Leon Edwards reveals absurd request from UFC to save Tyron Woodley bout

UFC welterweight Leon Edwards has revealed the lengths that the promotion wanted him to go to in order to fight Tyron Woodley this past weekend.

Due to the chaos surrounding the sports world courtesy of the coronavirus outbreak, the UFC London card, scheduled for this past Saturday night, was called off with the UFC hoping to reschedule the event over in the United States.

That would’ve required an incredible effort from everyone involved, and that includes one half of the main event – Leon Edwards himself.

During a recent interview with BT Sport’s Adam Catterall, Edwards had the following to say on the matter.

“I went to bed on Saturday night, and I got a phone call waking me up about 9am on Sunday from my management team saying the fight’s off in London, and you need to get to America today,” Edwards said. “I was like, ‘hold on, what? How long [have I got]?’. They said you’ve got three hours to get to Heathrow and fly from Heathrow with your team. I was like ‘that’s impossible’.

“I was like ‘where am I flying to’ and they said ‘we don’t know yet’, just get on a plane to America’ and we’ll sort that once we get there. So yeah that was it really. They didn’t care about me getting back [with the travel ban] they just cared about me getting there.”

Despite the unlikelihood of it all happening, Leon Edwards did try to negotiate with the UFC.

“We phoned the UFC again and said can we leave Monday or Tuesday, giving us a little bit more time to try and sort stuff out, but they said no, you’ve got to leave today [Sunday] if you wanna do it.”

The UFC canceled UFC Portland and UFC Columbus in addition to UFC London, with many questioning whether or not UFC 249 will go ahead as planned.

Stay tuned for further updates on the UFC schedule, and on the next move for Leon Edwards, as details emerge.

This article first appeared on BJPENN.com on 3/23/2020.