Janel Grant says her life came crashing down when she learned The Wall Street Journal was about to expose Vince McMahon’s secret NDA scandal in 2022 — but one of her first concerns wasn’t herself. During a conversation with POST Wrestling published September 22, 2026, Grant revealed that she actually asked whether McMahon was okay as the story was preparing to blow wide open.
Grant said she learned on June 15, 2022 that The Wall Street Journal was preparing to publish its story concerning McMahon’s $3 million NDA with a former WWE employee. Grant was not initially identified by name, but she said simply knowing the story was coming caused her to collapse emotionally.
Even with that happening, Grant said she asked her attorney about McMahon. Her reasoning was that if she felt like her own world was ending, she wondered whether McMahon might be feeling something similar.
“I asked the attorney a question that I don’t know I ever got an answer [to]. I said, ‘Is he okay?’ Because I thought, if I instantly felt like I might want to not be here anymore, if this was something that maybe my light goes out in life, why wouldn’t he feel the same way, if something’s about to be outed.”
That reaction becomes even more striking when placed against Grant’s later accusations. She filed a federal lawsuit in January 2024 accusing McMahon of sexual assault, coercion and sex trafficking during their relationship, allegations McMahon has denied. The full history of those accusations and the fallout inside WWE is detailed in Ringside News’ complete breakdown of the Janel Grant and Vince McMahon case.
POST Wrestling asked Grant why she would have been worried about McMahon considering what she now alleges he had already done to her. Grant explained that her thinking at the time was much more complicated than simply deciding who she should be angry with. According to Grant, McMahon felt like the only person who could explain what was happening and whether she was going to survive the fallout.
“It’s actually, to be in my body and see the world through my eyes, it’s pretty easy. He’s the only person who can tell me if I’m going to be okay. And what’s going on, like, what just happened? How did this happen? He’s the only person who would know that. That’s how I felt.”
Grant described herself as an intensely private person before the McMahon scandal became national news. She said learning that the story was coming felt like having everything ripped out from underneath her, and the fallout only became worse as people around her began figuring out she was the unnamed WWE employee involved.
Years later, the public courtroom portion of Grant’s fight has ended. A federal judge formally closed the lawsuit in July 2026 after Grant, McMahon and WWE agreed to resolve the dispute through private arbitration instead. Grant has since started speaking far more openly about what those years were like from her perspective. She recently described the NDA fallout as something that nearly cost her life, making her revelation that she was still worrying about McMahon when the story first broke one of the more unexpected pieces of her account.
What do you make of Janel Grant admitting that one of her first concerns was whether Vince McMahon was okay when the scandal started exploding publicly? Let us know your thoughts and feedback in the comments.
