11 Years Later, Rousey Apologizes For Sandy Hook Comments

It took eleven years and one of the worst beatdowns Reddit has ever delivered to a celebrity, but Rousey has apologized for spreading ‘conspiracy bulls—.’

Eleven years after posting a video on social media questioning whether the Sandy Hook massacre was real, Ronda Rousey is apologizing.

The moment in question went down all the way back in 2013, just before Rousey was set to fight Liz Carmouche in the first ever women’s title fight in the UFC. Rousey shared a video on X (then Twitter) that questioned whether the school shooting where Adam Lanza murdered 20 children and six adults really happened the way it was reported, calling it ‘interesting.’

“Rowdy” took a lot of bad publicity for promoting conspiracy theories surrounding the massacre of children, but she never apologized … until now. A Reddit Q&A to help crowdfund her new comic book series was downvoted into oblivion, with a flood of people bringing up the Sandy Hook ‘documentary’ she shared. It’s now considered one of the worst beatdowns the mercurial site has delivered upon a celebrity in years.

“I can’t say how many times I’ve redrafted this apology over the last 11 years,” Rousey wrote in tweet last night. “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 re-posted 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,” she continued. “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— 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.”

Rousey also had a message for “anyone else that’s fallen down the black hole of bulls—.”

“It doesn’t make you edgy, or an independent thinker,” she concluded. “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.”

As with most of Rousey’s public relations problems, all of this could have been solved years ago if she just spoke out at the time instead of waiting until things festered for several years before explaining her position.

Some haters may question her motives and never forgive her, but that’s about as complete of an apology as we’ve ever seen. Will it be enough to stop this latest “Rowdy” controversy from spinning out of control? Only time will tell.