Dark Side of the Ring

[909]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1438878972713050116

For some reason I always forget about this.

 

[King Kamala]

When Marty Jannetty was invited onto WrestlingClassics, first story he told was of them drugging a bunch of rowdy college kids on spring break circa '91 and ripping off the top of a female then shaving all of their heads (and Ultimate Warrior coming out from first class to aggressively purple nurple the female). And he did it as if it was some hilarious tale from the road.

Now as horrible of a cesspool as that place is and as much as I wish @BruiserBrody would never bring them up, I will give them credit for one thing and one thing only. Even in their mid-late '00s form, they were wise enough to be like "That's assault, brotha." and pretty much immediately banned Marty "Rocks Rocks Rocks Till He Drops Drops Drops (his homosexual weed dealer?)" Jannetty.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Damn as much as I hate sharing private stuff like that publicly, that kind of money seems excessive and like a bad precedent for journalism.

Not sure how to multi-quote so I apologize in advance for the next few posts all being mine,

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You have to punish a media company with a severe $$$ loss or nothing will deter them from being scummy in the future.

Had a company bought a secretly recorded Princess Di sex tape they'd rake in a huge financial load for it for example. You have to hit them where it hurts. (Had to take an extreme example to remove the LOL Orange Steroid Man from the thought process.)

Sex tapes are big business.

 

[BruiserBrody]

I didn’t think JR came off that bad. He was in an impossible situation. Vince was on the plane and delegated him to deal with everything, while at the same time Vince didn’t stop anything even though everyone in the front cabin knew what was going on. And at the same time Vince knew about everything that happened and only fired a few people, which is something else he delegated to JR and made him do.

Also keep in mind that there was an absolute wrestling monopoly at the time. This is why monopolies are bad. There was nowhere else for anyone to go get a job. Someone like JR has zero functional life skills to make a living outside of wrestling. The ringleader of the promotion clearly was okay with all of this happening, so what could he do? Some people I’ve seen on Twitter act like he or someone else could have been a lone crusader and stopped all these things, but if the big boss doesn’t care, then you can’t.

tl;dr this is all Vince’s fault. Linda was there too and she didn’t do shit.

A little too much of a off the cuff hot take. JR was a vice president of a billion dollar company. Yes it's fucking wrestling, but he could have transferred comfortably to a middle management role in sales somewhere else easily and raked in 6 figures. Not to mention his announcing pedigree. I'd suggest even sports talk radio would have been a path for a younger version of JR.
Yes I know JR lost his family business when he was given a chance to run it when he was a puppy in the 70s.

 

[BruiserBrody]

I just mean JR's demeanor in general is really offputting with so much of this stuff, not just this one. He was fucked bad in this instance, though. I just don't think he comes off well when he has to act like a human.

Also for a private plane full of giant hulking men to want to see the oldest guy dress in a sequin robe with nothing underneath and to talk about how massive his dick was is kinda gay.

I can see a sports oriented locker room finding their Hall of Famer who happens to still act like Tucker Max to be the highest on the pecking order of "cool."

Athletes fucking everything that moved was a long time badge of honor.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Also you could call what Stone Cold did rape too. You think ol Stone Cold wasn’t getting laid every night while beating Debra and keeping her prisoner? People’s imaginations aren’t vivid enough to get the whole picture without it being outright stated I guess.

THIS FUCKIN DUDE KEPT HIS WIFE PRISONER AND IS ALL OVER TV. NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

Unless you saw or read something different, Debra's interview on this subject suggested she was hit on 2 occasions and told Steve he had run out of chances and the next time she was struck she left him. I'm far from justifying this, just leveling out the hyperbole.
She did say one of the smacks came after turning down sex in a hotel room.
But Prisoner, sure.
Only in the sense that someone like my mother was I suppose. Living in a shit relationship and taking one for the team for 50 years. At least Debra got the fuck out pretty quickly.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Hogan just hosted WM. I wouldn’t say he’s like done done. In the real world he has faced minimal ramifications and if anything benefited from it.

