Okay, rewrite thread why Woodley does not have good fight IQ:

Basically, every fighter has two main general attributes: Physical gifts and technical skillset. How you leverage those in correlation is how successful you are.

You want to be an elite fighter? You need to know how to be strategic and tactical enough to impose your phys./tech. advs vs what your opponent can and does offer you. Generally, good fight IQ involves this principle in order to win.

I.e. If I lack a phys. advantage, I'd want to develop the skills and variety of tech. to be able to beat people who hold phys. advantages, right?

Alvarez and Whittaker are good examples. Both are phys. freaks, but they met two, more imposing athletes in Chandler and Romero.

At athletic deficits, you can't simply hope to win that easily. Alvarez had to use pivots, lateral movement, darts, counters and body work to slow and punish Chandler. Whittaker had to fight grips, force scrambles, land front kicks to the body (to compensate for his front leg),

push the pace, and so on to win. In these cases, both fighters were capable athletes, but they utilized greater depth of skill to win and adapt to what Chandler/Romero brought to them.

Conversely, the best fighters in MMA are inherently going to be those w/ high phys. gifts +

the technical ability to back it up. Jose Aldo is the finest example. Aldo could have just been a knockout dynamo, but he developed one of the most functional, defensive toolboxes MMA had (and rn has imo) ever seen. Pivots, slips, rolls, head movement, counters, etc.
This made

Aldo incredibly difficult to win against because he not only had the athletic edge, but an extraordinary tech. depth to make him nigh unbeatable. It took two very special, next gen fighters to do it. Even now, on an obv. phys. decline, Aldo can still hang w/ elites to some extent

The claim that Woodley has high IQ seems to rest upon the fallacy that, if you are doing little or not being aggressive, then you are being inherently smart.

So, let's examine what Woodley does, shall we? Essentially, Woodley is one of the best athletes MMA has ever had and

what he does is lead opponents to the fence where he can punish their initiative with right hands and TDs. B/c of his athletic gifts, TW is powerful enough to KO anyone and strong enough to hold most down. But there are a few issues with Woodley. And it's tactics and pushing adv.

TW likes to limit his own space to draw opponents into blitzes, counters, or TDs, but he always waits on them. Why not force leads with feints, pressure or throwaways to punish them (I.e. Lawler, McGregor)? Why not restrict your space for TDs and be reactive in open space? Why

not force pocket trades and scare your opponents off so you could pressure them? Why not hit off breaks? These seem like feasible things for TW to do, but he doesn't.

Moreover, b/c Woodley is against the fence, essentially that means he has a few options that his opp. can expect

1. He will wait for a right hand counter
2. He will wait for a TD
3. He will wait for a chance to turn you with a clinch
4. He will blitz forward

See the problem yet? Most, if not ALL, of what Woodley does predicates upon waiting for you. In other words, this makes fighting him

extraordinarily predictable.

It also isn't like Woodley doesn't know how to do anything else, it's that he chooses not to. He showed he can pressure (vs Lawler), but doesn't do it. Why? Vs Maia, the only route Demian had was to chain wrestle and TW shut it down & had a clear

strength advantage. Once Maia's wrestling was shut down and TW didn't bite on the jab feints, Maia was sort of out of options. And Woodley...didn't really do anything about it. That's kind of damning.

Furthermore, b/c he is on the fence all the time, once you know that, it

becomes easy to gameplan and to exploit his lack of space and obvious options (I.e. Rory, Usman) because he won't really adjust to it with so little options. This is the big problem with saying Woodley has high Fight IQ: He is reliant upon phys. gifts with a minimalist skillset.

W/o natural athleticism, Woodley wouldn't even touch the top 20 of his division with that strategy. And, even then, if Woodley can't finish you, he'll earn drab or coinflip decisions. Once Woodley's gifts go away, he will lose more and lose fast.

In summary, having fight iq means leveraging your gifts and skills together if one of them isn't enough, but also being strategic/tactically capable of using them to win regardless. It's about balance and using that balance to your advantage while having backup plan(s)/responses.

Woodley has and chooses only one way to fight and athleticism is his cheat crutch to make it work. He isn't the only example of this, but he is, by far, the most damning one. If you took away his game, as Rory/usman did, he is left with almost no chance to win.

Essentially, those limitations are why Woodley does not have high fight IQ.

/end