This was something I was discussing with a friend the other day when we saw that Ronda Rousey had broken her UFC silence and gave a very rare bit of praise to other fighters and the league in general. Ronda was never really hated when she was active, she was quite the opposite actually as at one point in time she was the most sought after fighter in the world and consequently the highest paid. But after she suffered two defeats she turned her back on the UFC and MMA in general. She then proceeded to bad-mouth the promotion and the sport for many years afterwards.
She was seen as a Prima Donna, a serial-complainer, and one who is choking on sour grapes. However, in a recent turn where she has expressed regret over how she exited the scene, it appears as though people are willing to forgive her.
This can't really be said for Megan Rapinhoe though as there was a litany of reasons to dislike this soccer star and she has never given anyone any reason to think that this is media bias or some contrived opinion. It is genuine sentiment for the most part.
To this day Megan is protected by the media, to the point where it can be difficult to find any information outside of forums about her terrible behavior. I remember though, and so do other people, and I have my own opinions about why she is despicable and I will keep most of that information to myself and just stick to the major things.
I'll be fair to Megan to some degree and just admit that she, at least to some degree, was a target because she got so heavily involved in politics and therefore, pissed off half the USA population.
It certainly didn't help her very much that while one side seemed to hate her, the other side put her on a pedestal and tried to make her a speaker for their side or something. This was always going to end badly for her because while I don't really give a crap about politics, I do know that once you have used up your usefulness, the politicians will throw you out like yesterday's garbage.
There was a time that Americans really enjoyed the women's dominance in the sport of football but when those victories started to turn into arrogance, people started to get fed up. To some degree Megan was a victim of a bad take because her "I deserve this" was blown up to make it appear as though she was only in this for herself and other teammates would not stand up to her, even though the body language in various interviews revealed that things were not all sunshine and rainbows on the team end of things as well.
One of the original "knee-takers", Megan refused to let it go even after all of her teammates were no longer (pun intended) standing with her. This was purely a political statement on her part, and a lot of people were getting seriously sick of politics getting mixed in with sports. She never did let it go though and eventually even the media that once protected her, started to turn on her. When she was taking a knee at international events with the US side, this was seen as her being stubborn and well, bitchy. There is no financial incentive to play for the national team, it is mostly out of as sense of national pride, and she clearly didn't have very much of that.
Things got worse when images of her being dismissive of fans started to emerge as well.
Here's how this one went down. Initially Megan didn't even extend her hand to sign the ball for the child until she realized that the camera was on her. Then she took the ball and signed it and never at any point did she so much as look at the fan.
When confronted with this by the press, Megan would respond by pulling the woman card and the gay card, suggesting that the only reason why people were upset with her is because she is a gay woman. I think it was more because you are starting to seem like a terrible person, Megan.
Another of Megan's downsides was when she became very vocal about the supposed pay-gap between men and women soccer/football players.
I think that this topic is something that annoys a lot of sports fans because Megan, and other people that are involved in this non-debate, don't seem to be all that interested in the fact that women's professional sports don't make very much money, if they do at all.
I really don't want this to become some sort of sexist or misogynistic something or other, so let's just keep it as a math issue instead. Megan would repeatedly ignore this information and later, she would only take interviews with reporters or shows that she apparently knew beforehand were going to give her puffball questions and frame a narrative rather than have an actual discussion.
But the icing on the cake and what I think is the main reason why Megan isn't discussed so much anymore was was the 2023 women's World Cup Final against Sweden where after completely missing the goal on her shot she was laughing.
She would later attempt to explain this away and she might even be telling the truth about how it was a laugh of frustration because it was her pre-determined final game with the national team as well as in whatever league she played in. It doesn't matter if it is true or not though, because the damage was already done.
These days you don't really hear a great deal out of Megan, and I would be willing to bet that this is at least in part at the advisement of her PR team.
I wonder if at times she regrets becoming the center of political controversy, because it was mostly that attention that brought about the ire of viewers. It probably ended up costing her a bit of money in endorsements as well because while Nike was interested in her at first, they, and everyone else has kind of stepped back from being at all involved in the political or culture war. While her net worth of $5 million is certainly more than enough, there is no denying that it could have been a great deal more if she had been just a teensy bit more private about her political views.
The dislike for her is still evident and you need only look to a comments section that hasn't been disabled of any video featuring her in order to see this is the case.
I scrolled pretty far down and couldn't find a single complementary comment towards her in there.
I would imagine that she will be hired to do commentary for future world cups, or maybe not, it will be interesting to see if she is part of a panel in 2026. Unfortunately for Megan, I think she will likely be remembered in a negative light despite her achievements in her 17-year career. The media will try to hide this of course but it's the truth.