El-P

The Diva Search years look gloomier and gloomier too. Grooming as part of the product, basically.

TNA star Trinity... Hell of a timing too for TNA to be involved with WWE. Especially if it's a woman showing up.

Kevin Dunn's retirement timing looks quite interesting now too, for sure.

I dunno, that's their problem, not mine. React like decent human beings maybe ? Show the victim some sympathy ? Talk about how this is appalling and how the company must change as a whole ? Show unity and blast this shit like it should ? Where's an union when you need it I guess. Maybe some of the older ones are uncomfortable and for good reasons. But nah. Eric Young is the only guy who showed any kind of ethics in this whole debacle, really (for those who don't know, he requested to be released basically when Vince got back, and told in an interview later that he could not "work under that person and look at himself in the mirror".) Oh for sure, weaponizing this for a "pro-rasslin warz" would be godwaful.

Indeed. It opened a window of opportunity so that the details go public. Which is the important part in the grand scheme of things. "Sexual misconduct" is a bullshit euphemism that means nothing. Now the details are out. It's rape, mental and physical torture, sexual trafficking. And now it's out of the box and you can consider what happened to all those women who have been paid off in exchange for their silence. Without even thinking about all the others, who did not (because let's be real, this a systemic pattern). The silence of the pro-wrestling community has indeed been deafening thus far, apart from generic corporate "let's move forward" bullshit. This is an embarrassment for everyone involved.

And really now. Paul Levesque. Working so closely with his father in law for more than 20 years. What did he know ? This is a debacle.

When Ronda Rousey is the voice of reason, you know things are fucked up. And yeah. Good ol' Brucie. Been around for almost Vince's entire tenure. It's eIther two (or three) things. 1 : he's the dumbest motherfucker alive for not having seen what was happening. 2 : he knew and covered it. And yeah, the third one I don't even want to think about it considering the hours of his podcast I listened. But yeah. This isn't over. It's not just Vince, Laurinaitis and Lesnar. There are those unnamed corporate people. And you know they are at the top of the food chain. Clean this fucking mess and then we'll have a talk.

They can't possibly bring Lesnar back. As far as the reaction he would get. I dunno, an emoticon got Jericho booed for a good three weeks, so maybe this shit would get people to leave the building ? Then again, WWE audience is a bit different at times, "Thank you Vince" and all. They can still throttle Gabe Stevenson out there though, if they want another rapist on their show.

Slim Jim is back sponsoring the event. Everything is fine now, you see ? This is so fucking laughable and pathetic.

They knew. Vince steps down because of it. And then this happened : And they knew. This company is rotten to the core.

Nick Khan, Kevin Dunn, Bruce Prichard. You can't tell me that *at the very least*, they did not know about it. You can't be so close to Vince and not know about it, especially the later two, who have been around for almost 40 years. It's amazing. These people think they can do everything and get away with it. They can abuse people in every way possible and nothing will ever catch up to them. The fact they did not interview the woman is so crazy. "Yeah, let's not hear what the alleged victim has to say". Fuck. Internal investigation my ass.

Thats' the worst. Because let's not delude ourself that poor woman was the only one. Hell, the numbers of NDA last year don't lie. Yeah, it's a systemic issue. How many women were abused in Titan Towers over the last 40 years ? This should be an Harvey Weinstein level shitstorm. The entire archives of WWE are unwatchable now too. You want to revisit the amazing hours of the Attitude Era after reading THIS (and I've only red a little bit, and I feel sick) ? Are people gonna speak now ? I don't fucking care, I want the entire thing to be blown off, and by the entire thing I mean the business. I don't care if it's WWE, AEW, TNA, whatever. Blow the fucking wall of silence off. (and yeah, Brock Lesnar, people are gonna surprised about him ? When it was right there on Dark Side of the Ring, Terri Runnels telling the story of him exposing his dick to her. Which got zero traction back then) Ya think Gabe Stevenson is gonna debut at the Rumble ? That's be quite something, uh ?

