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Darkside of the Ring season 3 discussion


IANdrewDiceClay

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1 hour ago, Joe Blog said:

It would be lovely if everyone stopped using Flair in any sort of capacity. That is how you punish someone like Flair, just let him slip into obscurity. However this is wrestling and he will still be getting used regular after this no doubt. 

He shouldn't be used by anyone but like all of this stuff, it'd be purely PR at this point. These stories are all common knowledge and have been for years and it hasn't stopped WWE employing him or fans immediately begging for him to turn up elsewhere upon his release. I'm sure this is new information to some but most just do not care. Plenty of stuff is murky or alleged but lots is cut and dry yet so normal in that environment, no-one bats an eyelid.

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10 minutes ago, Joe Blog said:

Yeah that is just awful. First time I had heard about Dustin being involved which is hugely disappointing. 

Haven't seen the doc but it seems the air hostess credited Dustin with being the one who saved her from Flair but the doc didn't mention these other allegations so he's come out of it as the hero to many.

Edited by tiger_rick
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Just now, tiger_rick said:

Haven't seen the doc but it seems the air hostess credited Dustin with being the one who saved her from Flair but didn't mention these other allegations so he's come out of it as the hero to many.

Yeah I haven't watched it yet either. Bullshit really that Dustin has seemingly nabbed a get out of jail card. 

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Watched it last night. Vile. 

I was a fan in 2002 and remember hearing bits about this (maybe on here, even!) but thought it was just drunk idiots, fighting, perhaps the odd grope. 
That poor girl- having just come back to work from having her baby- disgusting.  She wasn’t some groupie trying to hang with the boys, she was trying to do her job and couldn’t get away, how frightening for her. 

No love for Flair and wasn’t looking forward to having him in AEW but I’ll be very upset if they have anything to do with him. I’m sure this wasn’t the only time he behaved like this either. 

Craziest thing to read was that Vince AND Linda were onboard and they just let it happen. 

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Van Dam strikes me as the kind of guy who has enough on-point recollection to send half the alumni down for time, despite being stoned out of his gonads virtually every hour for most of his adult life. We reach for good guys even if they aren't perfect, and I feel good for him that he's emerged from the industry as an oddly lucid above-the-shit authority of sorts. 

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I've often wondered what the point of this show is given they tell these horror stories that everyone in and around wrestling already knows and and covers for. But something like this one has shown the real value of it because there are clearly a generation of people out there who only know Flair as a cuddly old man or a "bit of a card". There are plenty who think this story is about Perfect and Lesnar scrapping or X-Pac having his hair cut. Bringing it to the masses is a good thing and has real value. It will be interesting to see if there are any outcomes which seem to have been absent from all the other stories they've told, shamefully.

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55 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

I've often wondered what the point of this show is given they tell these horror stories that everyone in and around wrestling already knows and and covers for. But something like this one has shown the real value of it because there are clearly a generation of people out there who only know Flair as a cuddly old man or a "bit of a card". There are plenty who think this story is about Perfect and Lesnar scrapping or X-Pac having his hair cut. Bringing it to the masses is a good thing and has real value. It will be interesting to see if there are any outcomes which seem to have been absent from all the other stories they've told, shamefully.

what's very telling is that when this episode was first discussed, one of the directors said that it was the most harrowing they'd had to do, and Jim Cornette categorically didn't get it. He was talking about it all as a bit of a laugh, and not understanding what they meant. For people like him who have lived their entire adult lives in wrestling, there's no meaningful sense of boundaries - he's giving out death threats over bad booking and ring announcers not wearing ties, but makes excuses for sexual assault (unless it's a wrestler he doesn't like because they do comedy spots). 

Like so many things, it just became a bit of a jokey wrestling story. Even those of us who knew it didn't necessarily know all the details, or dwell on it. What Dark Side Of The Ring do very well is pick up on where the shitty side of wrestling crosses over into "real life" - wrestlers being abusive shitheads to each other is one thing, but to people just trying to do their job, on a flight where they can't go anywhere or get away, puts it all into a different perspective. And the other side of people just seeing Flair as a comical old man is that not many wrestling fans would think of Flair as a big powerful guy because of that, but from the perspective of a frightened air stewardess with a naked 6'+ muscled up old bloke leering down on her and not knowing how far this is going to go? That's fucking terrifying. 

Edited by BomberPat
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1 hour ago, Sonny Mustang said:

 

Craziest thing to read was that Vince AND Linda were onboard and they just let it happen. 

I’m sure Nancy Argentino‘s family aren’t surprised. I’d be amazed if they were even aware of what was going on, they were probably in some exclusive section. 

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5 hours ago, BomberPat said:

We've all read wrestling autobiographies and watched shoot interviews that are full of "ribs" that are basically just physical, emotional or sexual assault, or heard old-time wrestlers laughing it up about drugging and abusing women. Whether they've been held up as funny road stories or Wrestling Sleaze, it all falls under the same "boys will be boys" umbrella, and all of those stories are well overdue reframing as the stories of abuse that they are.

I think that still happens now to some degree. It's just now called 'banter'.

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