Vince McMahon is back. "I hear ya a racist now, father?"

[El Hijo del Mikey Jr]

I think if you're still pro-WWE, I not only have to question your taste and level of intelligence, I have to question your morality.

[DavidB6937]

Morality maybe but taste and level of intelligence? It might not be what you like but not sure we need to be insulting everyone who does like it.

[Keith Houchen]

51 minutes ago, El Hijo del Mikey Jr said:

I think if you're still pro-WWE, I not only have to question your taste and level of intelligence, I have to question your morality.

Was your dad the Mikey who was a West Ham fan on here?

[El Hijo del Mikey Jr]

17 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Was your dad the Mikey who was a West Ham fan on here?

It's the same Mikey, Keith.  My old account doesn't work and I couldn't reset the password.  I assume the board has migrated to new software or something.

[Keith Houchen]

9 minutes ago, El Hijo del Mikey Jr said:

It's the same Mikey, Keith.  My old account doesn't work and I couldn't reset the password.  I assume the board has migrated to new software or something.

Ah, another one lost to the new double authentication or whatever it’s called. 

[El Hijo del Mikey Jr]

Just now, Keith Houchen said:

Ah, another one lost to the new double authentication or whatever it’s called. 

Personally, I like my new name.  Viva Mexico!

[SuperBacon]

44 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Was your dad the Mikey who was a West Ham fan on here?

 

24 minutes ago, El Hijo del Mikey Jr said:

It's the same Mikey, Keith. 

Now I'm going to have to question your taste and level of intelligence. 

[El Hijo del Mikey Jr]

27 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Now I'm going to have to question your taste and level of intelligence. 

But not my morality. 😉

[Loki]

17 hours ago, El Hijo del Mikey Jr said:

I think if you're still pro-WWE, I not only have to question your taste and level of intelligence, I have to question your morality.

 

This is a wrestling forum and we are all fans of wrestling, one of the scummiest, carniest, least PC forms of entertainment in existence. If we start boycotting organisations due to sleaze, none of us would ever watch a match again.

 You had the WCW cokeroom of beefed up roid monsters leaving a trail of road babies through the South, Jerry Lawler fiddling girls in the janitor’s closet in between calling your favourite WWF shows, the ECW locker room destroying underage rats in skeazy motels across the US.  Shawn Michaels runs NXT, Darby Allin is one of AEW’s four pillars, Tommy Dreamer runs Impact!…. The Japanese feds and their young boys and Joshi girls I assume are also full of horrors.

Remember when everyone thought the NXT locker room were playing videogames after shows and it turned out they were filming each other banging each other’s girlfriends?  And then sharing the videos around?

 It’s fine to tut at individuals but let’s not start moralising about wrestling as if there’s any part of the industry that isn’t and hasn’t always been utterly morally repugnant.  If you’re going to watch men and women in underwear fake fighting, leave the prayer book at home.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Loki

[Keith Houchen]

20 minutes ago, Loki said:

It’s fine to tut at individuals but let’s not start moralising about wrestling as if there’s any part of the industry that isn’t and hasn’t always been utterly morally repugnant.  If you’re going to watch men and women in underwear fake fighting, leave the prayer book at home.

Where is the line for you though (no Tone, not that line). Is there one?  It was one thing when we were younger and didn’t know about what went on off screen, but now? If you can separate what’s on TV from who is on TV as it were, then great. But knowing it’s a wrongun on the screen or the company is ran by wronguns with terrible practices? Not for me, Clive. 

[El Hijo del Mikey Jr]

1 hour ago, Loki said:

Remember when everyone thought the NXT locker room were playing videogames after shows and it turned out they were filming each other banging each other’s girlfriends?  And then sharing the videos around?

Officially no but I assume that my browser history would probably disagree.

Making generalisations and saying that "the whole industry is terrible" is the same as when people say "all politicians are corrupt" and it has the same effect of letting the very worst offenders off the hook and sullying the few people who are clean or mostly clean.

I don't know of another company that earns 50m per event from Saudi Arabia.  When everybody was cutting ties with the Saudis, WWE were the only major company to stand by them.  Not just that, they're using such obviously nonsensical logic to justify doing so.  If WWE had the opportunity to play Sun City in the 80s, they would have broken the South African cultural boycott in a heartbeat.  Not just that, they would have said that cultural boycotts do nothing, despite obvious evidence to the contrary.

When Speaking Out kicked off, the company that did the bare minimum and even punished those who owned up while protecting those who clearly lied was WWE.  They're run by a sex pest who has spent nearly 20m in hush money to cover up multiple allegations of sexual assault, coercion and rape.  There are people who were mean to trainees who lost their careers.  One particularly high-profile wrestler is now persona non grata because he had consensual drunken sex with somebody of legal age but McMahon is profiting to the tune of 3.1bn and control of the company he was forced to resign from in shame.

Vince McMahon is the most disgustingly egregious and high-profile offender in the industry.  If you forgive him and support him, you have no moral leg to stand on.  If that's fine for you then great.  However, you can't ever moralise over anything again.  You can't hold opinions like "Joey Ryan is a sleazebag" or "Scurll is a wrong 'un" because you support somebody who is even worse.

[Nick James]

What about watching a company through nafarious means? Never putting a penny into their coffers or views on their stuff? 

I get what Loki was saying and I'm someone who tries my hardest to learn, grow and move with the times and call out abhorrent behaviour where I see it. 

It's clearly not a black and white thing and is pretty much as Keith said, wherever your draw your personal line. One person may never watch WWE again, another may protest by never putting money into their pockets, but may still enjoy the overall product and others may just not care at all. As mentioned, do you go with levels, such as Vince being a CEO, but it's you can give a pass to a Matt Riddle or a Jay Lethal etc? (Two names off the top of my head, not company specific). It all comes down to your personal line and everyone's will be different. 

I don't think anyone can tell another person whether they can or can't enjoy a product, but you can try to educate, which is something this forum does fantastically, I might add. 

[Loki]

2 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

Where is the line for you though (no Tone, not that line). Is there one?  It was one thing when we were younger and didn’t know about what went on off screen, but now? If you can separate what’s on TV from who is on TV as it were, then great. But knowing it’s a wrongun on the screen or the company is ran by wronguns with terrible practices? Not for me, Clive. 

The line?  Benoit.  Still not watched any of him since he killed his family.

 So do you not watch any WWE or AEW Keith, or do you skip the matches with wronguns?  Mikey presumably didn’t watch a minute of Wrestlemania but I reckon the rest of us did.  

I think it’s easier to just not hero worship any organisation, wrestler (or actor, musician) and that way you won’t have to re-evaluate your moral compass every time they turn out to be a sex offender.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Loki

[Keith Houchen]

3 minutes ago, Loki said:

So do you not watch any WWE or AEW Keith

I don’t, no. I may see a clip on my Twitter feed and whatnot but no, I don’t watch them because they’re run by cunts. 
 

I guess that’s my line, the owners. I get what you mean about yours though. and that’s fair enough. 

[Chris B]

7 minutes ago, Loki said:

The line?  Benoit.  Still not watched any of him since he killed his family.

That'll teach him. 

2 hours ago, Loki said:

Remember when everyone thought the NXT locker room were playing videogames after shows and it turned out they were filming each other banging each other’s girlfriends?  And then sharing the videos around?

Assuming you're talking about the Paige thing, everything about that seemed enthusiastically consensual. The only thing that wasn't was someone's phone getting hacked.

If you're talking about something else, or if it was a revenge porn situation, fair enough, but otherwise, that's not anything like those other things you talked about.