Muscle & Fitness favorite Terry Crews had a lot of say about a topic on everyone’s lips lately: Ray Rice. He spoke to Entertainment Tonight‘s Kevin Hunter about Rice’s domestic violence incident and how the news hit close to home. Crews, who has spoken openly about growing up with an abusive father, remembered his childhood and witnessing similar scenes. TMZ released disturbing new video of the February altercation between Rice and his then-finance, now-wife Janay earlier this week. Rice, who was originally serving a two-game suspension for the incident, was immediately released by the Baltimore Ravens after the new video emerged.

“When I saw the video I was immediately taken back to my childhood,” said Crews to ET Online. “This is the way I grew up. I used to watch this happen over and over again. It was a post-traumatic stress experience for me. I used to watch my father hit my mother in the face and watch her go down and there was some things that just affected me more than I don’t think anyone could realize.”

Crews went on to say that he has been met with derision for his stance on this issue. “Because of my stance on domestic violence and standing [up] for women I have tons of men coming at me like, ‘You are a punk, you are a punk, look at you, get your skirt and go pop your pecs somewhere’…This is the mentality I’m talking about, the challenge, the male pride…Pride is a thing that kills you…Male pride is so tough that they feel that any time a woman back talks, it’s they’d rather die than stand for that, than actually have a women tell them what’s up and then they would say, ‘Ok you know what, I got to hit her. I got to lash out.'”

Crews, as a former NFL player, had unique insight into the situation. “I speak from a person who (has) been in the NFL, a person who had this anger issue, a person who could have been a Ray Rice. I mean, if I had not changed, it could have been me. It was not, but it could have been…I saw the future and I got away from that circle enough to realize who I wanted to be because when you’re in that culture it’s who you hang around.”

The full interview is slated to air on September 10.