Maria Kanellis Says WWE "Never Offered Help" For Mike Bennett's Addiction Issues

During an interview with the Florida Sports podcast, Maria Kanellis revealed that WWE reportedly didn't do very much to help Mike Bennett with his addiction issues.

"I know a lot of people like to give WWE credit for him going through their program but he never did. He didn’t even tell them for a month-and-half after he told me. I was his recovery. I was his therapy. We were in the Loews Sapphire hotel in Florida and I had him basically locked in his hotel room for several days because he was worried he was gonna die and he had to go to the emergency room and you can actually see it [a patch/bandage of sorts] in that match with Sami [Zayn], and you know, it was a crazy week because he hadn’t wrestled on WWE [TV] yet but in his first match, he was three days from recovery and every time somebody says, ‘Oh, well WWE helped him,’ no, they never offered help and it was me. So if you want to pat someone on the back, you should pat me on the back because I was the one who was there making sure he didn’t die in that hotel room."

She also spoke about the position she almost had in WWE.

"Yeah, I mean so Mike [Bennett] did [feel that way], I didn’t. I was only two months postpartum and WWE knew that we were gonna have a second baby. We had talked about it, we signed our contract with them having full knowledge — at least the Talent Relations side. So Talent Relations may not have told Vince McMahon but I know Talent Relations knew, so for me, only being two months postpartum, I was like, ‘Well crap. I wanted to finish the rest of my career out in WWE.’ I wanted to become a backstage producer. I mean Paul Heyman was trying to get me to be either his assistant or an assistant down in NXT, so I knew that was going to be the trajectory of my career, but for Mike, he wanted out, and so he wanted out but not in that way. I mean, to be released in a pandemic when there’s no work and nobody’s running shows, yeah, nobody wants to be released that way."