The Ultimate Fighter Nations: Canada vs. Australia middleweight Tyler Manawaroa has addressed an earlier discovery of a racially offensive image he uploaded on Instagram several months prior to being selected for the reality show. The 19-year-old unbeaten fighter posted the following on his Facebook page:
I posted a pic on instagram that has offended people..im very sorry !! As you can imagine that was never the intention. .as a dark skinned person myself who has delt with racism all my life ,I was making fun of the stereotype that all dark people go to jail..which is obviously not true….hence the irony…but I will remove it and I apologize for offending you.
Manawaroa has indeed removed the image from his Instagram account. The link to the offending pic now reads as a “Page Not Found”.
The pic was posted 18 months ago, but only re-surfaced in a major way after TUF Nations cast member an welterweight Kajan Johnson (representing Team Canada) tweeted a screenshot of the photo today. This led to coach Patrick Cote calling Manawaroa as a “loser” and ex-UFC fighter David Loiseau stating he’d “love to teach him about respect in a cage”.
Manawaroa, originally from New Zealand but now training and competing out of Australia, advanced to the middleweight semifinals of TUF Nations after beating Canada’s Nordine Taleb by three-round “Sudden Victory” unanimous decision on last Wednesday’s Fox Sports 1-televised episode.
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