I was gonna be out of the loop for some time as to not spoil myself and be able to watch the stuff I can't watch now later. Then I'm reading news on Liberation, like and do everyday and this : https://www.liberation.fr/international/amerique/etats-unis-accuse-dagressions-sexuelles-le-boss-du-catch-demissionne-20240127_J3CP43QT7FBZ7C7AGUBU3SD6QI/ When you've got an article on Libé (and really, it's on every major news outlet, Le Monde, L'Equipe), you not under the radar anymore. I wonder if the fact it became TKO actually made it more visible. In which case, oh, the irony. Fucking finally. I have not red the details yet, and from reading the thread's reaction I'm not sure I want to, as I don't deal very well this stuff like this. Guilty by way of silence. The guys closest to Vince can't say they did not know about who he was. It's the same as Gérard Depardieu in France. The French cinema industry knew. But "Oh, it's Gérard !"... This. There need to be a clean up. A real, deep one. There probably won't be.

That's also another one way to look at it. I realized that Royal Rumble 1999 was a quarter a century ago today. That's 25 years since me stopping being a WWF (then) fan. I was appalled by the Rock vs Foley match. I was appalled by the focus on Vince (ya know, winning the Rumble and all). 25 years later, I totally pre-shot that shit. The Foley match remains one of the most horrific and wrong in mainstream pro-wrestling, and Vince was a complete piece of trash. 25 years... Enjoy the Rumble, people. Or don't.

Mauro would be an improvement over jack and shit.

I don't remember Santana & Ortiz not being used before Santana got badly injured. I dunno. They sure weren't in any memorable stuff for a while apart from the awesome street fight with Best Friends. Well, one would not even talk to the other apparently, even when they had to work this match together on Rampage. Ortiz has tons of charisma, can be funny, he'll be allright if they use him alongside other people. Santana. As a single, unless he totally reinvent himself, I don't see it. He's a good worker, but he's one good worker out of a sea of good workers, and there's nothing really specific about him. They sure seem to have totally forgot about him, after he won his match with Ortiz no less. They were the hype of the late 2010's on the indies and such, but time flies.

He fucking did a shout out to them when he won the Rumble. Last year he stated in an interview that they were still in contact fairly regularly, and that they were bonded for life. Crazy to think that people might be friends, and that not everything fits people's fantasy narrative.

Netflix : "Love is sharing a password" Also Netflix : "Hey, you people are cheating us, you can't share passwords no more !" Also, they don't pay taxes like they should (yeah, that covers a whole lot of companies). Fuck ya, Netflix. Then again, all big streaming service are awful, really. Choosing one is having to choose the lesser evil, just like with music. Fuck you too Spotify, by the way, you're an awful company.

I just picture Rock powerwalking backstage up to Cody's locker room and give him the "That finishing the story stuff, doesn't work for me brutha." while Lesveque is shrugging in the background. Watcha gonna do when Netflix runs wild ?

Mauro's announcing is god awful. Yeah, sign him for 20 years on Netflix, please.

He's been with TNA since 2014. Hell, 2011 considering Ring Ka King. And he's never been any good. So yeah, he's a job guy, because at this point that's all he can be. I'm actually amazed he's still employed, really, he must be real good friends with someone. He's basically just as poor now as he was 10 years ago when he started as a regular. Barely improved at all.

WWE is all about nepokids now. Orton, Cody, Charlotte, Dominik, Ava... Roman. And it's only gonna get worse with time, especially now that pro-wrestlers date each others, marry each others and have kids together. It's gonna be a big-ass incestuous bourgeois family in no time. It is hilarious though. Like, maybe a little more subtlety ? A little LESS obvious ?

While at it, gotta say this, and that has nothing to do with WWE at all : I always though Netflix was kind of a shitty service. Shitty interface, übershitty search device, shitty mentality to boot.

'member when Mike Santana basically threw away a great tag-team because he thought he could be a single star, got a few vignettes and a match on Rampage against the guy who he would barely talk to ? Where he is now, while Ortiz just main evented Collision against Danielson & Claudio, tagging with his friend Eddie Kingston ? Funny thing is, when you looked at LAX, as they were called, Ortiz always was the most charismatic of the two. If anyone would break out, it would have been him.

I'm sure glad I did not spoil myself, because I did not expect Will Ospreay to put over Josh Alexander. That really meant something for him, because he did not need to do this at all. Awesome match, of course.