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<h3><a href="/go=news.detail&gid=446913" target="_blank">
Woodley: Things in Ferguson not going to end well
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<a href="/go=news.detail&gid=446913" ><img class="photo" src="http://img.mixedmartialarts.com/method=get&rs=80&q=75&x=45&y=17&w=310&h=165&ro=0&s=tyron-woodley-08-28-2014-0-24-1-191.jpg" /></a>
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<p>The protest continue in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting on Aug. 9 of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, by a white police officer.</p>
The protests have engendered a wide variety of responses across the USA, and the world. Top UFC welterweight Tyron Woodley grew up in Ferguson, and was with his three sons getting his hair cut on Canfield Drive just two days before Brown was shot and left on the tarmac in public view for four hours.
The eleventh of thirteen children born to Sylvester and Deborah Woodley, Tyron's father left when he was young. Despite being raised by a single mother far from wealth, Tyron excelled, making honor roll in high school every semester, while going 48-0 his final season of wrestling, winning states.
Woodley attended the University of Missouri on a wrestling scholarship, graduating with a degree in Agricultural Economics in 2005. Woodley is currently the #3 welterweight in the UFC.
In short, Tyron Woodley is an exemplary citizen, and in a remarkable interview Jeremy Botter for B/R, he shares a vital perspective.
"I was a one-minute walk away from where it happened," said Woodley. "It was way too close to home."
"You always hear about it. You got pulled over for not having your seatbelt on. You got pulled over for jaywalking. You got pulled over for going two miles over the speed limit. I've physically seen profiling. I've seen me walking up the street with my friends, and the police officers get out of their car and bust the hell out of my friends. And they can't do anything about it, and the cop gets back in his car and drives off.
"I've had friends who have been beaten up by police officers who put phone books in their T-shirts and then beat them up, then drive off. So these are things that are going on in the community."
"Why wouldn't the police officers be on edge? Why wouldn't they be alert? And why wouldn't people in the community trust police officers? Because they are consistently harassing them, and they have experience with police officers doing awful things."
Too Woodley believes the protestors who have caused violence are not members of the Ferguson community.
"They see this as an opportunity to use the kid's death to satisfy their own flesh. To steal, to be unlawful and cause trouble," he said. "But people who live in Ferguson that did that? I am really questioning where their psyche was. Why would you want to blow up a QuikTrip around the corner? And now your neighborhood looks terrible because you blew up the QuikTrip. You busted out the windows at AutoZone and you're stealing rims? What are you going to do with one rim?"
Unfortunately, Woodley does not believe the conclusion of the investigation into what happened will resolve the situation.
"Somebody is going to be pissed off," he said. "Either he's going to go free, and the community will go nuts, or he's going to get locked up and all the people who are pro-Wilson, who have raised over $200,000 for him in a Go Fund Me account, they're going to blame it on the African American community being riffraff."
"It is not going to end well, no matter which way it ends. I hope that people are thinking about that, and I hope they are ready to heal and to mend.
"They have to be ready."
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