Pat Patterson passes away at the age of 79

[King Kamala]

I mean I consider Bret Hart to be one of the most honest guys in wrestling and he said Pat Patterson was unfairly railroaded during the sexual abuse scandal in the early ‘90s.


It is hard to distinguish line between old school wrestling ribs and straight up sexual abuse sometimes tbh.

 

[alkeiper]

Gay men are frequently non monogamous so I don’t buy the WWE Stan argument that Pat couldn’t have possibly done these things cause he had a long term partner.

Pat himself stated in his autobiography he wasn't monogamous.

 

[Brocklock]

Yeah but anyone that has been best buds with Vince for so long probably is a tad of a predator. It's hard to really be positive towards anyone in that era on a personal level.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if some of these ribs were legitimate sexual/physical abuse. Think about the stories about Ric Flair openly flashing women or running around nude that other wrestlers just go, "Oh, Ric was just being Ric Flair." Pranks like what Owen would do I consider ribs but when you start going into other territory (think some of the JBL horror stories) there really isn't a 'hard to distinguish line' for me personally.

Knowing wrestling and the 70s/80s era, I find it harder to believe that Patterson was a complete innocent and nothing ever happened. I can buy that he got railroaded in 1992 but where there's smoke, there's usually some fire.

 

[Aero]

Commentator Vince going nuts over Bret decking Pat in this video is always one of the first things I think of with Pat Patterson. Maybe it actually fits better in the thread than I thought it would. At 4:24 if it doesn't autostart start there.

 

[AA484]

Commentator Vince going nuts over Bret decking Pat in this video is always one of the first things I think of with Pat Patterson. Maybe it actually fits better in the thread than I thought it would. At 4:24 if it doesn't autostart start there.

I think Vince said the same thing when Austin hit him at Over the Edge but I may be misremembering.

 

[Valeyard]

In fairness Al Perez destroyed his career by being stupid.

I always felt like a lot of these allegations didn't get taken as seriously because they came from job guys. It's weird.

 

[alkeiper]

I'm in the category of believing abusers. The problem with Patterson is a great deal of it is rumors/innuendo and I don't know if anyone directly abused is on the record. Combine that with the general bigotry experienced by homosexuals and it's hard to know what is true and what's not. If I had to guess I would imagine some level of harassment at least. But I didn't know him. How do you judge a person's reputation and life?

 

[Valeyard]

Also relying on ribbing "boys will be boys" as any kind of rationalization for any kind of allegations like this is fucking gross.

 

[BruiserBrody]

The Al Perez story in that video seems sort of real. It fits too, because Perez had the type of look of a guy that Vince would at least feature on television and he was nothing but a job guy and was out of the company super fast. It's gonna be hard to know what really happened, but I think some more stuff will come out of this in the next few years.

Vince also squandered Barry Windham and other talents who would be pushable via look alone (Spivey, McGee, etc) so one doesn't have to equal one necessarily.

Theoretically there should be a smoking gun to prove the push would/did occur for others if they had performed favors so to speak.

Perez did nothing in JCP in 1988 either. Did Dusty want his dick sucked?

 

[BruiserBrody]

Also relying on ribbing "boys will be boys" as any kind of rationalization for any kind of allegations like this is fucking gross.

Wrestlers fucked teenage girls every night of the 1980s. A different world.

Wrestlers injected Matilda with drugs and steroids for LULZ.

And so on....

 

[BruiserBrody]

Fucking Bradshaw is straight and he was soaping up geeks for the LULZ in 1999! Patterson fucking with guys heads seems perfectly rational in a business full of drugged up, paranoid, alpha males.

The Atlanta Falcons in 1991 made Brett Favre and a black team mate sing "Ebony and Ivory" naked in the locker room/shower for LULZ. It wasn't a gay thing, it was hazing.

 

[Valeyard]

That makes it less gross how?

 

[909]

This kind of rationalization for bad things is why they lasted for so long.

 

[AA484]

Can we just say a guy is dead and leave it at that? There isn't anything strong enough to sway me either way but it seems like people are hesitant to even say he was influential within WWE for 30+ years for fear of someone reporting them to Bix for cancellation. Did Patterson do some of the things he was accused of? I don't know. I'm with Al -- maybe he did some of it, maybe he didn't, but nobody is holding him up as a paragon of virtue either way.

 

[Brocklock]

This thread is going in a gross direction (I've helped contributed to that by getting wrapped up in this garbage) so I'm going back into the Tugboat thread for sanctuary. I don't want to get in an argument over someone who may or may not be a sexual predator. Best for me to just ignore this shit and stay to trying to post "funny" stuff not just for the sake of the board, but for myself. So I'm not letting this stuff control my day due to all my personal shit going on.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

Can we just say a guy is dead and leave it at that? There isn't anything strong enough to sway me either way but it seems like people are hesitant to even say he was influential within WWE for 30+ years for fear of someone reporting them to Bix for cancellation. Did Patterson do some of the things he was accused of? I don't know. I'm with Al -- maybe he did some of it, maybe he didn't, but nobody is holding him up as a paragon of virtue either way.

I said he was incredibly influential and RIP and all that stuff but I also don't think it's unfair to point out that he may (or may not) have had some questionable history. Especially when it pertains to the actual industry that he built his career and reputation with. I'm not saying 'CANCEL' but guys doing bad stuff shouldn't just be swept under the rug or ignored because that's just the way it was back in the day. That's part of their legacy, good and bad.

And when a Ric Flair or Hulk Hogan pass, I'm gonna do the same thing in my posts for them. Fantastic wrestlers, beyond influential to the industry, and had some very questionable baggage.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Y'all better bring it when Flair dies.

