Ronda Rousey has never really been shy about voicing her opinion. With magic fists and feet, this UFC superstar is perfectly entitled to her own opinion. Sadly, things don’t look to well for another fighter, the famous Manny Pacquiao.
He is a world-class boxer and a current member of Philippines House of Representatives and he came under a lot of fire last week when he considered people who enjoy same-sex relationships, ‘worse than animals’.
After the latter comment, he apologized soon enough but still mentioned that he is against homosexuality and this is a move which received a lot of hate from people around the world.
Nike severed ties with this 37-year old for what the company called ‘abhorrent’ comments and it was joined by several athletes who further condemned his remarks. This included Magic Johnson and WWE’s Dave Bautista.
Rousey recently came to know about Manny’s comments and this is what she said, “I understand that a lot of people use religion as a reason to be against gay people, but there was no ‘Thou shall not be gay’.
“God never said that, and I really think that our Pope now is boss. He was saying something the other day that religion should be all-encompassing and should be about loving everyone. And I think sometimes people take the wrong message.”
Rousey also discussed about her recent appearance on Ellen, during her interview with TMZ. She talked about her suicidal thoughts following her loss to Holly Holm at UFC 193. Till now, Rousey has never been vocal about her own religious beliefs but she has been pretty open about her views in gay marriage. She supports it and moreover, politically she is a Bernie Sanders fan. Therefore, her recent comments didn’t come as much of a surprise.
She said, “I feel like there’s been an overly negative light on [discussing suicidal thoughts]. It’s something real people are going through, not something like a weakness that we should condemn,” she said. “It’s really heavily affected our family…anything I can do to make sure it affects as few people as possible, I’d be happy to do that.”
Rousey never shied away from the topic of suicide since it had a major impact on her as well as her family.
She said, “There’s a history of suicide in my family. My dad and his father both took their lives and I think that suicide is the number one killer of young teens as well. I do a lot of work with Didi Hirsch, which is a free mental health clinic here in L.A. And the last even I went to for them, their whole thing was erasing the stigma… Of taking the stigma away from everything like suicide and making it actually acceptable for people to talk about it and look for help and to not feel like ashamed of themselves for it. I think that should be encouraged.”
In other news, Terence Crawford was instantly vaulted to the top of a very short list of candidates suitable as potential opponents for Manny Pacquiao. Bob Arum, Top Rank Chairman has often characterized Crawford as one of the three finalists for the honor to meet Pacquiao on 9th April, along with Amir Khan and Timothy Bradley.