Ronda Rousey has issued a public apology about eleven years after she expressed a conspiracy theory about the Sandy Hook tragedy.
The 37-year-old former UFC and WWE star took part in a Reddit AMA earlier this week, where she faced backlash from users of the platform over her controversial posts on X (formerly Twitter).
Rousey was accused of spreading the baseless claim that the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012, in which 20 children were killed and several others injured, was staged. The post in question was shared in January 2013.
The former MMA fighter now has a detailed apology for their actionsand wrote in an X-post on Friday: “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve restated that apology over the past 11 years. How many times I’ve convinced myself that it wasn’t the right time or that I would cause more damage by doing so.
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“But 11 years ago, I made the most regrettable decision of my life. I watched a video about the Sandy Hook conspiracy and posted it on Twitter. I didn’t even believe it, but was so horrified by the truth that I looked for an alternative fiction to cling to instead. I quickly realized my mistake and took it down, but the damage was done.”
She continued: “Miraculously, it seems to have slipped under the media radar. I was never asked about it and never spoke about it again because I was afraid that drawing attention to it would have the opposite of the intended effect – it might increase the views of these conspiracy videos and, selfishly, make even more people aware that I was ignorant, self-centered and insensitive enough to share one in the first place.”
Rousey further stated that she tried to apologize in her memoirs. Our fight— which was published earlier this year — but her publisher advised her against it. He begged her to withdraw it, saying it would overshadow everything else and do more harm than good.
“So I convinced myself that an apology would only reopen the wound, for no other reason than that I was selfishly trying to feel better about myself. I would hurt those who were suffering even more and possibly lead even more people into the black hole of conspiracy theories by bringing the issue up again just to get rid of the label of a ‘Sandy Hook truther.’
“But honestly, I deserve to be hated, labeled, loathed, despised and worse. I deserve to miss every opportunity, I should have been cancelled, I deserved it. I still do.”
Noting the time gap between the post and her apology, Rousey said, “I apologize that this came 11 years late, but to everyone affected by the Sandy Hook massacre, from the bottom of my heart and soul, I am so sorry for the pain I caused. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain you endured and words cannot describe how deeply remorseful and ashamed I am that I contributed to it. I have regretted it every day of my life since then and will do so until the day I die.”
She also addressed others who had “fallen into the black hole of bullshit,” writing: “This does not make you nervous or an independent thinker. You are not doing your due diligence by considering these conspiracies and not considering all the possibilities.”
“They will only make you feel powerless, anxious, miserable and isolated. All you will do is harm others and yourself. No matter how many bridges you have burned behind you, stop digging yourself deeper into the hole, don’t get caught up in the sunk cost fallacy, no matter how long you have been on the wrong path, you should still turn back.”
Rousey’s apology was viewed over 600,000 times less than four hours after it was posted.
In October 2022, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was sentenced by a jury in the US state of Connecticut to pay $965 million to the families of eight victims of the Sandy Hook massacre and an FBI agent who was on duty at the tragedy for calling the massacre a hoax.
Jones was sued for defamation after years of calling the shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six school principals a hoax and accusing the victims of being actors who helped stage the deadly tragedy. Prosecutors demanded $550 million.
This was the second multimillion-dollar verdict against Jones, who was ordered in August 2022 to pay $4 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million in punitive damages to another set of parents whose child was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting.
Update 08/23/24, 6:50 AM ET: This article has been updated with additional information.
