Former UFC fighter Ronda Rousey apologizes for sharing Sandy Hook conspiracy video: ‘I deserve to be hated’

Ronda Rousey is apologizing for reposting a conspiracy theory video 11 years ago about the Sandy Hook mass shooting, calling it “the single most regrettable decision of my life.”

The former UFC fighter said she was still “ashamed” of herself for sharing the video on Twitter, now called X, and has wanted to publicly apologize for it ever since.

“I can’t say how many times I’ve redrafted this apology over the last 11 years. 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 11 years ago I made the single most regrettable decision of my life. I watched a Sandy Hook conspiracy video and reposted it on Twitter,” Rousey began a lengthy message posted Aug. 23 on X.

“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,” continued the mom of two.

The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 left six adults and 20 children dead.

According Bleacher Report, one month after the massacre, Rousey shared a YouTube conspiracy video about the event. She captioned her post, “Extremely interesting, and must-watch.”

After other Twitter users responded to the video with outrage, Rousey removed it.

Rousey, who won a bronze medal for judo at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, said that her post of the video somehow “slipped under the media’s radar” at the time, and she was never made to explain her decision to share it.

“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 wrote.

She added that she wanted to apologize for the video in her last memoir but her publisher “begged” her to reconsider, telling her it “would overshadow everything else and do more harm than good.”

She eventually “convinced” herself that an apology would only serve to “reopen the wound for no other reason than me selfishly trying to make myself feel better.”

She said she also feared that an apology might “possibly lead more people down the black hole of conspiracy bulls****.”

“But honestly I deserve to be hated, labeled, detested, resented and worse for it,” Rousey wrote. “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,” she continued.

“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. I’ve regretted it every day of my life since and will continue to do so until the day I die.”

Rousey concluded her message by cautioning others who may listen to and repeat conspiracy theories, calling the theories 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.”