Some defenders of Ray Rice have been clinging to the fact that we hadn’t seen the video of what happened inside the Atlantic City casino elevator that precipitated his wife becoming unconscious, such that it mattered.
Now that we’ve seen it, nothing changes the fact his two-game suspension was so light that the league realized its tremendous error and changed the policy immediately.
TMZ has obtained the video from inside the elevator, and it shows what most expected.
Janay Rice and her now-husband were clearly having some degree of argument. She turned and appeared to be saying something, took a step his direction and he laid her out with a quick left to the face.
It certainly does not appear that she was about to inflict harm on him in the moments before she was knocked unconscious, and later dragged out of the elevator.
The visual is stark and troubling, and a chilling reminder of how egregious Roger Goodell’s initial mistake was.