Former MMA Fighter Ronda Rousey Apologizes for Sharing Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory Years Ago

Former MMA fighter Ronda Rousey has apologized for sharing a Sandy Hook conspiracy theory 11 years ago on X and then on Twitter, saying, “I’ve regretted it every day of my life since.”

The 37-year-old California professional wrestler shared a lengthy statement Thursday night (early Friday EST) saying she has long wanted to apologize in the years since sharing the controversial conspiracy, and is finally ready to come clean.

“I apologize for doing this eleven years too late, but to everyone who was affected by the Sandy Hook massacre, from the bottom of my heart and soul, I am truly sorry for the hurt I have caused,” she wrote. “I cannot even begin to imagine the pain you have endured and words cannot describe how deeply sorry and ashamed I am for having contributed to it.”

Rousey began her apology by saying, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rewritten this apology over the last 11 years.” She revealed that she struggled internally over whether to apologize and was worried about “causing even more damage by doing so.”

It all started with what she called “the most regrettable decision of my life”: “I watched a conspiracy video from Sandy Hook and reposted it on Twitter,” Rousey wrote.

According to Bleacher Report, she shared a YouTube video revealing the conspiracy in January 2013, just a month after the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six staff members. She captioned her post, “Extremely interesting and not to be missed.” But the tweet sparked outrage and she deleted it shortly after.

“I didn’t even believe it, but I was so horrified by the truth that I looked for an alternative fiction to cling to,” Rousey wrote in her apology. “I quickly realized my mistake and took it down, but the damage was done.”

Rousey said that although she immediately regretted it, she was afraid to talk about it.

“By miracle “It apparently slipped under the media radar, I was never asked about it, so I never spoke about it again, for fear that drawing attention to it would have the opposite effect of what I intended: it might increase the number of views of these conspiracy videos and, selfishly, inform even more people that I was ignorant, self-centered, and tone-deaf enough to share one in the first place,” she said.

She said she had written a draft apology to include in her final memoir, but “my publisher begged me to withdraw it, saying that it would overshadow everything else and do more harm than good.

“So I convinced myself that apologizing would only reopen the wound for no other reason than to selfishly try to make myself feel better, that I would hurt those who were suffering even more, and that I would possibly lead even more people into the black hole of conspiracies*** “Bringing it back up just so I can try to get rid of the label of ‘Sandy Hook truth teller,'” she explained.

“But honestly, I deserve to be hated, labeled, loathed, resented and worse. I deserve to lose every opportunity, I should have been canceled, I deserved it. I still deserve it,” she continued.

She said she would regret her decision to share the video “until the day I die.”

Rousey ended her apology with a plea to anyone who has fallen for conspiracy theories, warning that believing such ideas does not make one an “independent thinker.”

“They will only make you feel helpless, scared, miserable and isolated. You are only hurting others and yourself,” she warns. “No matter how long you have been on the wrong path, you must always turn around.”

Shortly after the devastating Sandy Hook massacre — which at the time was the second deadliest mass shooting in the United States after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting — conspiracy theories circulated about the shooting.

The Sandy Hook conspiracy is very popular in far-right circles, and is often mentioned by Infowars host Alex Jones, who called the school shooting a hoax. Family members of the Sandy Hook victims sued him, and he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion to the Sandy Hook parents.