Fighter pay has been an issue with the UFC for a while now. Former welterweight champion Tyron Woodley recently had a conversation with ONE Championship flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson, where he opened up on his frustrations with Dana White regarding pay that led him to leave the promotion.

Tyron Woodley was the UFC welterweight champion from 2016 to 2019. He defended his championship on four occasions. However, two years after Woodley lost the title, he parted ways with the UFC. Recently, he opened up on his leaving the promotion and stated when he arrived at that decision. Let’s see what ‘The Chosen One’ had to say.

Tyron Woodley asked to be released from the UFC

The former welterweight champion had his last fight against Vicente Luque at UFC 260, following which he fought YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul twice. However, Tyron Woodley revealed that he was considering leaving Dana White’s promotion after his fourth title defense against Darren Till, who recently parted ways with the UFC as well. He said, “I was going to leave UFC prior [to fighting Jake Paul]. I was going to leave the UFC after [fighting] Darren Till.”

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Furthermore, Woodley even urged the UFC to release him many times. He also claimed to have known that Dana White and co. were not in favor of keeping him as a member of the roster. “I told them, I said, ‘F***ing cut me, dawg. Y’all don’t want me here [anyway],” Tyron Woodley added. In addition to that, ‘The Chosen One’ also revealed that his real reason for leaving UFC was the financial disagreement he had with the UFC CEO.

Woodley wanted to get paid more by Dana White

Tyron Woodley claimed that he knew how much fighters were getting paid. Furthermore, he revealed that he was making the same amount of money as a champion that Dana White was paying Hall of Famer Donald Cerrone, even though ‘Cowboy’ never won a championship throughout his UFC career. “I just knew the numbers so well. I knew what everybody was making [and] I’m not going to go be making the same as Cowboy Cerrone. That motherf***er never touched gold in his life.”

Moreover, ‘The Chosen One’ claimed that Dana White and UFC wanted him to be grateful for the fact that he was a part of the world’s biggest MMA promotion. Tyron Woodley did not have a problem with that. However, he argued that his rise to becoming the champion was all because of his fighting skills. That, according to him, should have been the reason for him getting paid what he wanted, but that never happened. Moreover, the fact that Woodley knew what others were making rubbed the UFC in the wrong way.

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“Sometimes when you’re African-American in this game, they think you should just be appreciative. I am not just appreciative, I’m thankful that you gave me the opportunity, but you didn’t give me the gifts. God gave me the gifts… At the end of the day, they hated that I knew the numbers,” Woodley added.

Tyron Woodley was so fed up with the way the UFC paid him, he even confronted the promotion’s brass regarding Demetrious Johnson as well. But now, the latter is having the time of his life in ONE Championship. Meanwhile, Woodley is done with MMA, but he is still up for a boxing match in the influencer scene.

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