 

[Brocklock]

Flair is one of the worst people in the business so I will.

 

[909]

When Flair dies, there will be so many stories about him calling people racial slurs that...yeah, there will be a lot to be said.

 

[AA484]

When Flair dies, there will be so many stories about him calling people racial slurs that...yeah, there will be a lot to be said.

There are already a lot of those stories!

 

[AA484]

I said he was incredibly influential and RIP and all that stuff but I also don't think it's unfair to point out that he may (or may not) have had some questionable history. Especially when it pertains to the actual industry that he built his career and reputation with. I'm not saying 'CANCEL' but guys doing bad stuff shouldn't just be swept under the rug or ignored because that's just the way it was back in the day. That's part of their legacy, good and bad.

And when a Ric Flair or Hulk Hogan pass, I'm gonna do the same thing in my posts for them. Fantastic wrestlers, beyond influential to the industry, and had some very questionable baggage.

And that's very fair.

 

[Mickey Massuco]

This kind of rationalization for bad things is why they lasted for so long.

was waiting for a post like this. A lot of bad takes itt

Really need to know if I should retract my sad emoji from the first post.

Makes me look like an asshole as the only one, too.

Retract it.

 

[King Kamala]

See the other wrestling board I am on is opposite where they are all looking at Pat with rose colored glasses and talking about what a huge loss it is.

You can acknowledge that it is a loss for his friends and family (and it seems like had a bunch of the former) and talking about his massive while bringing up the allegations of wrongdoing.

 

[Brocklock]

I don't want to keep coming back to this thread, but this place is thankfully usually very negative to controversial wrestlers. I remember a lot of Flair is terrible stories rightfully being posted in the thread when he nearly died a few years ago. The Fuji and Snuka threads were filled with similar stuff. It's a reason I like posting here because I might get physically ill seeing people pretend like some of these people are great human beings.

edit: why did I read the PWO thread on this. That board is so spineless since all the regular posters with a personality left and all the regulars now are rejects from TOTSM.

 

[AA484]

I don't want to keep coming back to this thread, but this place is thankfully usually very negative to controversial wrestlers. I remember a lot of Flair is terrible stories rightfully being posted in the thread when he nearly died a few years ago. The Fuji and Snuka threads were filled with similar stuff. It's a reason I like posting here because I might get physically ill seeing people pretend like some of these people are great human beings.

edit: why did I read the PWO thread on this. That board is so spineless since all the regular posters with a personality left and all the regulars now are rejects from TOTSM.

Sorry for quoting you in a thread you are trying to avoid but PWO is weird in that they seem to want to acknowledge shitty behaviour and then disregard it in others. With that said, there are still some good guys over there. However, others take wrestling really, really seriously and that manifests itself in different ways, not all of them good.

 

[snuffbox]

I think we can all agree that Pat Patterson is dead.

And some of us here might want to reconsider some posts in the Kobe Bryant thread.

 

[909]

FWIW the Pat Patterson allegations have a distinct absence of proof. The guy who accused Terry Garvin has stated that Pat Patterson never did anything. There is not a kid who said Pat Patterson did anything to them. And Roddy Piper was not even remotely a reliable source for anything.

The accusations about Pat Patterson are rooted in latent homophobia the same way Kobe's was rooted in racism. People are so quick to judge people that belong in groups that are minorities in society, and they believe everything that those people wind up being accused of. It's fucking crazy. Of course the wrestling business is going to assume that any prominent gay person fucks kids, and they're going to spread innuendo about them fucking kids. There is literally no proof and not even one single person other than Piper who said that Pat Patterson molested anyone. I don't know why people still believe the Kobe allegations when the police department literally made shirts where Kobe was depicted being lynched.

It's some of the other stuff we know happened that is being rationalized here that is pretty gross. When you know that other wrestlers were being perverts because everyone has said so, and you rationalize it because it was a "different world", idk what's wrong with you. The wrestling business is full of the biggest scumbags on the fucking planet. You shouldn't just assume that someone did something because one racist, bigoted piece of trash told you that they did. And yeah I'm saying that about guys like Piper because it's true. Sorry if it hurts anyone's feelings.

My post about rationalizing stuff was largely related to the Bradshaw defending and that kind of thing. But in an effort to root out actual problems with stuff, people are becoming way too quick to believe absolutely anything about others who are accused of something.

 

[909]

Also, I did just see the Tom Cole thing, but a settlement is also not proof of anything. A gay dude in 1992 is going to do whatever it takes to stay out of a court room so that he isn't judged on a case like that. Obviously Pat Patterson did some creepy shit based on the stories that other people have told, but jumping straight to "this guy is a pedophile" is some QAnon shit that I didn't expect to read here.

Now if there's a dam breaking of sorts over the next few weeks, then obviously it's a lot different.

 

[909]

Also, I dunno why I'm still going, but when Linda was running for office and fortunately lost, Tom Cole said this:

"I can truly say without hesitation I’m thankful for how Linda handled my situation. Without me going out into the world and finding myself, god knows where I'd be," reads the email. The two alleged harassers, he continued, "were fired for there actions and they NEVER returned to the Company. That alone is more than most Companies would do now (let alone 20yrs ago) I'm sending a check to Linda's campaign fund this evening. She is after all my favorite type of Politician...Fiscally Sound. As a life long Republican I hope she wins."

Note that he didn't mention or reference Pat Patterson. Obviously I hate WWE and am quick to shit on them at every opportunity, but I don't really see it in the case of Pat Patterson. He may not have been a saint but he didn't do anything that I would immediately jump to say that he was a pedophile, that I know about anyway.