As noted before, former WWE wrestler Ashley Massaro gave an affidavit prior to her passing in 2019 as part of a class-action lawsuit against WWE. This affidavit was released shortly after her death and revealed that Massaro claimed that she was raped by a United States military member during an overseas tour WWE held at a military base in Kuwait in 2006 and WWE management covered up this incident.
John Laurinaitis’ lawyer Edward Brennan recently confirmed that Laurinaitis and most of WWE’s upper management were aware of the allegations made by Massaro in contradiction of WWE’s official statement at the time.
VICE News reported that a previously unreleased version of Massaro’s affidavit had contained allegations made by Massaro against McMahon himself. In this unreleased statement, Massaro claimed that McMahon preyed on female wrestlers in WWE.
It was reported that the reason why this statement was not included in the final version of Massaro’s affidavit was due to her attorneys Konstantine Kyros and Erica Mirabella felt that “it wasn’t relevant to central claims in the lawsuit in which they were representing her, which concerned concussions.”
This statement that was removed from the final version read:
“During my time with the WWE, I had observed Vince McMahon making-out with other divas in the locker room, but he never paid attention to me, and I assumed I was not his type. This changed after my Playboy cover was released. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to fly on the company jet and stay at the same hotels as the executives for a period of time so that I could get home faster to spend more time with my daughter. On one of these occasions, Vince was attempting to get me alone with him in his hotel room late at night and I felt extraordinarily uncomfortable. He began calling the hotel room phone and my cell phone nonstop. I called Kevin Dunn to explain the situation and he said I should tell Vince I was not feeling well and would see him on TV the next day, so I did. Immediately after that night, Vince started writing my promos for me. Vince does not write promos for female wrestlers—that is the job of the creative department—and he certainly wouldn’t have, under any normal circumstances, written a promo for me. But he did, and the promos were written with the clear intention of ruining my career. I brought the first script Vince wrote for me to the WWE employee in charge of Creative at the time, Michael Hayes, and he said, ‘you’re not saying this, who the [expletive] wrote this?’ and I told him that Vince did. He said, ‘Well kid, these are the breaks,’ meaning that Vince wanted to end my career and destroy my reputation on my way out. He is known for this type of behavior and also did this to [REDACTED] upon her departure from WWE. In addition, after that night, each time I walk by him he would make vulgar sexual comments that were clearly designed to make me uncomfortable.”
It was also reported that a spokesperson for WWE’s parent company TKO Group declined to comment when asked about this unreleased allegations but did confirm that Michael Hayes still works at WWE.