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Wrestling #MeToo #SpeakingOut


Keith Houchen

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42 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

He's been hovering around. He started up the IPW twitter account, and restarted posting stuff on his DailyWres account, and habitually blocks people who have ever criticised him, presumably in the hope that his stuff flies under the radar. There's a locked Facebook group too.

Yep, I think it was yourself who pointed him out on Twitter, I asked if it was he, he said “The very same!” Triumphantly, I called him a nonce and he blocked me. 
 

Dan, you’re no doubt reading this so I’d like to clarify what I said. You’re a nonce, fuck off. 

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8 hours ago, LSM said:

When did Dan Edler get back into British Wrestling?

I've just had the same email below from IPW:UK promoting a show for November and it's been signed off by Daniel Edler Owner/Promoter.

 

Edit: The Billington Bulldogs have already come out to say they won't be on this show and will be in Canada.

One less for the show.

 

 

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Wrestling is never going to change, at least to any significant degree.

A big bally-hoo was made a couple of years ago about the APPG group and the UK scene getting regulated but bar some 'suggestions' it's still the same scummy business it always was and the politicians involved in the APPG seem more interested in getting pictures with their favourite wrestlers than actually doing anything productive.

Who was the politician in America who made a big thing on Twitter about pushing unionisation for wrestlers a few years ago? Andrew Yang or something? What happened there?

Wrestling is an industry where people from WWE and AEW openly train at a gym operated by a convicted paedophile and, if you are a big enough name or do cool flippy shit then fans, wrestlers and promoters will look the other way or have selective amnesia.

It's progressed from covering up murders and shitting in peoples bags but it's still shady aa fuck.

 

 

 

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48 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

Wrestling is an industry where people from WWE and AEW openly train at a gym operated by a convicted paedophile and, if you are a big enough name or do cool flippy shit then fans, wrestlers and promoters will look the other way or have selective amnesia.

Who's this? Sorry, am a bit out of the loop.

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Yeah, Riddle and others (can’t remember who) were photographed and all smiles with Chasyn recently.

In semi-related news, Chasyn also recently booked himself to be tag champions with a 16-year-old female trainee: https://411mania.com/wrestling/team-vision-dojo-statement-registered-sex-offender-chasyn-rance-training-minors/

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37 minutes ago, Your Fight Site said:

Yeah, Riddle and others (can’t remember who) were photographed and all smiles with Chasyn recently.

 

That might be Marty Scurll you're thinking of in that instance.

Chasyn has been pictured all smiles with Kenny Omega and Ricochet and others have trained at his gym.
I believe Rance's girlfriend also works for AEW. Amber Nova? I could be wrong on that one.

Point is, the wrestling business is still the wrestling business.


 

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I think it's disingenuous to say that Speaking Out changed nothing.

Of the eight wrestlers announced for this IPW show, at least four have publicly either withdrawn their involvement or denied they were ever going to be there in the first place. He's deleted the Tweets promoting the show. Plenty of wrestlers and promoters have alerted people to him trying to weasel his way back into the scene. I don't know if anyone's contacted the venue yet, but I'll be amazed if this show goes ahead. That's all happened since the show was announced to a mailing list yesterday. 

There's never going to be a magic button to stop people like him trying to work in wrestling, but nor is there one to stop it in any other walk of life. But what are wrestlers, promoters, fans, etc., expected to do if not rally behind shows like this getting shut down? 

I couldn't really give a toss about AEW or WWE in this respect, to be honest, but the independent level is where collective action can actually do something about this, and that's what we're seeing here. The attitude of "ah, it's wrestling, it'll never change" and washing your hands of it is just leaving it to the likes of Edler to guarantee that things never get better.

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23 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I think it's disingenuous to say that Speaking Out changed nothing.

Of the eight wrestlers announced for this IPW show, at least four have publicly either withdrawn their involvement or denied they were ever going to be there in the first place. He's deleted the Tweets promoting the show. Plenty of wrestlers and promoters have alerted people to him trying to weasel his way back into the scene. I don't know if anyone's contacted the venue yet, but I'll be amazed if this show goes ahead. That's all happened since the show was announced to a mailing list yesterday. 

There's never going to be a magic button to stop people like him trying to work in wrestling, but nor is there one to stop it in any other walk of life. But what are wrestlers, promoters, fans, etc., expected to do if not rally behind shows like this getting shut down? 

I couldn't really give a toss about AEW or WWE in this respect, to be honest, but the independent level is where collective action can actually do something about this, and that's what we're seeing here. The attitude of "ah, it's wrestling, it'll never change" and washing your hands of it is just leaving it to the likes of Edler to guarantee that things never get better.

