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Woodley said at the luncheon. “At the time [King] was doing that, he didn’t think he’d be ‘Martin Luther King.’ He was doing it because it was right. We also have to think as fighters, celebrities — whatever you want to call us — that we have an obligation to point out stuff that’s just completely wrong.
“Muhammad Ali said it best when he said, ‘I might lose some money in this by sitting out some of my prime [protesting the Vietnam draft], but this is right.’ And this is why people remember him. I just made a vow to myself this year that things that are unjust, things that are untrue, things that are racially driven, I’m not going to be quiet. I’m going to speak up. In the past, I said I didn’t want to speak on certain issues because the second I said one thing about race, then ‘Tyron’s playing the race card.’ But if you really think about it, what is the race card? The race card is that the man held me down, I had unfair circumstances and I wasn’t able to be successful because I was held down.
“This is not me being vindictive. This is me making my way out of nowhere, rising above my situation. You might live in an impoverished environment. That doesn’t have to be you.”
He said that the company missed a golden opportunity to spread that message in November, when he fought Thompson at Madison Square Garden in the UFC’s debut card in New York.
Sauce: http://www.latimes.com/sports/boxing/la-sp-sn-ufc-tyron-woodley-stephen-thompson-20170119-story.html
“Muhammad Ali said it best when he said, ‘I might lose some money in this by sitting out some of my prime [protesting the Vietnam draft], but this is right.’ And this is why people remember him. I just made a vow to myself this year that things that are unjust, things that are untrue, things that are racially driven, I’m not going to be quiet. I’m going to speak up. In the past, I said I didn’t want to speak on certain issues because the second I said one thing about race, then ‘Tyron’s playing the race card.’ But if you really think about it, what is the race card? The race card is that the man held me down, I had unfair circumstances and I wasn’t able to be successful because I was held down.
“This is not me being vindictive. This is me making my way out of nowhere, rising above my situation. You might live in an impoverished environment. That doesn’t have to be you.”
He said that the company missed a golden opportunity to spread that message in November, when he fought Thompson at Madison Square Garden in the UFC’s debut card in New York.
Sauce: http://www.latimes.com/sports/boxing/la-sp-sn-ufc-tyron-woodley-stephen-thompson-20170119-story.html