Woodley teases potential fight at UFC 219; brass mulling Diaz as opponent
It appears the UFC needs to get creative to salvage its last card of the year.
With a main event-less UFC 219 just seven weeks away, reigning welterweight champion Tyron Woodley may be the man to fill the void opposite an unlikely foe. Speaking with FloCombat's Damon Martin on Tuesday, Woodley said a win over any of his division's many contenders would do little to cement his status as the greatest welterweight ever, and teased a potentially imminent fight announcement - likely against an opponent in another weight class.
"There's a lot of guys in my weight class that are talking, they're chirping, everybody wants the title, everybody wants to fight me, everybody thinks they can beat me," Woodley said. "People are talking because they think I can't fight. They think I'm injured to the point where I can't compete and I'm not going back and forth with them so that gives them more wings to keep flying.
"At the end of the day, none of the people in my division right now are the fight that are going to get me to legendary status. Get me to the point where I'm a household name. I'm looking for that and I might have found that fight."
Enter Nate Diaz.
The longtime lightweight has been holding out from the couch since he dropped a welterweight rematch to Conor McGregor in August 2016, although that looked like it may have changed Tuesday, when his strength and conditioning coach, Jose Garcia, teased a return to the cage with a pair of Instagram posts (he's since deleted the first).
It didn't take long for the Twitterverse to put two and two together, with MMA Fighting's Ariel Helwani reporting the UFC had indeed been mulling the idea of pitting Diaz against Woodley on the year-end bill, although a deal has yet to be hammered out. The 32-year-old Diaz has split six promotional bouts at 170 pounds.
Woodley, for one, believes the matchup would bolster his legacy, telling ESPN's Brett Okamoto on Wednesday: "If Nate wants to go UFC 219, I'm ready." Okamoto also echoed Helwani's report that the promotion is in fact looking into what would be a welterweight tilt.
UFC 219 is scheduled for Dec. 30 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.