In her new memoir, U.S. female soccer star Hope Solo claims that Dancing With the Stars’ Maksim Chmerkovskiy manhandled her roughly during rehearsals, and once slapped her so hard that “I had a red handprint there the rest of the day.”
In her book, Solo: A Memoir of Hope, Solo writes that she felt she stepped into the middle of a pre-existing conflict between the judges and the Ukrainian-born ballroom dancer when Maks famously erupted after judges’ criticized their performance, saying, “This is my show!”
In her book, Solo writes: “He manhandled me in rehearsals from the start, pushing me, whacking my stomach, bending my arms roughly. I thought that was just how it went — how dancers worked with each other.
“But it kept getting worse. One day, Maks was trying to put me in a certain position and hit my stomach so hard with his open palm that I had a red handprint there for the rest of the day.”
Solo claims that the relationship had soured to the point that ABC offered her the chance to continue the show with a different partner, but she decided to remain with Maks over fears that the tabloids would paint her as a “prima donna.” Plus, she also “didn’t want to end Maks’s career.”
Neither ABC nor Chmerkovskiy has yet to respond to the allegations, although yesterday Maks issued this cryptic tweet: “Always hated hypocrites and liars…but when someone is both AND an opportunist, I just feel bad for them. Can’t win at someone’s expense.”
