Following her controversial stance about the national media’s coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Ronda Rousey has issued a public statement.
Posting a short message on her Twitter feed, the women’s bantamweight champion is openly apologizing to those offended by her support of a controversial clip from YouTube channel ThinkOutsideTheTV:
I never meant to insult or hurt anyone, sorry if anyone was offended. It was not my intention in the least. mmajunkie.com/news/2013/01/m… — Ronda Rousey (@RondaRousey) January 16, 2013
On Tuesday, the UFC women’s bantamweight title-holder drew a lot of negative reactions after retweeting “The Sandy Hook Shooting – Fully Exposed“—a widely circulated conspiracy video that suggests much of the media coverage around the Sandy Hook shooting was either faked or falsified.
Rousey posted the video on her own Twitter account, calling it “interesting” and a “must watch” clip before deleting it from her feed hours later. However, manager Darin Harvey tells MMA Junkie that the UFC star didn’t mean to “disrespect” victims of the massacre, stating that Rousey was simply questioning the mainstream press:
Ronda’s the kind of person that doesn’t take everything at face value, and doesn’t have 100 percent faith in all the news that’s put out there by the mainstream press.
I don’t think that she did anything so horrible. I think what she was doing is retweeting something that gave a different perspective as to what transpired on that day. I don’t think anything in that video denied that it happened.
Rousey herself has currently not made another statement about the video, although previous posts on Twitter regarding her original post stated that “criticism is always expected.” Another deleted tweet also noted her opinion that “asking questions and doing research is more patriotic than blindly accepting what you’re told.”
Although the controversy is still fresh, Rousey is in the midst of preparing for her UFC debut, a historic first defense of the promotion’s new women’s bantamweight championship.
Rousey will face off against top-ranked challenger Liz Carmouche during the UFC 157 main event at Anaheim’s Honda Center on Feb. 23, which will also feature Dan Henderson vs. Lyoto Machida as the co-main event. It’s speculated that the winner of Henderson vs. Machida will challenge the winner of the upcoming Jon Jones vs. Chael Sonnen light heavyweight title bout at UFC 159.
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