Tyron Woodley responds to Dana White's UFC 214 criticism with threat, demand for public apology

UFC President Dana White better apologize to Tyron Woodley – or else.

That, in a nutshell, was the UFC welterweight champion’s response to White’s criticism of his performance during a unanimous-decision win over Demian Maia on Saturday at UFC 214 in Anaheim Calif.

Via “The MMA Hour”:

“I’ve done nothing but good stuff for the sport. I’ve done nothing but be a good model for the f*cking organization,” Woodley said. “I go out there, and I fight with integrity. I covered your sport from the FOX desk a week before my fight. I always uphold my responsibilities to the organization. It’s timeout for that. The word behind ‘business’ is ‘man.’ You need to be a man; you owe me a public apology. And if I don’t get that, I’m going to start leaking some sh*t that people don’t want to be out in the wind. I’m not even kidding about that.”

Woodley (18-3-1 MMA, 8-2-1 UFC) declined to elaborate on what exactly he was threatening to leak.

This isn’t the first time Woodley and White have been at odds with each other. Back in January, Woodley raised eyebrows when he said racial prejudice has played a role in not being able to maximize his star power. It was a claim White flat-out dismissed, suggesting Woodley be more like Conor McGregor to better promote himself.

The fight between Woodley and Maia was widely criticized as one of the least exciting UFC fights of all time, which was evident during the bout when fans booed regularly and turned on their cell phone flashlights and started waving them side to side. Statistically speaking, the fight set the UFC record for the least amount of strikes thrown.

Woodley revealed that he suffered a torn labrum in the first round of the fight, which prevented him from throwing more punches and putting on a better show. While the fans’ anger he can deal with, he can’t accept White’s harsh words.

“I don’t care so much about the fans, but when your job title is promoter, promote your f*cking fighters,” Woodley said. “Promote your champion. Don’t demote your champion. I threw my shoulder out in the first round, I wasn’t able to throw any damaging shots — for you guys who don’t understand what a labrum tear is, go get on Google or Wikipedia and figure it out — and I still stayed the course, I stayed on path, I stayed on point, I executed the gameplan. I had to reduce all of my shots from overhands, uppercuts, things that were hurting my shoulder, to straight punches.

For complete coverage of UFC 214, check out the UFC Events section of the site.