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Wrestling #MeToo #SpeakingOut


Keith Houchen

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What I’d also say is that a lot of the victims will want to de-escalate, and that’s another reason why there is silence.

I know in my case, and it was one of the lesser known cases, the attention was really intense. Too intense, and there was a certain group of people that were effectively set on me to question my character - people who do not know me and do not know my story and used a distorted account of the situation to justify their attacks. The attention was horrible, I just wanted to hide away and that’s why I deleted my Twitter, my LinkedIn and locked down my Facebook to within an inch of my life. The first live stream on the subject also made me fear for my family’s wellbeing, something I didn’t want to expose them to.

The legal threats and all that didn’t bother me. I know that if a civil case is brought against me, I have the evidence and the inclination to fight it and win, but the attention was intense and at this point I just want to defuse the situation and move on.

I can, therefore, only imagine what the ladies implicated in the higher profile scandals are going through. They are some tough, tough women. It takes a huge amount of courage to come out with something so personal and intimate, speak truth to power and keep that account out there in the face of god knows what - not least because a lot of these are harrowing personal traumas. I never regarded my allegation as a trauma as it was very much ‘a part of the show’, and was seen as such at the time but the questioning of my character got to me - thrown in a bit of trauma in there and I just cannot imagine what they’re going through. The folk that say ‘oh they just want their five minutes of fame’ could not be more wrong - I’m sure these ladies (and some guys) that keep their accounts in the public domain would love to crawl under a rock right now.

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4 hours ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

MLW's got some strange goings on at the minute. Weirdest thing is, its a pretty open secret its ran by a bunch of carnies with major connections to the Team Vision Dojo (the home of the worst people in Florida.)

https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/07/04/exclusive-details-on-saieve-al-sabahs-exit-from-mlw-emails-exchanged-mlw-comments/

I did think in amongst all of this that aside from getting rid of their much publicised ring announcer that they’d largely gone under the radar. 

Saieve Al Sabah’s swift exit from the company and the reasons he gives shines an unwanted light on their (current/past) connections. Whether it’s exactly how he has stated or not, in this day and age, rightly or wrongly, mud sticks. 

Some comments on sites extend as far as “who’s this jobber?” rather than focusing the substance of what he’s saying. 

Edited by uklaw
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1 hour ago, Keith Houchen said:

Fucking hell, that’s a title and a half! Even Hogan wouldn’t want that!

Chasyn Rance runs it. He's a convicted paedophile, a woman beater and recently had screenshots of him threatening to kill a trans escort. Aaron Epic is a trainer who beat the shit out of his girlfriend Mia Yim. Star pupil Ian Anselmo was charged with strangling his pregnant step mother to death. Also, Teddy Hart's a big part of it (recently on the hook for strangling his girlfriend.) Not every piece of shit in wrestling is from the Team Vision Dojo, but everyone in the Team Vision Dojo seems to be a piece of shit.

But Saraya Knight and Scott Hall have given their blessing for people to train there, so it cant be that bad.

Edited by IANdrewDiceClay
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3 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

So what does this mean? 

In practice, I have no idea.

In theory, it means that MPs will at least be looking at wrestling as an industry, which is promising in terms of having an oversight beyond "hope that wrestlers do what's right", and increases the likelihood of wrestling schools being included in the change of the law to view sports coaches/trainers as authority figures where relationships with students are concerned. 

If nothing else, it means that the speaking out and lobbying of people involved in all this is being listened to. 

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4 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

In practice, I have no idea.

In theory, it means that MPs will at least be looking at wrestling as an industry, which is promising in terms of having an oversight beyond "hope that wrestlers do what's right", and increases the likelihood of wrestling schools being included in the change of the law to view sports coaches/trainers as authority figures where relationships with students are concerned. 

If nothing else, it means that the speaking out and lobbying of people involved in all this is being listened to. 

In practice, I'm not sure forming it necessarily means anything. They're informal and don't have any power. It depends who's in it, who they're mates with and can get coming along to events. I briefly coordinated an APPG on something much more mainstream than wrestling and it honestly didn't mean much. 

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36 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

In theory, it means that MPs will at least be looking at wrestling as an industry, which is promising in terms of having an oversight beyond "hope that wrestlers do what's right"

Fixed.

Any oversight at all from outside the industry is what it bloody needs. We've all said it at some point on here, but simply put, people in wrestling have literally and figuratively got away with murder because of the ingrained tendency in mainstream society to dismiss anything to do with pro-wrestling as carny/childish shite. Some of the worst perpetrators have fully exploited both the lack of scrutiny and the lack of desire to scrutinise. The moment anyone with any authority to make regulations gets properly involved with the backing of the government, that's it.

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1 hour ago, Vamp said:

Sounds like a positive step, although whenever anyone outside of wrestling gets involved with British wrestling it seems to always involve Alex Shane so...

He will come out the woodwork as a self-styled wrestling regulation guru. You can just see it coming. 

 

I think the premise of the British Wrestling Council was designed to be regulatory in some ways (you are accredited and so you are seen as above board) but that fell on its arse as it was just a gimmick. 

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