Ronda Rousey’s recent appearance on Reddit, the so-called “front page of the internet,” did not go as planned – and has left the former UFC champion apologizing for posting a Sandy Hook conspiracy video years ago.
Rousey, the inaugural UFC women’s bantamweight champion, Hall of Famer, and former Strikeforce champ, was widely criticized at the time for parroting a baseless conspiracy theory suggesting the 2012 tragedy, which saw 26 victims shot and killed including 20 schoolchildren, was faked. In actual fact, the shooting was carried out by a lone gunman and remains the deadliest elementary school shooting in U.S. history.
During her stop on Reddit this week, to promote a Kickstarter campaign for her graphic novel Expecting the Unexpected, Rousey was mercilessly dragged for the post, made over a decade ago.
With dozens of posts referencing Rousey’s spread of the particularly foul conspiracy theory, the same one that would later cost controversial radio host Alex Jones nearly a billion dollars in civil penalties, “Rowdy’s” Reddit showing soon had the plug pulled. However, on Friday, the former UFC and WWE star, no longer working with either promotion, offered an apology on social media.
Ronda Rousey’s full statement as issued on Friday 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 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 it 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 convicted 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 people down the black hole of conspiracy bullsh*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 cancelled, 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 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 bullsh*t, it doesn’t make you edge, 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. 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.
