Mauro Ranallo signed with the WWE in 2015.(WWE.com)
SmackDown Live commentator Mauro Ranallo has been absent for three weeks, and he has now revealed that he will not be at WrestleMania 33 on Sunday.
This is according to a new tweet which Ranallo posted on Wednesday afternoon. In it, he thanks everyone for sending their love to him, but goes on to wish his WWE family a great WrestleMania. This language highly implies that Ranallo himself will not be there.
Ranallo suffers from bipolar disorder, and this is the reason he has been off of WWE television for the past several weeks. He recently said on Twitter that he is touched by the support but that his doctor said that he should stay off of social media. Ranallo is usually quite active on Twitter, but these two tweets have been his only updates for the past two weeks.
Bas Rutten, Mauro Ranallo’s co-host on the Rutten and Ranallo podcast, recently said on Sirius XM that Ranallo is doing okay.
“He’s doing okay,” Rutten said. “As everybody knows – he’s very vocal about it – Mauro is bipolar. Sometimes, a couple of times a year, things are going too fast and he needs to just simply slow down. But he’s doing good. I talked to him, he’s sending me funny video clips, he just sent me something – I didn’t take a look at it… but a happy thing – it’s all in good spirits. I think he will be back to normal very soon.”
Ranallo was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was 19 after the death of a close friend. He has talked about this openly and says he wants to remove some of the stigma surrounding mental illness.
“I think mental health issues have to be more and more prominent; that’s who I am,” Ranallo said in an old interview with Sherdog. “I know there is a stigma, and we’re still not comfortable talking about it in our society. You even asked me if I was OK talking about it for this story. I’ve been very open about this for many, many years. I firmly believe that’s who I am and we’re still not comfortable with talking about it in society, but I want to be an advocate. I want to make it easier for people to talk about. I hope that one day we’re still alive when people don’t have to ask and there is no stigma attached to mental illness.”
On March 14th’s episode of SmackDown Live, it was said on air that Ranallo was absent due to the weather. The following week, it was said that he was out sick. On the most recent episode of SmackDown, Ranallo again wasn’t on commentary, but this time, no explanation was given for his absence.
It is not currently known when Mauro Ranallo might return to SmackDown Live.