Tyron Woodley dealing with racist backlash after winning UFC welterweight title

Winning the UFC welterweight championship was supposed to be a joyous occasion for Tyron Woodley. His first-round knockout of Robbie Lawler shocked the world and proved that his decision to wait a year and a half for the title fight paid off. However, now that he’s the freshly minted champion, it appears that not everyone shares the excitement that Woodley does.

“I can tell you from experience, as a champion, the last three weeks of my life have been completely the opposite of what you’d think it’d be,” Woodley said on his podcast, ‘The Morning Wood Show.’ “I’ve had so many people say, ‘You [expletive], you’re scared of this person’ and I’m like, I just fought an hour ago. I just got the belt. I’ve had people say ‘You should be stripped of the belt’ and actually it’s a month today that I won the belt.”

Some backlash was expected. But what Woodley didn’t expect was the amount of racist comments that were directed at him on social media.

“I’ve had people call me [expletive] and monkey and all this racist stuff and I delete these people, then they’ll create another page and just go back out,” Woodley said about the harassment and racial epithets he’s received. The explicit racism that has followed him since becoming the champion has been surprising for Woodley. As well as the time that the offenders are putting in to chase down Woodley with such negative comments. “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.”

Woodley is awaiting word on who he will be fighting next. He’s lobbied for a fight with Nick Diaz and Georges St-Pierre, but UFC president Dana White has suggested that he would face Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson in his first title defense.