Ronda Rousey issues an apology for her past comments about the Sandy Hook tragedy.
On December 14, 2012, a mass shooting took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, killed 26 people, including 20 children aged 6 and 7, along with six adult staff members. Before heading to the school, Lanza also shot and killed his mother at their home in Newtown. As first responders arrived at the scene, Lanza took his own life with a gunshot to the head.
This tragic event stands as the deadliest mass shooting in Connecticut’s history and the deadliest at a U.S. elementary school.
In 2013, Rousey (who was the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion at the time) shared a video promoting conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre, which she later removed.
During a recent Reddit AMA session, fans brought up the topic of Sandy Hook, but Rousey didn’t answer. However, Rousey has now finally issued an apology on X. You can read it below:
“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 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 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 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 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 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.”
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