How Ronda Rousey Reacted To Disturbing Vince McMahon Allegations

Ronda Rousey has not held back on her feelings as she lifts the lid on how WWE handled the Vince McMahon scandal breaking in 2022.

Vince McMahon has been accused of sexual assault and sex trafficking in a bombshell new lawsuit that has forced him to resign as TKO’s Executive Chairman.

The lawsuit stems from a relationship McMahon is said to have had with a former WWE employee whom he had sign an NDA in return for millions of dollars. The news about Vince McMahon’s “hush money” payments broke in 2022 and led to an internal investigation into the then-WWE Chairman.

However, that investigation was completed with little more known other than there were other NDAs signed by other ex-female workers in the company. However, as the dust settled, Vince McMahon forced his way back into power in January 2023 before the sickening details of the lawsuit saw him leave, likely permanently, later that year.

Ronda Rousey – “F*ck Vince”

Writing in her upcoming book Our Fight – available for pre-order now – Ronda Rousey did not hold back with her feelings on Vince McMahon or John Laurinaitis as she grew increasingly frustrated with her role in the company and added that she felt like she was being set up to fail:

I felt like I was being set up to fail. My job was to go out in front of tens of thousands of people in person and millions of people watching on TV and get them to believe a story that some nearly eighty-year-old chauvinist was improvising on the spot. It felt like an impossible task.

F*ck Vince, I said to myself. My phone rang again. Pō was losing her sh*t, but I picked up anyway. It was John Laurinaitis, Vince’s No. 1 sycophant. “We’re going to need you to jump on a plane between shows this week to hit Good Morning America in New York to promote Money in the Bank,” he said. “Travel will be in touch with the details.” It wasn’t a request. It was an order.

“I can’t,” I said, juggling Pō in one arm while holding the phone in the other. “I can’t put my baby through five cross-country flights in less than a week. When I came back, I was told I wouldn’t be required to do that kind of travel.” He made a sound that I could only interpret to mean “I don’t care.” “We gave you the title so you could do these things for us,” he said. You gave me the title because it benefits your company for me to carry around your bedazzled logo in belt form on TV every week, I thought.

Instead I just said, “I never asked for the title. Give it to someone who will then.” I hung up. F*ck Vince, I repeated, adding, and F*ck Laurinaitis too. Somewhere out there, it seemed like karma heard me.

Rousey’s conversation with Laurinaitis came the night before the story broke that Vince McMahon had paid millions of dollars in hush money and that WWE’s board had found out. That set the chain of events that saw McMahon temporarily retire from his role in 2022 but Ronda Rousey believed when the news came to light it was likely the tip of the iceberg:

The next morning, the Wall Street Journal published a story detailing how Vince had paid $3 million to cover up an affair with a paralegal on the WWE payroll. According to the report and to the surprise of absolutely no one backstage, during the affair, Vince had doubled her salary and when he was done with her, he had passed her over to John Laurinaitis. The woman had signed an NDA to keep it all quiet, but a friend of hers had not and emailed the board.

Of course, as the board started to dig further in the allegations, they found a whole bunch of other sh*t because spending a few million on hush money to pay off a paralegal that you and your friend used for blow jobs is typically only the tip of the iceberg.

It turns out that there were a number of other female employees that Vince had sign NDAs and paid settlements—in addition to the numerous women who had previously come forward over the years with claims against Vince for sexual assault, harassment, and discrimination. You might think that would be enough to push Vince out, or at least to make him lay low.

WWE issued a lame statement saying that he was going to step back as CEO and from the board, but that he would still oversee creative. To the outside world, that might have sounded like some kind of repercussion, but internally, the message was clear: Nothing is going to change. Two nights later, Vince went on SmackDown, looked straight at the camera, and recited WWE’s slogan, “Then, Now, Forever.” Fortunately, I had the week off.

Ronda Rousey has also lashed out at the casting couch culture that existed in WWE as she made perfectly clear she won’t be returning to the company again.