— Ronda Rousey (@RondaRousey)
August 23, 2024
It took more than a decade and recent notoriety for Ronda Rousey to apologize for a post about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
In 2013, less than a month after a mass shooting that took the lives of 20 children and six teachers, Rousey reposted a conspiracy theory that the shooting was staged, calling the video “a very interesting, must-watch video.” The repost and subsequent comments have since been deleted, but her subsequent response to a comment from notorious MMA troll Bradstain Lane remains. She wrote, “Thank you Bradstain Lane. I just think it’s more patriotic to ask questions and research rather than blindly accept what you’re told.” At the time, UFC president Dana White defended Rousey’s post, but she later deleted most of it.
On Tuesday, Rousey posted an “Ask Me Anything” question to Reddit’s Squared Circle community, which describes itself as the platform’s “largest pro wrestling community.” The topic of the question was a Kickstarter fundraising event for a graphic novel she hopes to publish. Fans and contributors flooded the page with questions about Rousey’s Sandy Hook convictions and harsh words for the fighter-turned-wrestler, with no response.
Among the many questions was why someone who is supposedly well-funded with MMA, wrestling and movie contracts would need crowdfunding to put this project together. She was then bombarded with posts like this one: “I heard rumors that WWE had pitched a project to repackage you as a pirate character, descendant of a famous pirate. You apparently nixed this, but did you nix it because your gimmick was going to be ‘Sandy Hook’?” Another wrote: “Like wrestling, there are a lot of people now who think UFC is rigged. You’ve competed in both, so can you explain a bit on whether they were rigged or not? And while you’re at it, can you comment on whether the Sandy Hook shooting was rigged or not?”
The barrage of backlash against Rousey, criticizing her conspiracy posts and defense of “The Question,” led her to acknowledge her past beliefs. On Thursday, the former Ultimate Fighting Championship star issued a thorough apology on social media and warned others not to make the same mistake she did.
Here is her full apology:
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rewritten this apology over the past 11 years. How many times I’ve told myself that now wasn’t the right time, or that apologizing would only do more damage. But 11 years ago, I made the decision I regret most of my life: I watched the Sandy Hook conspiracy video and reposted it on Twitter. I didn’t believe it, but the truth was so terrifying that I was looking for another fiction to hold on to instead. I quickly realized my mistake and deleted it, but the damage was done. Since I miraculously escaped media scrutiny and was never asked about it, I never spoke about it again, fearing that drawing attention to it would have the opposite effect to my intended effect: it would get more views for the conspiracy video and selfishly let even more people know that I was ignorant, self-centered, and insensitive enough to share such a video in the first place.
“I wrote the thousandth apology to include in my final memoir, but my publisher begged me to remove it because it overshadowed everything else and would do more harm than good. So I told myself that apologizing would only reopen wounds as a selfish attempt to console myself, further hurt those who are suffering, and probably drag more people into the black hole of conspiracy theories. There’s no way I’m bringing this up again in an attempt to shake off the label of a ‘Sandy Hook truther.'”
“But I’ll be honest: I deserved to be hated, labeled, shunned, resented and worse. I deserved every opportunity missed. I should have been canceled. I deserved it. I still do.”
“I apologize 11 years too late. I offer my deepest, most sincere apologies to the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting for the hurt I caused. I cannot imagine the pain you must have experienced, and words cannot express how deeply I regret and feel ashamed for my role in this incident. I have regretted it every day since, and will continue to regret it until the day I die.
“And to everyone who’s fallen into the black hole of bullshit: Buying conspiracy theories doesn’t make you a more radical or independent thinker. It doesn’t make you a more cautious and careful person. It only makes you feel helpless, scared, miserable and alone. It only hurts others and yourself. No matter how many bridges you’ve burned, stop digging a deeper hole. Don’t get caught up in the sunk cost fallacy. No matter how long you’ve been on the wrong path, it’s time to turn back.”
