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Ray Rice speaks out against domestic violence, 'done with football'

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NEW YORK -- Former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice is speaking out against domestic violence, but he said he's not doing it as a way to rejoin the NFL.

"I'll be the first one to say it: I don't have to retire to tell you I'm done with football," Rice, 31, said during an interview with "CBS This Morning" on Tuesday. "The pressure I was under of being a star, that was the person I hated the most," he said.

In the interview, in which he appeared with his wife, Janay, Rice said he sees similarities with himself after a video showed former Kansas City Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt shoving and kicking a woman at a hotel last month.

"Well, obviously, you know, you look back and you see the similarities," Rice said in the interview.

Rice was dropped from the team after he was captured on videos punching, kicking and dragging Janay, who was then his fiancée, from an elevator in 2014.

Rice said he hates the person he sees on the tapes and that he got a second chance when the couple married weeks later.

"I hate that person. I hate him," Rice said in the interview. "... Somewhere down the line everybody who's sayin', 'Does he deserve a second chance for football?' And this that and the other -- I actually got my second chance.

"During my darkest moments, and I used to ask myself, 'How could she even be -- want to support me? ... That's understandable. But I think what's misunderstood about us is that the friends we were before the incident. That's why, like I said, when I look at Kareem Hunt, I wanna know what his life was like. I want to know what happened in life. I know Kareem has apologized, and has expressed remorse for survivors of domestic violence."

Janay Rice says she's never seen the video where her now-husband punches her. She says it was the first and only time he physically abused her.

"I was there. I lived it," she said. "I don't really need to relive it over and over again just to appease the world.

"... It was never a thought whether I was going leave or not, because I knew that that wasn't him in that moment. This is somebody I've known since I was 15 years old. I knew that we had work to do, and I was willing to move forward and put in the work."

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