Opinion: In a Cold Place Beyond True and False

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Tyron Woodley says he’s the “worst-treated champion” in the history of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. He says it’s because he’s black; he says it’s “blatantly facts.”

I don’t agree whole-heartedly, but really, this is not a true-or-false proposition.

Woodley and his UFC 209 rematch challenger Stephen Thompson on Wednesday did the ESPN car wash circuit, including an especially energetic, charged and compelling “SportsCenter” spot. It was hardly Conor McGregor-Nate Diaz level fodder, but for two typically taciturn athletes, Woodley and Thompson’s simmering resentment -- especially in light of their hotly contested draw back at UFC 205 in November -- was fun to watch.

Naturally, what has made headlines and driven traffic is Woodley’s statement that he was the most poorly-treated champ in UFC history and that race was the culprit.

“The second I bring up race in the sport I’m immediately race baiting. I can point out clear facts: No other champion has been treated like me,” Woodley said. “I’m not saying they support [Thompson] more, but he has some fans who have crossed the line. It’s not his fault, [and] I’m not saying it’s him; let’s get clear on that. I do respect him. I have been friendly and cordial with him [and] I will be friendly and cordial when we walk out, but let’s put the cards on the table. Real is real. If I was a different complexion, I feel fans would treat me a different way. I'm by far the worst-treated champion in the history of the UFC -- blatantly facts.”

Again, this is not exactly something that can be easily fact-checked. Before we tackle the race issue -- never mind that it's an issue worth tens of thousands of words on its own -- let's consider how Woodley stacks up to other former UFC titlists, maligned by fans and their own promoter for whatever reason. Unfortunately, given the nasty implication, it's difficult to even pick a former champ to start with.

I suppose we can go with Frank Shamrock. He was the first great UFC divisional champion, but he wasn't a Zuffa man. He now makes some scant appearances in UFC “all-time best” countdown materials, but it's usually just to show him beating up Tito Ortiz, whose public shaming has become a larger priority. The Zuffa-era UFC still spent years on end suing him and publicly skewering him, ostensibly for using UFC materials to promote himself, but mostly because it hated him.

Speaking of Ortiz, well, the promotion he helped build erases him from history while openly trashing him; and while Ortiz still has a real, honest-to-goodness casual fanbase that just vaguely remembers wisps of “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy” persona from 15 years ago, he is perhaps the sport's favorite subject of public mockery.

On the topic of Semaphore Entertainment Group-era champs, SEG hated Randy Couture for being an old man who beat up Vitor Belfort and Kevin Randleman. When Zuffa bought the company, it never wanted the already-old man as a champ, so it set him up to get beaten twice by Pedro Rizzo. The plan failed. The Fertittas and Dana White always used Couture as a steppingstone for another preferred fighter and were rarely happy with the results. Couture, who bucked back against SEG in 2000 and left for Japan, did the same against Zuffa, too. He wouldn't sign over his intellectual property rights and “resigned” as champion. Ultimately, the UFC wouldn't even let him corner his own son for his Octagon stint.

Early Zuffa champs? Back in 2002, rather than pay its reigning champions at all, the UFC let Murilo Bustamante and Jens Pulver walk away to Japan. Imagine today if the UFC literally let champions take their belts and show up with them in the Bellator MMA or Rizin Fighting Federation cage to cut a promo about how excited they were to jump ship.

Other than Conor McGregor's most vehement disciples, not too many fans speak ill of the greatest featherweight ever, Jose Aldo. Know who has? White, who basically accused Aldo of being a liar and fabricating the severity of a rib injury ahead of his first meeting with McGregor.

Also, while the UFC itself never did much to publicly skewer him, largely because its heavyweight division was so moribund that his presence was a necessity, can I please remind everyone that Tim Sylvia won the UFC heavyweight title twice? Sylvia's personality never clicked with most MMA fans, to the point he became contemptuous of them himself. Ask most seasoned fans of the sport, “Who are the three most hated MMA fighters ever?” If they didn't select a group of outright criminals like War Machine and kept it confined to the realms of historically established, elite fighters, Sylvia would come up with a frequency that would make Woodley's head spin.

