By Madeleine Albright’s reckoning, there’s a special place in hell for UFC’s Ronda Rousey – but she’d be awful brave to tell her to her face. The former US secretary of state ruffled a feather or three last weekend when she was introducing Hillary Clinton at an event in New Hampshire, ahead of Tuesday’s primary, telling the crowd that “women who don’t help each other” were hell- bound. In other words, if you’re a she and you support Bernie Sanders and not Hillary, you’re off to the netherworld.
Rousey, then, is doomed, the fighter having felt the Bern last November. "I'm voting for Bernie Sanders, because he doesn't take any corporate money," she told Maxim magazine. "I don't think politicians should be allowed to take money for their campaigns from outside interests."
If Hillary won the nomination? She’d vote third party.
That endorsement left Donald Trump peeved because he thought she supported him, but by then she had already hinted that she had, eh, some reservations: “I wouldn’t vote for [Trump] . . . I mean, I don’t want a reality TV star to be running my country.”
This put her at political odds with UFC president Dana White who loves Trump because he hosted UFC events at the Trump Taj Mahal and even turned up to watch some of them at the elegant venue.
Trump tweet
So, when Rousey suffered that shock defeat to Holly Holm last year, Trump tweeted: “Glad to see that @RondaRousey lost her championship fight last night. Was soundly beaten – not a nice person!” At which point our very own Conor McGregor intervened: “Donald can shut his big, fat mouth. I don’t give a f**k about Donald Trump.”
It was marvellous stuff, and possibly the first time in history a presidential candidate found himself at the centre of a UFC tussle. Just to be fair here, Trump has lots of endorsements from the fight world, including the one and only Hulk Hogan, which mightn’t seem like a big thing, but wait ’til they get to Wyoming. But he’s had sporty trouble along the way, too, like when he asked “Obama said in his speech that Muslims are our sports heroes – what sport is he talking about, and who?” – at which point his Twitter mentions were deluged with photos of Muhammad Ali, Shaquille O’Neal and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, among others.
Sporting endorsements
So, how useful are sporting endorsements? And on the Democratic side, how helpful are female sporting endorsements? When New Hampshire Democrats trudged through the snow to vote last Tuesday, were they thinking “if Ronda’s feeling the Bern, then that’s good enough for me”?
Possibly not, although the Washington Post's Philip Bump made the case a while back when he wrote "sports figures are great proxies for politicians, allowing all sorts of analogies to victory and leadership and struggle and so on – plus they're popular and (usually) handsome in a way politicians (usually) aren't".
Harsh. (But probably true.)
When Rousey nailed her colours to Bernie’s mast, there was many a commentary on the aptness of the pairing – outsiders, non-establishment rebels, that kind of thing.
Unlike, the argument went, Hillary’s list of female sporting supporters, like Chris Evert, Billie Jean King and Abby Wambach. Billie, mind you, might be viewed as “establishment” now, feted by many a president, but she was anything but when she became the first truly famous sportswoman to come out as gay. Mouthy, too, and that never went down well. And there are Trump supporters who’d still like to see her burned at the stake. (The Ted Cruz faithful would reckon that’d be too kind a fate).
But, they’re making their voices heard, which is no harm, and if they go on to play active roles in the presidential campaign, once the nominations are done, there’d be no harm in that either.
Most American professional sporty people, though, will most probably have GOP tattooed on their hearts. Phil Mickelson, for example, would take one look at Bernie’s tax plans – 52 per cent on those earning in excess of $10 million – and reach for the ventilator. He’d be feeling burnt.