He’s done with me though because I have no positive childhood memories of that dude anyway and I always hated his guts. He tried to steal Macho’s wife, he screwed Bret, he got all the NWO spotlight that Hall and Nash should have gotten. Fuck that orange motherfucker for real.

You just complained about Debra's situation, but then turned around and villainized Hogan for getting Liz out of a similar cycle.

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Not going to argue Hogan wanted to drop his third leg in Liz, but there isn't any evidence of that. Hogan did fuck everything that moved, so wanting the ultimate ultra male dick move of poking your friend/rivals wife isn't out of the realm of possibilities.

 

[909]

You just complained about Debra's situation, but then turned around and villainized Hogan for getting Liz out of a similar cycle.

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Not going to argue Hogan wanted to drop his third leg in Liz, but there isn't any evidence of that. Hogan did fuck everything that moved, so wanting the ultimate ultra male dick move of poking your friend/rivals wife isn't out of the realm of possibilities.

I was talking about in a wrestling context only man

 

[King Kamala]

A little too much of a off the cuff hot take. JR was a vice president of a billion dollar company. Yes it's fucking wrestling, but he could have transferred comfortably to a middle management role in sales somewhere else easily and raked in 6 figures. Not to mention his announcing pedigree. I'd suggest even sports talk radio would have been a path for a younger version of JR.
Yes I know JR lost his family business when he was given a chance to run it when he was a puppy in the 70s.

JR was a good enough broadcaster to do PBP for an NFL team and host a call in show on one of the biggest radio stations in the country. I feel like he definitely could have had a decent sports talk radio career if he ever decided to walk away.

And if he is to be believed (and again, he's someone who has spent half a century in wrestling so take him with a (NCAA regulation) football sized grain of salt), he would do the office work of 2 or 3 people in WWE so he probably would have been able to succeed in some other management field if he wanted to.

BUT I think he has a lot of psychological/emotional damage from his childhood that attracts him to the industry probably so Idk. Like on paper, it seems like he'd be more versatile if he HAD to work outside of wrestling than Bruce Prichard or Pat Patterson but those guys seem (or I guess SEEMED in Pat's case) stronger emotionally so Idk.

 

[909]

Unless you saw or read something different, Debra's interview on this subject suggested she was hit on 2 occasions and told Steve he had run out of chances and the next time she was struck she left him. I'm far from justifying this, just leveling out the hyperbole.
She did say one of the smacks came after turning down sex in a hotel room.
But Prisoner, sure.
Only in the sense that someone like my mother was I suppose. Living in a shit relationship and taking one for the team for 50 years. At least Debra got the fuck out pretty quickly.

I would definitely call her a prisoner. And I think people's concept of abuse is a little bit warped too. If she had sex with him at any point after this shit do you think she did it because she felt like she had to? Well I mean obviously the answer is yes and what does that mean? I think everyone can put two and two together.

 

[Valeyard]

I can see a sports oriented locker room finding their Hall of Famer who happens to still act like Tucker Max to be the highest on the pecking order of "cool."

Athletes fucking everything that moved was a long time badge of honor.

 

[King Kamala]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1439039936892743684

The Coach just got Bix'd!

 

[geniusMoment]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1439039936892743684

The Coach just got Bix'd!

Former TSMer Bix!

 

[King Kamala]

 

[snuffbox]

I'm not quite convinced that blaming Jim Ross and turning one's self into a pretzel to properly worship Hulk Hogan is the best solution to anything.

 

[BruiserBrody]

----

I was over at @King Kamala's favorite site reading their reaction. Mostly it was the expected outrage. One guy wants Billy Corgan to strip Flair of his fake World title wins.
This was the winner:

Stuff like this makes me wish a plane load of wrestlers would sink into the ocean. Seriously, are they all this scummy? How do you remove the carnies from wrestling? Oh and f*ck the Undertaker for being Vince's little lapdog and wagging his tail for that Saudi bone. I'm not ashamed to say I'll be pleased when Vince, Dunn and MARK croak.

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Is Dark Side of the Pod coming out? I assume it is going to be on the My World feed but last I checked it wasn't there.

