In the early days of the #SpeakingOut movement, WWE’s Matt Riddle was accused of sexual assault by independent wrestler Candy Cartwright. Riddle shared a statement from his lawyer about the story, and his rollout on SmackDown continued.
Since then, Cartwright and others have occasionally shared pictures and screenshots as proof of a relationship between Riddle and Cartwright. Today (July 8), he tweeted a video statement confessing to an affair but categorically denying the assault allegation.
Wanna know the truth about all these allegations watch this video pic.twitter.com/kW4EQqcugx
— matthew riddle (@SuperKingofBros) July 8, 2020
“I’m gonna make this quick. I have never - in my entire life - sexually assaulted a man, woman, or anybody. And that includes Samantha Tavel, Candy Cartwright. I never sexually assaulted you. The story about that van trip, and the driver being asleep, and me forcing you to do stuff, and hop on whatever - is a complete lie, it’s a fabricated story because you’re still mad. You know why you’re mad? Because yes, you’re right. We had an affair. You have plenty of evidence of that. And you know what? I never denied it. Because it happened. Do I want to talk about it, do I really want to share about it? No. It’s embarrassing, because I feel like a real piece of crap, cheating on my wife and doing that. And now having to talk about it publicly, but I have to.
”We had a relationship. We had a fling. I started to get sad and depressed because I was lying to my wife so much to hide what I was doing. I was lying to all my friends because I didn’t want anybody to know, because it’s not something cool - I didn’t want to brag about it. I tried to end it. I told my wife about you and us. I tried to end it. I blocked you, I blocked your social media. You then started using messaging apps. You kept coming. I blocked those. You got my - I got a new number, you got my new number and kept messaging me. You literally got on social media accounts for other companies, kept messaging me until I blocked them. Now you have literally started harassing me, showing up to hotels harassing my friends, ‘where is he? where is he? where is he?’ At this point you have to realize, if you don’t think you’re stalking me or harassing me - you’re crazy. And if you’re at home and you don’t think that’s harassment, you’re crazy.
“At the end of the day, I’m not perfect. We did have an affair, and I’m not happy about that. But I never sexually abused anybody, I never sexually assaulted anybody, and when I wanted to get out of this [air quotes] relationship, out of this situation, she said ‘no’ and she kept pursuing me and harassing me and stalking me. And then, when she didn’t get her way, she used the speak out movement to try and ruin my career. Completely unacceptable. That’s all I really have to say. That’s the story. Everybody have a great day, take care, later.”