Ronda Rousey Issues Apology for 2013 Post of Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory

It took Ronda Rousey over a decade and some recent bad publicity to come out with an apology for her posts about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

In 2013, less than a month removed from the shooting that claimed the lives of 20 children and six teachers, Rousey reposted a conspiracy theory that claimed the shooting was a hoax while saying the video was an “extremely interesting must watch video.” Although that repost and her follow-up comments have since been deleted, her follow-up response to a comment from notorious MMA troll Bloodstain Lane still exists. She wrote, “Bloodstain Lane thanks, I just figure asking questions and doing research is more patriotic than blindly accepting what you’re told.” At the time, UFC head Dana White defended Rousey’s postings, but she later took most of them down.

On Tuesday, Rousey conducted an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit’s Squared Circle community, which calls itself as the “largest professional wrestling community” on the platform. The subject of the AMA was to be about Rousey’s upcoming Kickstarter fundraiser for a graphic novel she wishes to publish. Fans and posters on the site overwhelmed the page with questions about Rousey’s Sandy Hook beliefs, hurling daggers at the fighter-turned-wrestler that received no responses.

Among the many questions asked included why a person likely with ample financial resources following contracts from MMA, pro wrestling and films, would need a crowdsourced fundraiser to put this project together. Additionally, she was overwhelmed with posts like, “I’d heard rumors that WWE had pitched an angle to repackage you as a pirate character, the descendant of a well-known swashbuckler. Supposedly you shot this down. Did you deny it because your gimmick was going to be “Sandy Hook?” Another wrote, “Much like wrestling, a lot of people now think the UFC is staged. Seeing as you competed in both, can you shed some light on if they’re staged, and while we’re at it, can you comment on if the Sandy Hook shooting was staged?”

This barrage of anti-Rousey sentiment, taking her to task for her conspiracy theory posts and defenses about her “asking questions,” led to Rousey owning up to her past thoughts. On Thursday, the ex- Ultimate Fighting Championship star issued a thorough apology on social media , while warning others not to make the same mistakes she did.

Her apology in full reads as follows:

“I can’t say how many times I’ve redrafted this apology over the last 11 years. How many times I’ve convinced myself that it wasn’t the right time or that I’d be causing even more damage by giving it. But eleven years ago I made the single most regrettable decision of my life. I watched a Sandy Hook conspiracy video and reposted it on Twitter. I didn’t even believe it, but was so horrified at the truth that I was grasping for an alternative fiction to cling to instead. I quickly realized my mistake and took it down, but the damage was done. By some miracle it seemingly slipped under the media’s radar, I was never asked about it so I never spoke of it again, afraid that calling attention to it would have the opposite of the intended effect—it could increase the views of those conspiracy videos, and selfishly, inform even more people that I was ignorant, self absorbed, and tone deaf enough to share one in the first place.

“I drafted a thousandth apology to include in my last memoir, but my publisher begged me to take it out, saying it would overshadow everything else and do more harm than good. So I convinced myself that apologizing would just reopen the wound for no other reason than me selfishly trying to make myself feel better, that I would hurt those suffering even more and possibly lead more people down the black hole of conspiracy bulls--t by it being brought up again just so I could try to shake the label of being a ‘Sandy Hook truther.’

“But honestly I deserve to be hated, labeled, detested, resented and worse for it. I deserve to lose out on every opportunity, I should have been canceled, I would have deserved it. I still do.

“I apologize that this came 11 years too late, but to those affected by the Sandy Hook massacre, from the bottom of my heart and depth of my soul I am so so sorry for the hurt I caused. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain you’ve endured and the words cannot describe how thoroughly remorseful and ashamed I am of myself for contributing to it. I’ve regretted it every day of my life since and will continue to do so until the day I die.

“And to anyone else that’s fallen down the black hole of bulls—t. It doesn’t make you edgy, or an independent thinker, you’re not doing your due diligence entertaining every possibility by digesting these conspiracies. They will only make you feel powerless, afraid, miserable and isolated. You’re doing nothing but hurting others and yourself. Regardless of how many bridges you’ve burned over it, stop digging yourself a deeper hole, don’t get wrapped up in the sunk cost fallacy, no matter how long you’ve gone down the wrong road, you should still turn back.”