Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Sasha Banks Vs. The Reporters

Banks refuted a bad dirtsheet report that you should've sniffed out as phony from the get-go
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Sasha Banks returned from her what is now known as a self-imposed hiatus from WWE the night after SummerSlam. While she was gone, people went on rumors and whispers thinking she was unhappy with the company. It turns out that wasn't the case, for better or worse. Even I bought the rumors to an extent. However, one of the more pernicious whispers said that she left in a hissy-fit after carrying on along with Bayley on the locker room and hotel room floors because they were booked to lose the Women's Tag Team Championships at WrestleMania. The two proponents of that report were Pro Wrestling Sheet's Ryan Satin and self-styled wrestling scoopster at-large, Brad Shepard.

Banks made no overtures to confirm or deny those reports until an episode of Chronicle aired on WWE Network Saturday night for the first time. Banks spoke on the supposed incident and asked for the people who reported on it to produce video or audio proof. It was an emphatic denial. Satin at the time claimed that "a few sources" told him. If I had to guess, it was Lana and Alexa Bliss who gave that info, but that's only as speculative as the reports about Banks and Bayley after their Mania loss.

Now, the converse of the issue isn't that maybe Satin and Shepard were right, but that this is another case of a person with more power and influence punching down at people who aren't worth the time of day, much like when Peyton Royce rallied the troops to dump on Dave Meltzer when he said WWE pushed her to "be hotter" before she made the main roster and then commented on the change in look. Honestly, I don't see it as similar to that situation, although Meltzer's lack of awareness was bound to get him in trouble sooner rather than later. It's just a shame it was in that situation and not from when he along with Jim Ross callously accused Tomoaki Honma's partner of making up abuse allegations.

In this case, Satin and ESPECIALLY Shepard have track records of targeting POC and female wrestlers for no other reason than bigotry. Satin's coverage of WWE is way more access-based than anyone except perhaps another stooge in Justin Barrasso. Also, he was one of the cavalry coming to the defense of Michael Elgin when the person he abused and that one of his students raped came looking for justice. Shepard, on the other hand, is way out of pocket on his bullshit. As far back as 2016, he went in on Kofi Kingston celebrating a milestone because he thought Kingston was playing "the race card." In recent history, he's come down hard on women's wrestling, criticizing WWE's push of it, not for reasons like "they're not serious about it" and "it feels like tokenism," but "women are inferior and boring." And what does he have to hang his hat on? Breaking the return of the XFL? A football league? He's got a worse track record than literally anyone who self-styles as a reporter.

But what is the value of a wrestling report? A certain sect of Wrestling Twitter gives so much respect and credence to reporting that is only accurate when reporting on things the companies give as press releases, and better preference is given to having it first rather than having it right. It's how Shepard can use getting one non-wrestling piece of news concerning a wrestling personality to catapult himself to being a newsman who basically only uses his bully pulpit to spew grotesque sexism. Is that really what should really have value? If Shepard were right more than once every never, would his ghastly opinions be more valid? This is a question some people have to ask themselves.

That's the biggest reason why Banks potentially punching down in this case might not be the worst thing. Then again, she didn't mention the people by name. Even if she did, would a dogpile on a gross misogynist like Shepard, who doubled down on bashing Banks in his response and slammed Satin for issuing an apology, be such a bad thing? The worst thing would be Banks using the media arm of a company that has done things a billion times worse than even Shepard has done, and I get that. I also like seeing gross people get what's coming to them. Maybe it's for the best that Banks didn't mention him by name. Maybe Shepard will catch a ban from Twitter or something else that he deserves.

The reality is that the people running news sites and reporting on wrestling don't do a good enough job to be as transparently awful as people, but then again, how much do you have to get right to warrant the levels of putridity that someone like Shepard displays on a regular basis? How many stories do you have to break in order to get a pass for enabling an abuser and the rapist he's protecting like Satin? The real answer is nothing excuses that, but sadly, if you tell people what they want to hear in terms of "backstage gossip," those levels of accuracy can fall way lower than 100 percent. Still, the fact that they'd bite on an obviously phony-sounding story about two POC female wrestlers shows their asses a lot, and it shows the asses of everyone who bought it without question as a smear of either one of those two wrestlers.