Originally published on ProWrestlingSheet.

Despite how it may have sounded to some ... Santino Marella says his comments about transgender women in wrestling were about AMATEUR, not professional wrestling.

As we previously reported, Santino recently spoke on an Impact Twitch stream about how he dislikes intergender wrestling. He then shifted the conversation to transgender women and said "There’s cases now in MMA and wrestling where there’s trans girls that were born boys that are beating the sh*t out of females and that’s wrong."

Marella reached out to Pro Wrestling Sheet to clarify that he was NOT talking about pro wrestling in this moment. "In legitimate combative sports, I don’t want to see women get hurt unnecessarily," he tells us. "Professional wrestling welcomes everybody"

Adding, "I consider myself an ambassador to professional wrestling and my view has always been that it is welcome to all, I have gay students. I have trans students. I have students from every race and creed, we are all one big happy family."

The video of his original comments can be found below. 

Watch Pro Wrestling Talk with Anthony Carelli, Alicia Atout and JIMMY JACOBS! Behind The Lights: Episode 43 from IMPACTWrestling on www.twitch.tv