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Tyron Woodley finally got back in the win column at RAF 12, and apparently that was all it took for The Chosen One to start calling his next shot like he just found the old championship cheat code. His RAF Moscow match with Khamzat Chimaev is still sitting on the calendar for Sept. 5, but Woodley came out of the Joaquin Buckley comeback talking like the harder work may already be behind him. Watch Woodley discuss the matchup below. Woodley told Ariel Helwani that the Buckley match was widely expected to be the more manageable piece of his schedule. After rallying from an 8-1 hole to win 14-8 in Cleveland, he made an emphatic promise about Chimaev. “I’m so thankful and I’m so excited. I’m going to take out Khamzat. I’m going to take him out. I promise you. Mark my words.” Woodley then directly compared the two RAF assignments. “Many people thought Joaquin Buckley was going to be the easy match. My gut tells me Khamzat’s going to be the easy match.” Woodley Is Treating RAF Like A Fresh Start The confidence makes sense if you follow the timeline. Woodley’s last UFC win came in 2018, when he submitted Darren Till to defend the welterweight title. After that, the sport turned into a meat grinder. He dropped the belt to Kamaru Usman in 2019, lost his final four UFC fights, went through the Jake Paul boxing circus twice, then kept searching for the right lane back into competition. RAF has given him a different kind of oxygen. This is wrestling, not MMA wrestling against the fence with elbows waiting over the top. Chimaev has been praised for smothering opponents in the cage and already handled Dillon Danis under the RAF banner, but Woodley is betting that a pure wrestling ruleset drags the matchup closer to his own roots. After what happened against Buckley, he has a fresh receipt to wave around. Woodley also leaned on the comeback itself and explained why he believes he can handle another difficult wrestling match. “He is going to be a tough match. It may come down to the last minute. It may come down to the last takedown, but I just proved to myself that I can do it. I scored 14 unanswered points and came back for a victory.” That matters because Chimaev has built a career on making strong people look like they forgot how gravity works. Woodley is not denying the danger. He is saying the danger looks different without punches, knees, submissions, and cage control stitched into the problem. The matchup also gives RAF exactly what it wants. A former UFC welterweight champion against a recently dethroned UFC middleweight champion is a billboard with teeth, especially after Woodley beat a dangerous current contender in Buckley. Woodley beating Buckley turned this from nostalgia bait into something more annoying for Chimaev. Now there is momentum attached to the talk. Still, Chimaev is not getting treated like some random warm body. Woodley explained that the threat is exactly why he accepted the match. “I’m not Dillon Danis that disrespected the culture, disrespected Khabib. I’m a very respectful guy. I think Khamzat’s a monster. That’s kind of the reason why I want the match.” Woodley separated Chimaev’s effectiveness inside MMA from his credentials in a straight wrestling contest. “He’s a great—he’s a phenomenal, exceptional wrestler in MMA. He’s a good wrestler in regular wrestling. We’re heads up in this match.” Asked why he remained so certain despite Chimaev entering the match in his prime, Woodley kept the answer brief. “Why not be confident when you believe in God and you train your butt off?” That is the fun part. Woodley spent years being written off as cooked, then one wild RAF comeback yanked him right back into a headline fight. Buckley knows all about wild momentum too after one of the most replayed knockouts in recent UFC memory. If Woodley really makes Chimaev the easier match, RAF Moscow gets a full-blown upset story. If Chimaev runs through him, Woodley still helped turn a freestyle wrestling card into must-watch combat-sports weirdness. Either way, the old champ is back talking spicy, and at least this time he has a fresh win sitting next to the microphone.