Clayton Echard has reacted to criticism from ex Gabby Windey over his dance moves.
After Windey, 34, criticized Echard’s online dancing videos during her appearance on the Thursday, April 3, episode of the “Las Culturistas” podcast, the season 26 Bachelor, 31, called her remarks “bullying.”
“Gabby, what you’re doing is bullying. There’s no other way around it,” Echard said in a Sunday, April 6, Instagram video that addressed Windey telling the podcast’s hosts, Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers, that Echard’s dancing posts “will make you run … you’ll wish you didn’t have eyes.”
“You’re attacking me for my physical appearance, you’re attacking me for a passion that I love that’s changed my life. It’s unnecessary and it’s not funny,” Echard added. “You have such a large platform and you’re setting a really bad example, which is just disheartening. I don’t want people to be scared to try something new because [of] bullying online, like what you’re doing. Do better Gabby.”
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Echard, who dated Windey on the ABC reality show and ultimately dumped her as well as Rachel Recchia to pursue a relationship with Susie Evans, has regularly shared videos of himself dancing for the camera since 2023. (Echard and his now ex-girlfriend Evans, 31, revealed they were an item in the After the Final Rose special but split for good in September 2022.)
While Echard received support from fans who commented on his filmed response, some pointed out that Windey’s podcast comments may have been taken out of context. “I really think she was just being cheeky and sarcastic in the podcast,” one commenter wrote. “I do agree she took it too far, but I don’t think that was her intention.”
Echard explained in his video that dancing has helped him evolve as a human. “[Dancing] has brought so much self love and self confidence that I’m truly so grateful to have found something that I get to work on myself every day and challenge myself,” he said. “I’m not the greatest at it and I’m aware of that, I’m not delusional but it’s me versus me every single day I get into that studio and it’s movement therapy and it’s allowed me to release a lot of my anger and frustrations.”
He added that he hadn’t talked to Windey, who served as a Bachelorette alongside Recchia, 29, in 2022, “in three years,” but that Windey continues “to take shots at me and it’s just unnecessary.”
Windey, who married comedian Robby Hoffman in a secret Las Vegas wedding in January, openly discussed Echard when he was accused of fathering a former flame’s twins in 2023, later confirming that he was not the father via an Instagram video.
“I feel like that’s the wrong tone for being accused of being a dad of twins,” she said on “The Viall Files” podcast in October that year. “This isn’t how I would respond. At least match the seriousness of this.”
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