Tyron Woodley expects Colby Covington to “be racist” ahead of their fight

Former UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley expects Colby Covington resort to racism in an effort to get under his skin before their fight.

Woodley and Covington are not officially scheduled to fight yet, but the bout is expected to be finalized soon.

Once the fight is official, Woodley believes Covington may incorporate racism into his pre-fight trash talk.

“He’s gonna try to use everything in mental warfare,” Woodley said on the Real Quick with Mike Swick podcast (transcript via MMA Mania). “He’s going to try to be racist, he’s going to try to talk about stuff from my personal life, he’s gonna bluff and make up shit about the gym. He’s going to ask all these daggone questions cause he was in St. Louis with me so anything he can turn into something he’s going to do that. Guess what? I’m going to match him and make him look stupid.”

During his interview with Swick, Tyron Woodley also referred to the fight with Covington as the biggest fight of his career, pointing out how their years of back-and-forth trash talk has raised the stakes of their collision.

“This is a big fight for me,” Woodley said. “This is probably the biggest fight of my career to be honest. Because the situation, it’s bragging rights. He’s talked all this sh*t, but in my mind, he really knows what time it is but now because he has talked that much sh*t, he’s got to try to live up to it. He’s got to try to beat me. He’s been calling me out for three or four years damn near. So now it’s to the point where it’s personal and the other fights didn’t really mean as much.

“I feel like [Kamaru] Usman and Gilbert are kind of goofy and I really didn’t feel no animosity towards them. But I feel that with Colby. Some of the other guys I felt the urgency because of how good they were, Carlos Condit and Robbie Lawler, those guys are the OG’s. ‘The Natural Born Killer,’ ‘Ruthless,’ ‘Gorilla’ [Darren Till], all these monstrous fighters that I got to bring it to them cause they sure as f**k going to bring it to me. I think Colby’s going to bring me that, the first time I get the opponent at the press conference, we probably just going to break the internet to be honest.”