Tyron Woodley talks about racist fan backlash to winning title

Before UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley won his title, he had faced a degree of derision from some fans that were not excited about the possibility of him fighting Robbie Lawler. Fans saw other contenders to be more worthy, and pointed at the fact that Woodley had been sitting out for quite some time. Yet after pulling off the upset and winning the title at UFC 201, he’s gotten more online hate and invective than ever before.

Courtesy of Jose Youngs at Fansided.com, Woodley discussed the situation on his podcast (The Morning Wood Show) where he explained not just the negative reactions to his winning the title as an athlete, but the explicit racism that has been thrown his way in the process:

“I’ve had people call me n—-er and monkey and all this racist stuff and I delete these people, then they’ll create another page and just go back out. People are willing to take so many hours of their day to be so negative.”

“Some people, I look at their page and all they do all day is go against African-American athletes and try to really slur them.”

One of the most interesting points mentioned here is Woodley looking up the people that insult him and finding that there is a string of items specifically aimed at African-American athletes. That’s a particularly disturbing trend, as that sort of behavior is not that of an average online pest. The Twitter users that get blocked and create another account may have an unhealthy amount of deliberate run-of-the-mill trolls in that group, but there’s something to be said about the level of dedication to attacking an athlete on the basis of race via multiple channels or going after people of a certain race time after time.

Woodley also mentioned the fact that he’s only held the belt for a month, and while some have made unfair criticisms of him as a fighter, it’s the racial comments that have surprised him most. Woodley is no stranger into wading into the waters of social problems, having been very open in previous comments regarding protests at University of Missouri, as well as the protests in his native Ferguson, MO after the Michael Brown shooting. Both cases saw him deal with some fan reactions, yet this appears to have reached a new level for Woodley.

After the victories of both Stephen Thompson and Demian Maia, there is no set opponent or date for Woodley’s next fight.