Ronda Rousey Is Very Sorry for Sharing Conspiracy Video

Wrestler and former MMA fighter Ronda Rousey has offered a profuse apology for what she says was "the single most regrettable decision" of her life. In a post on X Friday, Rousey apologized for sharing a Sandy Hook conspiracy video on what was then Twitter more than 11 years ago, around a month after 20 children and six educators were killed in the mass shooting, NBC News reports.

• "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 Friday. "I quickly realized my mistake and took it down, but the damage was done."
• She said she had regretted the post "every day of my life since," but "by some miracle it seemingly slipped under the media's radar, I was never asked about it so I never spoke of it again." She said she feared calling attention to it would increase views of conspiracy videos.
• "I deserve to be hated, labeled, detested, resented and worse for it," the 37-year-old former UFC and WWE champ wrote. "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," she wrote. "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."
• Rousey said she had drafted the apology many times over the last 11 years. She said her publisher "begged" her to keep it out of her recent memoir, saying it would "overshadow everything else and do more harm than good."

• Rousey is the most followed female athlete on Instagram, with more than 17 million followers, the BBC reports. On X, where she has 3.2 million followers, she urged fans to avoid falling down the "black hole of bulls---." "It doesn't make you edgy, or an independent thinker, you're not doing your due diligence entertaining every possibility by digesting these conspiracies," she wrote. "They will only make you feel powerless, afraid, miserable and isolated. You're doing nothing but hurting others and yourself."
• The apology came two days after Rousey took part in an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit. Dozens of people asked questions about her Sandy Hook post in what MMA Mania describes as "one of the worst beatdowns the mercurial site has delivered upon a celebrity in years."

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