LONDON – Nathaniel Wood has a solid task on his hands Saturday, but the UFC may have known what it was doing putting him on the same card as Lerone Murphy.
Wood and Murphy had a run-in at the host hotel early in fight week for UFC Fight Night 224 in London. The featherweights just aren’t fighting each other … yet. The two were booked for UFC 286 in March, but Wood had to pull out after a freak leg injury a handful of weeks out.
There may be enough heat now to warrant booking them after this week.
“If I’m honest, that, you know, I think the social media said it was heated,” Wood said at Thursday’s media day in London. “That wasn’t heated. That was really calm from me. We just had a few words – a little bit of a conversation, if anything, or maybe like a heated debate. I guess we still just disagree, but it might just be one of those where we’re just going to have to agree to disagree and move on, because nothing really went anywhere with that conversation.”
But on social media, Wood admitted things were a bit different after Murphy took something Wood said about putting on a “masterclass” against him to offense.
“It started from 0, ended up at 100, and I guess, what do you do with that? I said things to him that are very offensive to him. He said things to me that are very offensive. He said things to me that people were telling me I could go and speak to lawyers about. I’m not, obviously, going to do that, but I think it just got over-escalated. I think it kind of started from nothing, and I think deep down he knows that, as well.
“I wish him all the best. If we end up fighting, great. I’m going to try and knock him out whether we’re friends or whether we’re not. But I’m not losing any sleep over it, you know, so I wish him all the best this Saturday. Hopefully he gets the win, I get my win, and if we can match up in the future and fight, then so be it.”
Saturday, Wood (19-5 MMA, 6-2 UFC) takes on Andre Fili (22-9 MMA, 10-8 UFC) in a featured bout on the main card just a few fights after Murphy (12-0-1 MMA, 4-0-1 UFC) opens the main card against Josh Culibao (11-1-1 MMA, 3-1-1 UFC).
Check out Wood’s full UFC Fight Night 224 media day interview in the video above.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC Fight Night 224.