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\

 

[Epic Springs]

Well I agree with the 4th sentence.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Credible took a much different tone to the Flair stuff and other adventures in this shoot.

 

[geniusMoment]

According to Dave VKM wasn't on the flight:

So just to give a rundown on what Dave said about Vince being on the flight.

-He was told by multiple people the week that Plane Ride happened that a big reason why this whole mess happened was because Vince wasn't there.

-He emphasizes that he doesn't think people are lying when they say Vince was on the flight. It's just a situation where if you have to recall something that happened twenty years ago, you're going to misremember things.

-It COULD be a situation where people are conflating multiple flights together, because there were flights that Vince was on that got bad. There were three different flights where bad shit went down. While the Plane Ride from Hell was probably the worst of all at the time, there were other flights that got way out of hand back then.

-He contacted multiple people who were on the flight (after the episode aired). The person who he feels would have the best memory of the whole situation was emphatic that Vince wasn't there. While the ones who told him that he was there, weren't totally sure.

 

[snuffbox]

Fair enough, must be one of those Mandela Effects. But the buck still stops there. And his choices following that flight were entirely his own.

 

[King Kamala]

Yeah. I never got the impression that Vince was actually on the flight and one of the reasons JR was so overwhelmed is because he was the one who was technically in charge (although wasn’t Linda on the flight?)

 

[HarleyQuinn]

According to Dave VKM wasn't on the flight:

-He contacted multiple people who were on the flight (after the episode aired). The person who he feels would have the best memory of the whole situation was emphatic that Vince wasn't there. While the ones who told him that he was there, weren't totally sure.

It's been proven that memory can be very unreliable so I'm curious why Meltzer would believe a specific individual's recollection over a collective group. I can also easily see Vince having a "boys will be boys" attitude and his sending JR to the back as a problem solved wipe the hands clean kind of action.

 

[BruiserBrody]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1439233286920974343

 

[909]

JR has always said that Vince was on the plane. Linda was too. The flight attendant also said that Vince was on the plane. I believe completely that he was on the plane. If you can't trust her story then..........


Also, not to be a captain obvious, but Vince and JR sat in the same part of the plane. This is according to JR. It was them, Linda, Heyman, and Terri. Vince also never went back there to deal with the wrestlers. It is very likely people think he wasn't on the plane and told people he wasn't on the plane just because he didn't do anything and they never saw him. JR also said that when they landed Vince immediately told him who to get rid of and who to punish. How would that happen if he wasn't there? I think we can take JR's word for it because he said that everything mentioned in this episode happened as the flight attendant stated, as Terri stated, as has always been stated, etc.

 

[geniusMoment]

I'm thinking VKM wasn't on the flight. Coach goes into detail on the layout of the plane on twitter.

Also, I've heard people saying VKM had to be on it because he wrestled Kurt Angle. Look at the twitter exchange below with Sean Ross Sapp. Angle couldn't have been on the plane as he was wrestling at the time of the plane ride from hell. I think people are mixing up plane rides here.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1439006580972785666

 

[King Kamala]

Yeah but Coach got Bixed then apologized to him for getting it wrong.

 

[geniusMoment]

But, if you go through his twitter he seems to have the clearest recollection of anyone I've heard. Even explaining the layout of the plane and the other sports teams that used it.

Plus, it would make sense that VKM would only go over for TVs, not the entire 10 day trip.


Also, to be clear with what I posted earlier about Dave Meltzer. He's not going on what people are telling him now. His 2002 report from the Wrestling Obverver said VKM wasn't on the flight. Not saying it's impossible he was wrong. But, now you're talking about believing people right after a flight or people remembering things 20 years later.

 

[909]

Meltzer wouldn't necessarily be wrong if none of his sources saw Vince and as such didn't know he was on the plane.

 

[geniusMoment]

Below is the Wrestling Observer Radio show on it:

 

[snuffbox]

Does it really matter? On the plane, off the plane, it is either McMahon's fault & responsibility, or another exercise in increasingly bizarre rationalizations to defend him and deflect.