Ronda Rousey has left World Wrestling Entertainment but now says that a current NXT star touched her inappropriately backstage during her time with the company.
Rousey behaved as if what she experienced was not unusual in the WWE‘s behind-the-scenes culture.
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Ronda Rousey: ‘What the F*** is That?’
Rousey made her remarks during an interview with NewsNation host Brian Entin in which she was promoting her new book “Our Fight.”
The former UFC women’s champion recalled a time in WWE when she was waiting to speak to Triple H in the writer’s room, where she claimed current NXT star Drew Gulak grabbed the string on her sweatpants.
Rousey said:
“I was standing there and this guy I was barely an acquaintance with grabs the string of my sweatpants as I’m walking by…and nobody reacts as if this is abnormal, and he’s going down the hall and I’m like ‘what the f*ck is that? Why are you grabbing the string of my sweatpants? If my husband was standing there next to me, would you feel comfortable walking up to me and grabbing the string of my sweatpants?’ All the guys around me were like, this is part of the day. And if this guy was coming up to me and doing this kind of stuff to me when there are other people around, what’s happening to these other girls when I’m not in the hallway?”
Rousey said she confronted Gulak about what he did later.
“I was like, if I ever hear you putting your hands on any other woman like this or doing anything to me like this ever again…we’re going to have a problem. And he was like ‘No, no, no, I’m glad you said something to me’ and he backpedaled. But it put a sour taste in my mouth about the culture there and what’s considered acceptable and how to touch and treat the women in the hallways.”
Ronda Rousey left WWE in August and has been critical of the company since.
Last month, she half-joked about her former boss, Vince McMahon.
She said premium live events for the WWE are “held in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, as well as now twice a year in Saudi Arabia, a nation that restricts the rights of women in a way that I’m certain Vince McMahon wishes he could.”
While promoting her book on ‘Good Morning America’ this week, Rousey said the only way she would go back to the WWE was if things “drastically change.”
