Tyron Woodley To Conor McGregor: You Will Not Get Up Unless I Let You Up

UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor has a tendency to set up his next fight while he is already in the midst of promoting another, and that was no different last month in New York City from Madison Square Garden.

Although McGregor had a tough task ahead of him in the form of then-lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez, that didn’t stop ‘The Notorious One’ from setting up a possible welterweight title bout with Tyron Woodley down the road. During the early weigh-ins for the New York card McGregor and Woodley had a brief encounter that later escalated into a verbal war on both Twitter and at the late weigh-ins backstage.

McGregor would go on to defeat Alvarez via second round knockout, while Woodley and his opponent, Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson, would go to a majority draw that resulted in a title retain for ‘The Chosen One’. Both men have expressed interest in fighting one another since the conclusion of the Madison Square Garden event, but Woodley took it to a whole other level during the most recent edition of his YouTube series ‘The Champ Life’ (courtesy of MMA Fighting):

“When he got in my face and I looked at him I said, ‘what’s up?’ At that moment he realized I ain’t that dude. I’m really about that life. I’m really from that life. My family is from that life. I’m actually one of the sharper tools in the box that haven’t been in the streets like that but I have family members, close loved ones, that that’s all they know. So I’ve been around that a lot and I try not to take myself back to those dark areas, I try to stay sophisticated, stay professional but a few people can take you out of that element and bring that Ferguson back out of you and he almost did it. But I had to keep my eyes on the prize, defend my strap in a Fight of the Night performance at UFC 205.

“Now that we got that done – that’s off the table – if Conor want it he can get it. He knows how to get in touch with Dana [White, UFC President], he knows how to get the contract set, and he really don’t want to fight. I’m not saying he should want to fight because I’m not a little dude. I ain’t Nate Diaz. Nate Diaz is not a welterweight. He did not do well at welterweight because he was undersized and these dudes are real gorillas in this weight class.”

Woodley would proceed to warn ‘Mystic Mac’ of the repercussions of moving up dramatically in weight, which included facing men with ‘real power’, as well as threatening to rip the Irish champ’s head off and spew his blood across the Octagon‘s canvas:

“”If him and his coach John Kavanagh and everybody think that Conor can do well against me and they gas this dude up – you know, he’s a dope fighter but there’s levels to this. When you start going up, it’s like me going up to 205 and challenging guys at that weight. When you come up to this weight brother, it’s real power, it’s real people that will put real hands on you, that’ll put you down to the canvas and you will not get up unless I let you up.

“So if you want to get in there with a lion and get your head bit off and have me spewing your blood all over the octagon while you’ve got that goofy tiger tattoo on your chest, looking like a clown with a clown on your chest, we can do it. We can do it in Ireland, Dublin, we can do it in the back of White Castle, I don’t care. But just know, I ain’t that guy.  I don’t like to try and act overly hood or overly ghetto, a million hood stripes, but where I’m from you don’t call me a bitch, number one. Number two, you don’t fake like you’re about that life. If you want to scrap, if you want to make this money, let’s do it. If you don’t, shut your mouth. Just do your thing.”

‘The Chosen One’ remains adamant that he isn’t trying to build his name off of McGregor, but instead has a few other names in mind that he’d like to throw down with in order to help solidify himself as one of the greatest combatants at 170 pounds.

But that doesn’t mean he won’t capitalize on the opportunity if it just so happens to present itself:

“I want you guys to realize this about me, I’m not one of those guys that’s trying to position myself off Conor. I actually got no beef with Conor. He doing his thing, he’s getting what he want to get out of the game and I’m getting what I wanna get out of the game. But it’s a few people that you can step to with that BS and it can slide, I just so happen to not be one of those guys.

“I ain’t trying to build myself off Conor. I’ve got legendary ideas about my career. I want to be a great. There’s about four or five more people I’ve got to beat to solidify that position and that’s my focus and that’s my goal. If he wants to be a stumbling block that gets me to there faster, so be it.”

McGregor is no stranger to competing in the UFC’s welterweight division, as his mini-rivalry with Nate Diaz took place at 170 pounds over a span of six months. The lightweight champ has noticeably bulked up quite a bit since his days at 145 pounds, but is the increased muscle mass enough to allow him to hold his own against the elite of the welterweight division?

You can check out Woodley’s ‘The Champ Life’ episode in which he talks about McGregor here: