sek69

Having a Lumberjack Match in the middle of a rising covid spike probably wasn't the best idea, but like Good Brother KawadaSmile says it's BIG MEN SLAPPIN MEAT time.

Bix mentioned when he was working for Deadspin they had liability insurance on their writers so they could write the stories they wanted to without fear of being sued over it (assuming what they wrote was factual of course). Since most journalists are freelancers now, most don't have that luxury and have to weight the possibility of being tied up in court forever when writing something. Obligatory I Am Not A Lawyer, but I think retweeting is different than posting original material. I could be wrong though.

Wrestling journalism is a tricky thing. Most people doing it don't have the legal protection to touch something like that without fear of getting sued over it, and you have someone like Dave who will not mention anything about allegations unless it results in charges or someone quitting/getting fired. Right or wrong, when the people who should be getting the word out either can't or won't do so, it only helps the abusers.

Honestly it was worse, and probably considerably worse, in the 80s and 90s. Heavy drug use is less common than it was back then, and it was pretty close to impossible for victims to come forward and risk the wrath of daring to tarnish the local heroes. I mean, we've pretty much all forgotten what a scandal it was when Art Barr plead guilty to rape of a 19 year old in 1989, didn't stop everyone from praising him as one of the best ever who died too young.

So something similar is going on with folks in the gaming/streaming world now and a lot of guys were outed as abusers. I happen to follow one of the women who was dating one of the creeps in question and she mentioned even though her ex publicly admitted the accusations against him were true, and when she came forward with her story she still had people in her mentions all "where's your proof". Even when the guy in question fully copped to what he did, people still demand a fully annotated document from the woman in order to consider believing it.

When cases explode even more when baseball spring training starts up next week, the whole state might end up getting shut down anyway.

That was probably the most screenshotted thread in the history of message boards (at least wrestling related ones) so I'm not shocked someone still has them and put 2 and 2 together.

Yes, seeing Tenta go from "wtf is wrong with you" to "are we really going to do this" to finally "alright motherfucker, it's on" was great, especially when Kitao seems to realize perhaps he made a mistake

So this got posted on YouTube yesterday, and it's the first time I ever got to see it after decades of hearing about it. From what I can tell, Kitao seems mad at something (some old sumo beef? Tenta coming in as a bigger star in his home turf?) and just decides to stop cooperating. Tenta can be clearly heard yelling at him variations of "what the fuck", but the funny part is no one is going to take him down if he doesn't want to be taken down so he just stuffs him. Kitao throws what appears to be a shoot kick at the ref to get DQ'd, and the video (that appears to be from a commercial release) stops before the part that made this really well known: Kitao got on the house mic and said pro wrestling is fake and that's the only way Tenta could beat him. He ended up getting fired from SWS for that one. I always wondered if there was anything more to it other than Kitao just being the surly bastard he tended to always be. It was just such a random thing for him to just start no selling Tenta Anyway, if you've never seen it here you go:

It is odd since it can easily come off as them mocking it if you don't know their beliefs.

They are sincere. The whole family are diehard Christians, their dad and little bro was known to get nutty about it on Facebook at times before the Bucks made it big.

The details of the story (them on the floor crying) was so obviously fed to him by someone in the company to make them look bad. He didn't stop for a second to consider if what he was be being fed was in any way not on the level. It's something that carried into his FS1 gig as well. He reported everything WWE handed him without a sniff of analysis and/or criticism. I'm sure it's probably how he got the job, they knew he would just pass along everything they gave to him.

I'm not, the allure of hiring someone who was fairly high up on the WWE food chain (for a non McMahon) would have blinded most companies from paying attention to the ugly parts.

I mean, you were right even with all this happening now. I would argue drug use is probably at an all time low, and by and large the current generation has normalized activities other than going to the bar after every show (well maybe not in the UK). Folks used to get mocked for staying in the hotel and playing video games, and now you have people like Xavier Woods making a second career out of it that can carry him after his wrestling days are over. In fact I would argue one of the reasons this stands out even more today than it would in the territory days is that it *had* been cleaned up to a large degree. I see tons of promotions interacting with fans on social media, and less treating fans like dumb marks to be fleeced. I would also argue that probably a big reason a lot of the folks not named did not realize such scummy behavior was going on around them is the belief that it was something that was not a part of wrestling like that anymore. Things that were exposed in the last week or so was Business As Usual in past eras that most folks in place now don't stand for. I get it though, after what happened it's real tempting to just throw your hands up and yell "fuck all of it" and toss the whole industry in the dumpster. It was my first instinct too, but I have hope that there enough people who are still good who will make sure this is something that gets eliminated.

Sent an unsolicited dick pic to a female wrestler.

Oh hey, Bruce remembered Alistar still works there.

It's funny, but since Rey looks like he's permanently 12 years old, his son looks older than him now.

Impact has officially fired Joey Ryan and Dave Crist, and Mike Elgin was suspended.

I don't know if "Bayley Dos Straps" is supposed to be a subtle reminder that Bayley is actually a POC, but in my head canon it is.

Peyton with a perfect (no pun intended) Fisherman's suplex. That was a thing of beauty.

I don't know if there was a match I've gone from "hey this should be pretty good to "oh my god I do not care anymore" faster than the Street Profits vs Viking Raiders. They could have had a decent series of matches, but we got endless lame comedy bullshit instead.

I didn't reaaaaally need Dolph vs Drew, but they are paying attention to recent history, so I give them props for that. Unfortunately it's a another feud for Drew where the outcome is not in question so that hurts him.

Yeah, I didn't even think to consider Havoc could still be a manipulator with all this. Also it's not so much a Florida law as more as (I believe) an ADA thing that was intended to keep employers from punishing workers trying to seek help, so if it is Havoc manipulating things to his advantage that makes it even more scummy.

That was my impression as well. He does apparently have actual substance issues, so there's a chance that perhaps having everything exposed was his rock bottom moment that he needed to realize he should get help. I'm probably being way too optimistic, but at this point its all we can hope for.

To be fair we should probably stop judging every company by assuming they will handle it like WWE does. So far AEW has handled Sammy (a main event or at least upper level guy) the same as Havoc (midcard tag team guy) which is already 100% different than WWE would do. I would suspect Sammy will be back and Havoc won't, but that's more based on the severity of their actions rather than company bias. What other cases is AEW ignoring? The only one I saw was someone's story that people connected the dots to assume it was Jake Hager but I haven't seen it was confirmed to be him. I also fully admit I may have missed another case since I was mostly offline yesterday.