— Ronda Rousey (@RondaRousey)
August 23, 2024
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.
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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.”