sek69

Honestly, people bringing up Brock are just engaging in whataboutism and it's annoying. Of course showing your peen to co workers is not acceptable but that doesn't invalidate holding other sexual abusers to task. You can be mad at one abuser without having to be expected to be equally mad at every abuser that ever existed. It's exhausting and comes off as a way of getting people to stop talking entirely.

Right, but the way he said it clearly communicated he didn't think what happened was that big of a deal, and by extension calling her character into question at the same time. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he realized he fucked up now, but don't give me this "I never intended to..." bullshit when in the moment you 100% intended to do the thing you're releasing a solemn JPEG apology about. To be fair, this is rubbing me the wrong way partly because as a video game fan it's becoming commonplace for game companies to do these solemn JPEG apologies when they get caught acting poorly and it never comes off as sincere. It just comes off more as "I'm sorry I upset people to the point it affected my livelihood, and I would really like it for that to not be the case so I will release a statement saying I never intended to say or do the things I clearly was intending at the time". If that's enough to satisfy you, that's fine. Perhaps my cynical bastard-ness has gone terminal and there's no hope for me. I've just seen this movie too many times to just accept on face value.

I mean, Im sure he's sorry he said it since it presumably hit his wallet getting suspended, however... "It was never my intention to offend, hurt, or victim shame" Well then what was your intention then Thomas, when you said shit like "if it was really that bad she shouldn't have taken the settlement and Ric would be in jail"? You can't say you don't condone sexual misconduct when you were just shown on nation wide TV doing exactly that. Like, I suppose him realizing he said fucked up things and showing some kind of remorse is a good thing, better than we get in most of these situations. His wording is just so gaslight-y though, as if he thinks we'll believe he didn't do or say the things we saw him do if he just says he would never do that.

Was at least twice a year for a while, so people who were around during that time frame would have been on many transatlantic flights.

Again, I don't think anyone is surprised Dreamer held those beliefs, we just expected him to not say the quiet part out loud on TV.

Britt's retort of "you didn't run away from anywhere, you got FIRED" was pretty solid tho.

It's somewhat ironic that RVD, the "heh heh drugs" guy was the one to fully own up how common drugging and assaulting women was at the time while condemning it. Like I feel of he had said the things Dreamer did people would probably be less surprised but since it was Tommy Dreamer, Heart of ECW who went down with the ship, it made it seem like an extra slap in teh face.

Yeah USA used to be able to crank out their own shows that would get decent to good ratings, but they haven't been able to do that very much as of late. That ends up making Raw even more valuable to them.

Age is no excuse though. I can understand defending your friend and not wanting to believe accusations, that's a fair reaction to have. To make the effort to prevent someone else from making a living is a choice you purposefully make. From what I have gathered, Will basically implied he wouldn't work on a show if the company booked the accuser and since he's like the biggest UK star it wasn't like the companies had a choice. Also the promotion seemed to back off their claim because again, biggest star in the UK. That's the way I read it at least, every story about them backtracking made it sound like they had to in order to get booking for anyone.

Fox didn't shell out the money they did to get the B show, and neither did USA. WWE basically promised both sides would get the A show and I don't know if Vince's brain can handle the concept of a 1a and 1 b show.

If it wasn't for the last part of what was shown, I could see giving Dreamer the benefit of the doubt. When he was just trying to pass off the helicopter dick I was like "ugh, but that was how things were back then" but after they had the fight attendant go into details and Ric trying to force her to touch it and he went into the whole rant about "it it was REALLY that bad she wouldn't have took the settlement and Flair would be in jail" pretty much staying he thinks she's lying is what pushed everyone over the edge. I would really recommend watching the show before deciding Dreamer is an innocent caught up in the roiling Twitter mob.

Even weirder when called out he doubled down on Bix all "oh you're a researcher on that show, no wonder the facts are wrong" when he replied to the ACTUAL COURT DOCUMENTS. Jesus Christ, the stupidity.

Meanwhile the Coach seems to be the next one who wants to set themselves on fire in public, claimed the flight attendant in the show was lying and he knows because he testified at in the case that was brought, leading to Bix to pull the court docs to show that wasn't the case.

I loved going back to watch the early Starrcades and see how impressive those shows were at the time in a production standpoint. Made the WWF shows of the time look low rent. It's always been my underrated item of what really tipped the scales in WWF's favor is how quickly their shows improved production. Practically overnight their TV went from looking like it was filmed by some high school kids to all this slick-ass Titian Sports production. I always liked how in the first two shows they would emphasize how everyone under the NWA umbrella wanted their group to have a place on the show. Hammered home how big of a deal the show was and immediately created the idea of a tentpole annual event.

Let's be honest, Dave probably has to shoulder some of the blame too. He often would try to play down Flair's antics as just drunken but harmless fun and sometimes go out of his way to even mention them unless it was too newsworthy to ignore. His blind spot for Ric is legendary, and while he wasn't the only one (or even the biggest offender) he had the most reach. He low key (even if subconsciously) educated a generation of insider fans that Flair's behavior was acceptable.

FWIW I have seen more than a few wrestlers (male and female) speaking up because of what Terri said, especially Maria Kanellis basically backing up what she said.

lol it isn't but it's the only controversial thing I can recall Brock being involved in (and even then it was more because of sponsors)

As I said in the other thread, I think Brock may be getting a pass because he doesn't have a decades long history of this behavior other than that one time in UFC he said he was gonna go home and fuck his wife in his post fight interview. Dude goes to the woods and wrestles bears or whatever between WWE stints and no one ever hears about him. Plus as stated, he wasn't the focus of the story, and Tommy dousing himself with gas and lighting a match was such a jaw dropping moment of course that gets more attention.

I don't think Brock has a history of doing those things (as far as I'm aware), so that might be why isn't not as talked about as much. It's easier to chalk what he did up to youthful stupidity when there's not decades of similar stories about him.

Not just that, he trapped her and wouldn't let her go *and* insisted she touch it.

I almost feel bad for Andrade since he clearly had all these plans to bring Ric in and that's all seemingly out the window now, but then you reap what you sow there I suppose.

I got the impression on social media that there were a lot of folks who weren't around when this happened and only heard about the plane ride stories from places like that ESPN 30/30 episode that framed Flair's behavior as just harmless wacky hijinks. It sure seemed this was the first time a lot of 20 somethings first heard the actual gory details. I get what you're saying but at that same time "just let it rest" is the rallying cry of dudebros and douchebags that never want this kind of behavior to go away and for the people who did it to never face any consequences. This kind of behavior needs to be nuked from orbit no matter if it's some no name low level indy geek or Ric Flair.

Especially when they showed her talking about accepting the settlement because her husband was pushing for it so the story wouldn't get out. And that her employer pushed her to keep it quiet because celebrities need their privacy, And that Vince would have used his legal team to steamroll her and turn her life upside down to prove a point. Sure, Thomas.

Dreamer once said he was seriously considering doing a murder-suicide on Paul Heyman, so there's that.

Yeah Dreamer being a piece of shit is nothing new, but seeing him just go out there and show his complete ass on TV like that was something else. Every time I thought he couldn't say anything worse he just kept digging deeper and deeper until it became weirdly impressive.