Tyron Woodley says the period after losing his UFC welterweight title tipped him into a state of depression in which he believed the sport was mocking him.
“Rock bottom is when I thought everybody was laughing at me,” Woodley told Ariel Helwani. “I thought the UFC was laughing at me. Usman was laughing at me.”
Woodley had been unbeaten in his last seven fights, with four welterweight title defences behind him, when Kamaru Usman took the belt at UFC 235 in Las Vegas on 2 March 2019, on scores of 50-44, 50-44 and 50-45. He never won inside the Octagon again.
The chaos behind the reign
The reign itself, Woodley told Helwani, had been messy. He was going through a divorce, in a new relationship and a father, and admitted to spending around $40,000 a month, a habit he called being dumb.
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The Usman loss, he said, tipped that chaos into a state of depression in which he felt everybody had finally got what they wanted.
UFC Hall of Famer Demetrious Johnson, a close friend, spent a long time trying to help pull him out of it.
Nearly eight years without a hand raised
Woodley left the UFC in 2021 on a four-fight losing streak. Boxing gave him no answers either: he was beaten twice by Jake Paul and, on the Jake Paul vs Anthony Joshua undercard on 19 December 2025, stopped by Anderson Silva via second-round TKO. His winless run reached nearly eight years before an unlikely turnaround came in another sport altogether.
On 22 August 2026, the 44-year-old beat Joaquin Buckley 14-8 at Real American Freestyle 12, a professional wrestling card at Rocket Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. He had trailed 8-1 at the end of the opening period before mounting a 13-point comeback, including a four-point counter takedown against Buckley’s final attack.
“After I beat Buckley, I’m like, finally, it’s over with,” Woodley said.
The reprieve was brief. Two weeks later, Khamzat Chimaev stopped him in 94 seconds at RAF Moscow on 5 September 2026 for a first-period technical fall.
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