Now, it cannot be ignored that in the past White has been especially outspoken in his critiques of Woodley, from calling him a “choke artist” to saying he was scared of Hector Lombard. However, in terms of being disrespected as an actual champion, Woodley has held the gold for all of six months, made one title defense and hasn't really suffered any promotional slights other than the fact that the UFC wouldn't let him fight Nick Diaz instead of Thompson.

As I just pointed out, as sad is it might be, it's hard to call yourself the “worst-treated champion in UFC history” when so many UFC champs have either gotten slighted by the fanbase or their promoter. However, there's the racial component to Woodley's claims, and its validity is much harder to reduce to a yay or nay question.

I think during Zuffa's stewardship of the UFC the only color that has ever mattered was green. It pushed Jon Jones to the stars, and his problems at this point are his own. Daniel Cormier had no trouble getting into position as a major contender post-Strikeforce, and he has been rewarded with a broadcasting gig. Rashad Evans has been well-promoted throughout his career and now gets an analyst job, too. The UFC milked Quinton “Rampage” Jackson for everything he was worth, essentially breaking the law and getting a judge to sign off on Jackson, a Bellator-contracted fighter, fighting at UFC 186 in Montreal.

If the hyper-recent past shows us anything, it's that the WME-IMG regime may be even more astute in targeting promotional opportunities for champions and stars. While everyone and their mother complained that Amanda Nunes was a ghost in the promotion of UFC 207, left to toil in the shadow of the returning Ronda Rousey, the UFC has already been clever in executing media for Nunes in the wake of her destroying Rousey. She did “Live! With Kelly” on Thursday and choked out actor Christian Slater before appearing on the popular and Vice News-syndicated podcast “Bodega Boys.” After all, you can't promote a Brazilian woman and the UFC's first openly gay champion the way you would Matt Hughes.

The strongest promotional opportunities will always come to enduring champions, champions who reign and beat exciting, noteworthy opponents. Anderson Silva and Georges St. Pierre both became major draws for this sport, but it was an incremental climb over years of sustained dominance and presence in the public consciousness. This is enormously difficult to achieve, and that's why I can't blame Woodley every time he grouses about how he wants to fight Diaz and GSP instead.

With that said, the question of whether or not the UFC is racist isn't answered in full by, “Dana White and the UFC will promote a black star.” After all, Woodley's charge isn't that the UFC power structure is fundamentally racist; it's more that the company hasn't done much to promote or bolster him as a result of a fanbase that has a problem with the welterweight king and the color of his skin.

The UFC is ultimately a consumer product and customer prejudices can influence consumption habits; just because Floyd Mayweather Jr. can routinely sell over a million pay-per-views doesn't mean that we're in a post-racial society. In fact, by Woodley even speaking his mind on the matter, his social media feeds have turned into a torrent of thinly veiled racism, with swaths of people off of whom the UFC makes money calling him a crybaby, a race-baiter and, naturally, much worse.

We're in a world where social media followers and traffic can literally determine UFC card position and status and where ultimately the good graces, or at least the attention, of fans can buoy your career for an indeterminate amount of time. In the grand scheme of promotion, Woodley has had some dreadful bouts in the past, and he spent 18 months out of action before the Robbie Lawler fight; these things matter and take time to work beyond. Nonetheless, if Woodley -- or any fighter of color -- can't discuss his own career goals and opinions without getting called “uppity” or some other racist code word en masse, there's a problem, and it goes beyond the silliness of Woodley's insistence on fighting Diaz.

If Woodley is really to become the worst-treated champion in UFC history, he still has a long way to go. Fellow champion Demetrious Johnson still wouldn't be drawing right now if he was white. Yet Woodley has been trashed by his own promoter at almost every turn in his UFC career, and MMA, like all sports, sees our world's racial tensions play out. I don't think Woodley's “right,” but the man ain't wrong, either.