I'm not saying Speaking Out did nothing, I'm saying the APPG did nothing.

Also, there are plenty of promotions in this country (and the rest of Europe) that are 'off the radar' and have little to zero social media presence where people can get work and very few of those who 'know' about their indiscretions would be any the wiser. I don't think anybody is washing their hands of anything, however history has provided us with enough evidence to show that the pro wrestling business will never fundamentally change. Wrestlers going to Chasyn Rance's gym, wrestlers doing BJJ training with Marty Scurll, Stonecold Steve Austin getting a WrestleMania main event, Darby Allin still being pushed etc shows that, in spite of all the rhetoric and public statements, wrestling really HASN'T got better.

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Just now, Snitsky's back acne said:

I'm not saying Speaking Out did nothing, I'm saying the APPG did nothing.

Also, there are plenty of promotions in this country (and the rest of Europe) that are 'off the radar' and have little to zero social media presence where people can get work and very few of those of us who know about their indiscretions would be any the wiser. I don't think anybody is washing their hands of anything, however history has provided us with enough evidence to show that the pro wrestling business will never fundamentally change. Wrestlers going to Chasyn Rance's gym, wrestlers doing BJJ training with Marty Scurll, Stonecold Steve Austin getting a WrestleMania main event, Darby Allin still being pushed etc shows that, in spite of all the rhetoric and public statements, wrestling really HASN'T got better.

 

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Might it not be argued that wrestling has got better, but just not as much as initially hoped or touted? Certain things have happened that wouldn't have happened at all ten years ago.

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9 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

Wrestlers going to Chasyn Rance's gym, wrestlers doing BJJ training with Marty Scurll, Stonecold Steve Austin getting a WrestleMania main event, Darby Allin still being pushed etc shows that, in spite of all the rhetoric and public statements, wrestling really HASN'T got better.

Again, I don't really consider WWE and AEW part of the whole Speaking Out conversation. Obviously I'd prefer if they weren't employing wrong'uns, but they're beyond the scope of what audience pressure and collective action can reasonably achieve. My concerns, when all of this broke, were of my friends in independent wrestling, how they've been failed in the past, and what can be done to ensure that doesn't happen again - to them, or to anyone else.

I agree that the APPG has achieved very little. 

And, yeah, there are places off the radar where people can still get work. El Ligero was working shows without any online presence, Marty Scurll fucked off to Puerto Rico and Travis Banks to the Mexican indies, and there's probably others I don't know about. But these are all people who once would have been main eventing large shows, reduced to slumming it or uprooting their whole lives just to keep wrestling. Obviously I'd rather they be out of the business completely, but the fact that they can't just walk right back into their old spots is a step in the right direction. 

3 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Might it not be argued that wrestling has got better, but just not as much as initially hoped or touted? Certain things have happened that wouldn't have happened at all ten years ago.

I think it has, for sure, but people were really desperate post-Speaking Out for there to be some kind of catch-all solution that meant everything was fine and unproblematic, when in reality anything like this isn't a case of just flicking a switch, it's about constant work. From my perspective, which these days is limited to a few promotions/shows and a handful of wrestlers/promoters/crew I'm in regular contact with, things are already much better - one of the key ways is that if there is an issue, people can speak out, knowing they'll be supported, and without fear of being branded "difficult". That simply wasn't the case 2-3 years ago. 

I had a conversation with a promoter, who had been approached by wrestlers that might be considered problematic. He wasn't sure if he should book them, and was after advice. I said that he had to consider his brand, and whether whatever gains he would get from bringing them in would offset the potential reputational damage if people kicked off about it, at a time when British indies' biggest task is winning back people's trust. I don't know if these conversations were happening before, but I expect not.

The flipside of the people expecting there to be a magic button to fix things is that there were a lot of people who I don't think were ever really invested in fixing anything in the first place, but just enjoyed the Twitter drama and the dopamine boost from seeing another name to add to their list. I think having to wade through a lot of that has, in some ways, made actually identifying problem cases and dealing with things properly harder.

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33 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Might it not be argued that wrestling has got better, but just not as much as initially hoped or touted? Certain things have happened that wouldn't have happened at all ten years ago.

As I said, it's gone from covering up murders to where we are now.
Yeah, it's progress. It's 'better' - but it's like giving a cracked wall a new coat of paint and sticking a nice picture on it.
It's better than it was but ultimately it's still cracked. 

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Regarding Andrew Yang, I believe he left the Democrats to launch his own party (the Forward Party - a centrist leaning party) last year. Think there’s talk of him running for President (good luck with that). My guess is now that Yang has left, there’s now nobody in the current US Government who cares enough about professional wrestling to want to moderate it in any way.

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