Former MMA fighter Ronda Rousey has apologized for sharing a Sandy Hook conspiracy theory 11 years ago on X, then Twitter, saying, "I’ve regretted it every day of my life since."
The 37-year-old Californian pro wrestler shared a lengthy statement late Thursday night (early Friday morning EST) saying she had long-thought of apologizing in the years since sharing the controversial conspiracy, and is finally coming clean.
"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 it."
Rousey opened her apology saying "I can’t say how many times I’ve redrafted this apology over the last 11 years." She revealed that she internally grappled over the timing of sharing an apology and feared she could "be causing even more damage by giving it."
Get top local stories in Philly delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC Philadelphia's News Headlines newsletter.
It all started with what she called "the single most regrettable decision of my life" — "I watched a Sandy Hook conspiracy video and reposted it on Twitter," Rousey wrote.
She had shared a YouTube video spewing the conspiracy in January 2013, according to Bleacher Report — just one month after the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six staffers. She captioned the post: “Extremely interesting, and must-watch.” But the tweet was met with outrage and she deleted it soon after.
“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,” Rousey wrote in her apology. “I quickly realized my mistake and took it down, but the damage was done.”
U.S. & World
Stories that affect your life across the U.S. and around the world.
Rousey said that though she instantly regretted it, she feared speaking on it.
"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 said.
She said she drafted an apology to include in her last memoir, but "my publisher begged me to take it out, saying it would overshadow everything else and do more harm than good."
"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,'" she explained.
"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," she continued.
She said that she'll regret that decision to share the video "until the day I die."
Rousey ended her apology with a call to others who have fallen for conspiracy theories, warning that believing such ideas do not make one "an independent thinker."
"They will only make you feel powerless, afraid, miserable and isolated. You’re doing nothing but hurting others and yourself," she cautioned. "No matter how long you’ve gone down the wrong road, you should still turn back."
Shortly after the devastating massacre at Sandy Hook — which at the time was the second-deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. after the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech — conspiracy theories swirled regarding the shooting.
The Sandy Hook conspiracy is a favorite in fringe right-wing circles, often touted by Infowars host Alex Jones, who had called the school shooting a hoax. Family members of Sandy Hook victims sued him, and he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion to Sandy Hook parents.
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
