Woodley: Mayweather can hold his own with anyone, IF …
Tyron Woodley: “Every fight starts on the feet, and if you can keep it on the feet, I think that he can hold his own with pretty much anyone in that weight division.”
UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley is preparing to train Floyd Mayweather for a fight in the UFC’s Octagon. While many point to James Toney’s brief foray into the MMA space as prophetic (he never threw a punch), it’s not the only example. Olympic gold medalist in boxing and former WBO boxing champion fought former UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia, and knocked him out in nine seconds.
Earlier this month on his ‘The Hollywood Beatdown’ TMZ Sports show, Woodley said he could get Floyd Mayweather ready for a UFC fight in three months. Floyd Mayweather is the greeatest boxer of his generation, but never wrestled. And nine times out of ten, a wrestler beats a boxer. However, Woodley recently spoke with an amiably skeptical Karyn Bryant on UFC Tonight, and defended his assessment.
Blocking kicks is really easy, explained Woodley, as transcribed by Jed Meshew for MMA Fighting. Once you get to the point where Floyd Mayweather is at, you can see that his boxing, his defense, his ability to see a punch coming in a fraction of a second and avoid or evade that punch, comes from repetition. Drilling over and over and over again. So that’s all we would have to do to utilize blocking kicks.
If you look at mixed martial arts as a sport, there are guys that are in the UFC that don’t have a four out of five in their wrestling or jiu-jitsu, so therefore it’s not kinda crazy that someone with some of the best boxing we’ve ever seen may be able to hold his own.
Obviously, every round starts on the feet, every fight starts on the feet, and if you can keep it on the feet, I think that he can hold his own with pretty much anyone in that weight division. My job is to really just help him avoid being taken down, using angles, using footwork, using defense, how to get back up if he gets taken down.
It’s just a pivotal part of the sport where a boxing great decides to maybe come over to the octagon and see what he can do on that side and it’s an honor that they would consider me to do that.
There is no timetable yet for Mayweather fighting in the UFC, but it’s not as impossible as it appears at first glance. When the idea of Floyd Mayweather boxing Conor McGregor was first broached, UFC president Dana White wanted some degree of hybrid rules.
“If we start negotiating, it starts with punches kicks and elbows,” he said at the time. “And we can either add or subtract from there, whichever way we go.”
Team Money need to respond in kind.
If we start negotiating, it starts with no clinching, takedowns or submissions, they should propose. We can either add or subtract from there, whichever way we go.