Former UFC and WWE champ, and Sandy Hook truther, Ronda Rousey participated in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” on Tuesday to promote her upcoming graphic novel.
Not surprisingly, she didn’t answer any of the multitude of AMA questions alluding to her “research” on the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting, in which a 20-year-old shot and killed 26 people, including 20 first-graders.
In the years since the Sandy Hook shooting, an army of right-wing kooks have harassed survivors and family members of those who were mowed down in the shooting, claiming that the shooting was staged with crisis actors as a pretext to government action to take away people’s guns.
Rousey, a few weeks later, at the height of her UFC career, posted a link to a YouTube video that made the case that the shooting was staged, calling the video, in a tweet that she quickly deleted, “an extremely interesting, and must-watch video.”
After deleting the tweet, she dug herself another hole with a follow-up in which she offered a line later made infamous by serial truther Aaron Rogers – “I just figure asking questions and doing research is more patriotic than blindly accepting what you’re told.”
Later, she posted a half-hearted damage-control apology: “I never meant to insult or hurt anyone, sorry if anyone was offended. It was not my intention in the least.”
Fast forward to Tuesday, and her Reddit AMA, which was set up to promote her Kickstarter campaign for her upcoming book, and if anything is abundantly clear to Rousey afterward, it’s that the internet doesn’t forget.
“Much like wrestling, a lot of people now think UFC is staged. Seeing as you competed in both, can you shed some light on if they’re staged, and while we’re at it, can you comment on if the Sandy Hook shooting was staged?” one participant asked.
That one is a low blow; WWE, certainly, is staged, but UFC, which is all too often two competitors either circling each other endlessly trying to avoid contact, or rolling around on the mat trying to block submission holds, could use some staging, to make it remotely interesting to watch.
“When you voiced Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat 11, did all of your past bad decisions regarding your views about Sandy Hook being staged cause you to deliver an incredibly uninspired performance or was it just because you weren’t right for the role to begin with?” another wrote.
This one, fair, because, to be honest, Rousey wasn’t exactly all that inspiring performance-wise in her time in WWE, and it’s no question that her aura from her early UFC days never carried over.
“In your graphic novel ‘EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED,’ will we see something unexpected like you apologizing to or acknowledging the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Massacre where 20 children were ruthlessly gunned down? Talk about EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED! Can’t wait to read the book!” another wrote.
The one thing I can’t figure out here: why does Ronda Rousey, who racked up career earnings from her UFC and WWE tenures estimated at $25 million, need to do a Kickstarter to publish a book?
Maybe somebody should have asked that question.
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Chris Graham
