Woodley on White ‘drama queen’ quip: Pot, kettle

In January UFC middleweight champion Tyron Woodley engaged in a frank discussion of race in American generally, and combat sports specifically. He argued coherently that he wants to contribute to the growth of the sport, and will do so if marketed properly. Woodley wants to draw the African-American market to MMA, an effort that is particularly auspicious given the retirement of Floyd Mayweather. But he feels he does not have the might of the UFC marketing machine behind him and believes that is based at least in part on race.

UFC president Dana White appeared on ESPN Radio’s Russillo and Kanell and countered that the lack of attention was due to his calling for money fights over #1 contender fights.

He’s a smart guy, he’s a good-looking kid, said White, as transcribed by Marc Raimondi for MMA Fighting. He’s explosive. He’s got knockout power. But he’s a bit of a drama queen.

That’s not what people want to hear. People don’t want to hear that. And then what he does is he’ll start fighting and arguing with people on social media. Then he wonders why when we show up to a press conference, the whole crowd is booing him. They’re not booing him because he’s black. There’s tons of black guys fighting in the UFC, you know what I mean?

White said Woodley should be more like Conor McGregor, who is willing to fight anyone. Except of course, right now ‘Notorious’ is not willing to fight anyone – he wants instead to do the ultimate money fight, a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, and talks about nothing else. That does not seem to have ruined his popularity.

During a recent appearance on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour, Woodley responded with good humor.

How is Dana White gonna call me a drama queen? quipped Woodley. He’s the biggest drama queen. I learned from the best.

I just think that we’ve seen Dana, if you get Dana mad, he gets really mad. And then really quickly — I think he’s mad at so many people, I think he forgets he’s mad at you. And he almost just wipes it from his memory. I thought it was actually kind of funny when he called me a drama queen.

I didn’t take it personal. I think what he was saying is that he feels as if some of the treatment that I was talking about and some of the buzz, he thinks that if I was more like Conor I would be a bigger star. Well, guess what? I will never be anything like Conor. So if that’s what it takes to be a star, then I will never be a star. You can’t tell a man to be like another man. That’s just not who I am. I just will never be it.

Woodley and White watched the Super Bowl together, and the fighter says the UFC reached out to him over the issues he brought up, and have taken steps to improve things.

That was the goal, said Woodley.

Tyron Woodley fights Stephen Thompson on Saturday in the main event of UFC 209.