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Former UFC fighter and WWE wrestler Ronda Rousey posted an apology early Friday morning on social media for sharing a Sandy Hook conspiracy video 11 years ago.
Rousey called reposting the video the “single most regrettable decision” of her life.
“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,” she wrote.
Rousey, 37, is the only female athlete to have won the UFC and WWE titles. She retired from WWE in October 2023 to compete on the independent circuit.
Rousey said the incident wasn’t widely reported, and she never spoke of it again. A 2013 Bleacher Report article says Rousey called what she was sharing an “extremely interesting, and must-watch” video.
The 2012 mass shooting at the Connecticut elementary school killed 26 children and adults. In the years since, far-right figures like Alex Jones have falsely alleged the event was a hoax and the children were still alive. As a result of a long-running lawsuit from families of the dead children, Jones was eventually ordered to pay $1.5 billion for using his radio show and social media to spread conspiracy theories.
The fighter initially defended her sharing of the video, posting, “I just figure asking questions and doing research is more patriotic than blindly accepting what you’re told.” Rousey later apologized, saying, “I never meant to insult or hurt anyone, sorry if anyone was offended. It was not my intention in the least.” The video, from the YouTube channel ThinkOutsideTheTV, has since been taken down.
Rousey said Friday she has thought of apologizing more robustly for her actions ever since, including in her April memoir Our Fight, but her publisher dissuaded her. A recent “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit where she was hit with many questions about the incident is what made her decide to finally apologize, according to CBS News.
“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,” Rousey said.
She continued with an apology directly to those impacted by the tragedy, and encouraged others who believe conspiracies to return to the truth.
“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,” Rousey concluded.
