Former MMA fighter and professional wrestler Ronda Rousey has issued an online apology, which she admits is “11 years too late,” for reposting a conspiracy video on social media about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, which left 20 first graders and six educators dead.
Rousey, an Olympic bronze medalist in judo, said reposting the video was “the single most regrettable decision of my life” and that she didn’t even believe the video but “was so horrified at the truth that I was grasping for an alternative fiction to cling to instead.”
Rousey said she realized her mistake and quickly took down the post, but “the damage was done.” She said she was never asked about the post by the media, and she was afraid to draw attention to the video over the years. Rousey said she drafted “a thousandth apology” for her recent memoir, but a publisher urged her to take it out. She then convinced herself that apologizing would reopen an emotional wound and cause more suffering for others just so she could “shake the label of being a ‘Sandy Hook truther.'”
“But honestly I deserve to be hated, labeled, detested 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,” Rousey wrote. “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 sorry for the hurt I caused.”
Rousey’s posting of the video recently came up on the platform Reddit when she invited users to ask her questions about her fundraising campaign for her first graphic novel. Some asked why she didn’t issue a strong apology for amplifying the conspiracy theory about the shooting.
After the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, conspiracies began to spread online that the tragedy was a hoax. Victims’ families, who were awarded $1.5 billion by a jury in 2022 for the role conspiracy theorist Alex Jones played, have said they have been subjected to years of torment, threats and abuse by people who believed such lies.
A spokesperson for the lawyer who represents the families declined to comment on Rousey’s apology.
In her statement, Rousey said she was “remorseful and ashamed” for the pain she contributed to those affected by the massacre.
“I’ve regretted it every day of my life since and will continue to do so until the day I die,” she wrote.
Rousey warned others about falling down the “black hole” of conspiracy theories.
“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,” she wrote. “You’re doing nothing but hurting others and yourself.”