since then, talk of McGregor stepping up another weight class to take on the 34-year-old Woodley has been rampant, and Woodley today has further stoked that fire by suggesting that the fight could go down in Conor’s home city of Dublin, Ireland.
A vlog-style documentary video posted on Woodley’s YouTube account features the welterweight champ talking candidly about the burgeoning rivalry with McGregor, with Woodley insisting that he’d take on McGregor quite literally anywhere; even inside the beast’s own lair.
The key quote, if you missed it, goes like this:
“We can do it in Ireland, Dublin, we can do it in the back of White Castle, I don’t care.”
Hoooo boy.
Just to punch a ticket on that train of speculation real quick, McGregor has long wanted to return to his native Ireland for a main event fight, and the potential venue of Croke Park would just about shatter any and all attendance records the UFC could ever dream of.
But there’s obviously hurdles involved: McGregor does need to actually defend his newly-won lightweight title in order to silence some critics who insist he isn’t a legitimate champion until he does so; criticism that is particularly pertinent given that McGregor, despite all his impressiveness in the octagon and bravado outside of it, is yet to actually defend a championship that he’s won.
The other hurdle to the fight being the step-up in weight class, and whether UFC boss Dana White would allow McGregor to hunt a ridiculous third weightclass championship.
Still, the thought of 85,000 rabid Irish people fully behind their local-boy-done-good and braying at the big bad American as he saunters to the ring?
Yeah. You can have my PPV dollars for that now, Dana.
Source: MMAFighting.
Photo: Brandon Magnus, Zuffa LLC/Getty.
