Ronda Rousey, are you okay? We’re a little worried.
Nah, just kidding, we know a classic WWE heel move when we see one. While Rousey’s claim to be a doomsday prepper could be real, her explanation for prepping has to be part of building that persona.
On Friday USA Today reported on an appearance the former UFC champ made at LA’s Wildcard West boxing gym along with director Peter Berg (Collateral, Deepwater Horizon).
Rousey lives with her husband Travis Browne in a remote area of Southern California, and the couple does allegedly live a pretty spartan lifestyle. Which sounds kind of cool, all by itself. Then there’s this:
“I am a big doomsday prepper,” Rousey said … “I think of it as a very positive outlook on the world. Some people think it is negative. But I think as a self proclaimed genetic cream of the crop such as I am, I owe it to humanity to survive the end of the world. It’s my responsibility.”
Of course she wasn’t done. She reportedly said that rather than her “apocalypse plan being a handle of alcohol and maybe tears, which is a lot of people’s plan, I’m like, I’m going to make it. If anyone’s going to make it, I’m going to make it.”
The part about being the “cream of the crop” sounds bizarrely arrogant even from a famously self-confident star like Ronda Rousey.
However, she’s also moving into the WWE, and head-snapping statements like that sound calculated to fit in with playing the heel.
Then again, she had some pretty understandable things to say in her talk about the idea behind prepping itself. “I think that self reliance and independence is real freedom,” she said, “We forgo our freedom for convenience a lot of the time. It is more important for people to know how to feed themselves than to know how to do trigonometry.”
Most people could see her point there. As to whether the squirmy statements about her genetic superiority were totally serious, we’ll probably find out after Doomsday.