Was Mauro Ranallo Being Bullied Backstage At WWE?

There have been a lot of questions surrounding the current status of Mauro Ranallo. He’s been off WWE television in recent weeks and some have reported he is suffering from a bout of depression. Mauro has actually called himself the “Bi-Polar Rock ‘n’ Roller” in the past.

Mauro brings a sense of excitement to everything he announces and we love him for it. He also legitimizes each match he calls. The first thing we look for at this point when SmackDown Live comes on the air is whether or not Mauro is in the broadcast booth. It has now been three weeks since Ranallo has been on SmackDown Live.

In the latest issue of The Observer, it was reported that much of the Mauro Ranallo situation started when he mentioned on Twitter that he won the Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s Best Announcer award two years in a row. Apparently, JBL didn’t like that.

Mauro mentioning that he won the Observer’s award is actually a taboo move in pro wrestling. But JBL’s comments about the matter caused some tension between the two causing Mauro to respond in turn. He said “jealousy is one helluva drug”, which is something he’s tweeted before on December 11th last year when he was asked, “you have haters, how is that possible?” But those close to the situation say the latest instance was directed at JBL.

JBL has always teased Mauro but apparently, it became more of a shoot in recent weeks. JBL made comments about how Ranallo tweets so much and boasted about how Layfield blocked his broadcast partner on social media. When Ranallo missed his first episode of SmackDown, JBL criticized him for missing the show because the reason given for the cancellation was weather related and everyone else made the show without much of an issue. The tweet JBL sent out about Ranallo has since been deleted.

According to reports, Mauro hasn’t spoken to many people outside of his close friends like Frank Shamrock and Bas Rutten. Rutten has made comments about JBL saying that he’d “love to meet him” and while JBL hasn’t spoken on the issue since those close to the situation pointed a big finger of blame at him for exacerbating everything.

It goes without saying that a company like WWE who is actively involved in an anti-bullying campaign wouldn’t want this situation getting out of hand. But, apparently, it has gotten bad enough that Mauro canceled the last leg on the Road To WrestleMania. The company even told Bubba Ray Dudley he wasn’t allowed to use his Bully Ray gimmick on their programs because of the “Be A Star” anti-bullying campaign. So there is an obvious concern on how WWE could be perceived in the bullying issue.

But still, JBL made these comments about Mauro Ranallo knowing he had a history of bi-polar disorder. Of course, there is always a chance JBL had no idea how his comments would affect his broadcast partner and he was just making those comments in character.

In a recent Twitter post, Mauro Ranallo said he wants to wish his WWE family another amazing WrestleMania. Whether or not he will be a part of the announce team is yet to be seen. Of course, we would love to hear his one-of-a-kind voice on the WrestleMania 33 broadcast.

But, it is seldom a practice to wish someone a great time if they plan on being there themselves. This is indeed a very sad situation and we here at Still Real To Us wish Mauro Ranallo nothing but peace and love in hopes he is able to pull through this hard time and get back to the work he loves to do.