Pro wrestler Ronda Rousey is finally ready to apologize for sharing a video she an called “extremely interesting, must watch” that portrayed the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, which left six staff members and 20 six and seven year olds dead, as a hoax.
Rousey posted a lengthy statement Friday expressing her regret for sharing the video on January 15, 2013, just four weeks following the tragedy. “I can’t say how many times I’ve redrafted this apology over the last 11 years,” her statement begins. “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.”
The timing of the statement, at first glance, seems random—but it turns out the wrestling star turned actress was reminded this week how fresh her 11-year-old post is in the minds of her fans, when she held a Reddit forum on Tuesday where she allowed them to “Ask Me Anything.”
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Rousey was using the platform to promote the Kickstarter for her upcoming graphic novel when the online event was flooded with questions and rebukes related to her Sandy Hook post. “Considering 20 children were slaughtered and one was shot as many as 11 times, is it fair to say that you owe a much better public apology than the one you issued?” wrote one Redditor.
Rousey deleted the repost of the video soon after she’d posted it, but appeared to double down when she tweeted, “I just figure asking questions and doing research is more patriotic than blindly accepting what you're told.” She replied to another user saying, “I just said it was interesting, don’t know what I believe yet, but yes, mainstream media isn’t the only way to get info.”
The next day, she seemed to express some regret when she wrote to her followers, “I never meant to insult or hurt anyone, sorry if anyone was offended. It was not my intention in the least.” But it’s safe to say that users did not feel like that “if anyone was offended” caveat was enough to address the magnitude of the tragedy she’d called into question.
“In your graphic novel, will we see something unexpected like you apologizing to or acknowledging the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Massacre where 20 children were ruthlessly gunned down?” wrote another Redditor Tuesday.
“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,” she wrote in her newest post to Twitter/X. “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,” she continues.
Rousey’s statement did, for the most part, fly under the radar—ESPN published a blog from MMA writer Chuck Mindenhall shortly after her post, slamming Rousey for her “absent-mindedness,” but she escaped lashings from most outlets. She went on to start an acting career with a guest spot on 9-1-1 and a role in the Fast & Furious franchise. But the star, who recently announced she’s pregnant with her second child, decided to address the situation anyway, with a fuller, more heartfelt explanation for her actions.
“I deserve to be hated, labeled, detested, resented and worse for [the post],” she wrote in the statement, “I deserve to lose out on every opportunity. I should have been canceled, I would have deserved it. I still do.”
Whether or not fans will see her 11-years-late apology as genuine remains to be seen—said one X user, “Reddit made this happen”—but as Rousey appears to take accountability for her actions in the post, she certainly gave it a good try.
