Even with Vince McMahon now gone from WWE after resigning his position as executive chairman of TKO last month, it’s clear that additional information about the true scope and duration of his alleged sexual abuse of former female employees is going to continue to emerge as long as people are going to keep digging.
One of those with a proverbial shovel is Tim Marchman of VICE News. Earlier this week, Marchman published an article dispelling the idea that WWE was unaware of a claim by the late Ashley Massaro that she was raped while on a Kuwait military base in 2006 and advised not to discuss it for the sake of WWE’s work with the military.
In a follow-up today, Marchman obtained a previously unpublished statement used by Massaro’s lawyers to create sworn affidavits for a lawsuit for former wrestlers who claimed they suffered traumatic brain injuries while performing for WWE.
The statement was never used for that lawsuit because it was felt to be irrelevant to those specific claims, but it does shed new light on Massaro’s alleged treatment by McMahon: specifically, that he made unwanted sexual advances toward Massaro, pressured her into situations that made her feel uncomfortable, and that he took personal creative control over her character when rebuffed with the idea that he would ruin Massaro’s career.
Part of the statement also names former WWE exec Kevin Dunn and current creative team member Michael Hayes as people who knew about McMahon’s behavior and were dismissive or unhelpful to Massaro.
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.
Dunn was a well-known confidant of McMahon and instrumental in the TV production aspects of WWE for years. He left the company at the end of 2023. Hayes continues to be part of the creative team under Paul “Triple H” Levesque.
Massaro first joined WWE after winning the 2005 Raw Diva Search, and was elevated to a wrestling role quickly despite her lack of experience. She was also known from her participation on the “Survivor: China” reality series in 2007 and for appearing on the cover of “Playboy” magazine that same year — an achievement she claimed made McMahon take more interest in her than before.
Massaro later became a radio DJ, but was found unresponsive at her home in Smithtown, New York, on May 16, 2019, and later pronounced dead at the hospital after being transported by paramedics. Though the cause of her death was never officially revealed by the medical examiner in Suffolk County, it was believed to be suicide.