Monday, April 5, 2021

Will Ospreay, the Failures of Speaking Out, and the State of a Rotten World

Ospreay is a symptom, not the disease, but he's still a nasty one at that.
Photo Credit: NJPW1972.com

I have always believed in the maxim "When someone tells you who they are, believe them." What it means is that past decisions and actions by any entity, a person, a corporation, government, whatever, will be your guide when you're looking at what that entity might do when faced with a moral dilemma in the immediate present. For example, one shouldn't have needed to be surprised when WWE Hall of Famer Donald Trump stated that the tiki torch-wielding White supremacists who marched on Charlottesville, VA and murdered Heather Heyer in 2017 were "very fine people." His first brush with national reputation was when the Richard Nixon Administration fined him for discriminatory practices against Black renters on his properties, notable because that same administration was so racist itself that people within it admitted they began the hypercriminalization of drugs as a way to keep Black communities in check. Trump had repeatedly told you who he was when he took out a full page ad in New York newspapers to call for the executions of the entire Central Park Five, (maintaining their guilt even after DNA evidence exonerated them) or when he called Colin Kaepernick and other Black athletes who knelt during the National Anthem "sons of bitches."

Under that maxim, it should be no surprise that New Japan Pro Wrestling has dedicated their 2021 so far to building the star of one Will Ospreay. If you don't know about why he's such a sore spot in wrestling right now, you can read a detailed summary here. Basically, the biggest sticking-sore thumb is that Ospreay basically blackballed a woman from the British wrestling scene for the crime of speaking out about his mate raping her. There are other comparatively minor aggressions Ospreay has committed, as he's styled himself as some mob boss in the English wrestling scene, but stifling a woman was coming for her rapist, a rapist who happened to be one of Ospreay's friends and closest underbosses, should be enough to get someone all the way the fuck outta here. That was never going to be the case in New Japan because they already told you they don't give a shit about those things with past history.

The biggest example of foreshadowing in this case belongs with one Michael Elgin. When he was exposed as an abuser and a sex creep, his bookings in the company continued unabated. It wasn't until well after a year after those stories came out that he finished up with the company, and it's unclear whether his contract was allowed to lapse because he wanted too much money or because those accusations jeopardized the company's western expansion, which feels unlikely given other circumstances I'll get to later, but whatever the case is, he left far too long after that shitstorm was exposed for New Japan to get any credit for doing anything remotely close to be considered right thing. There's also the whole Tomoaki Honma domestic abuse allegation thing, one which Jim Ross and Dave Meltzer once laughed off accusing the accuser of being hysterical, as if the lovable loser on the low card really is the target you want to go after for extortion purposes. All that static faded into the background after Honma broke his neck in the ring. New Japan didn't think much of the accusations then, and they sure as hell don't think of them now that he's an inspirational comeback story.

If the "only" thing Will Ospreay did was exert political influence to keep someone one of his mates scarred for life from working in her chosen profession, you cannot reasonably expect New Japan to act with moral accordance. I mean, it's not like he was involved in any way in an extramarital affair. The above link mentioned that Taichi and TAKA Michinoku were involved in scandals as such and were viewed negatively by management for it, but the most famous example of someone who suffered because he was involved in an affair was Katsuyori Shibata. People in the know around wrestling spoke in whispers that the reason he never won the IWGP Championship during his active career was because he was involved in a prominent extramarital affair.Of course, that theory was never tested after April 9, 2017. A subdural hematoma suffered in his main event match for said title against Kazuchika Okada has effectively ended his career. Still, the fact that wrestlers like Shibata, Taichi, and Michinoku could suffer tangible consequences for an act that, while still morally wrong if viewed without context, involves two consenting adults while those who violated consent in some form or another walk scot-free says everything you need to know about the priorities of that company.

To pretend that this is a New Japan problem is laughable at best. Although Ospreay's mantel currently is the heaviest, he's not the only wrestler a company has given increased visibility and responsibility to after they were named in the widespread Speaking Out movement around this time last year. Matt Riddle was accused of assaulting a New York-area indie wrestler with whom he worked in EVOLVE. WWE saw those accusations and how Riddle, his wife, and his so-called attorney handled them, and they immediately pushed him further up the card on the main roster, where he currently resides as the United States Champion. All Elite Wrestling saw Darby Allin named by several accusers for mental and emotional abuse and have made him their de facto "homegrown" babyface on television, having him appear every week on Dynamite, allied with Sting and holding the TNT Championship.

If you think the wholesale response to Speaking Out has been indifference from the people who can make such a movement matter, you'd be wrong only inasmuch as indifference might have yielded better results. The total antipathy towards making wrestlers named by various accusers pay for their actions has jaded many fans in a form of entertainment that is already hemorrhaging viewers and fans thanks to how putrefied the industry leader has become to adults without an avenue to gain younger fans to replace them. There have been some positives to have come out of Speaking Out, sure. Ring Of Honor, though long past their "fresh by" date as a relevant promotion, jettisoned Marty Scurll, albeit with an embarrassingly long time between accusation and removal. David Starr, Mike Quackenbush, and other indie wrestlers named continue to be boxed out of bookings. Joey Ryan has had a show he tried to book using the cover of "charity" be sniffed out and snuffed out. Still, these small victories have been at local levels, and even then, wrestlers who have more a vested interest in protecting "the boys" instead of victims who just want a place to forget their traumas are trying to sneak these people chased out back in. You can see it already with people trying to fiat Tripp Cassidy back into the Indiana scene.

Wrestling on the whole needs to admit that it has a culture problem with regards to the abusers that proliferate the scene, but for them to do that, they would be the first industry worldwide to put their foot down. The world at-large has a problem with dealing with the abusers in its midst because abusers tend to have all the power. They even look out for the rapists and abusers who don't have any power to speak of, because if the low-level scumbags get caught, then there's a precedent for accountability, and that kind of accountability theoretically can propagate like a crack on a windshield. I say "theoretically" because I am not entirely sure a rich or powerful person has ever paid consequences for anything that didn't involve wholesale revolution.

And that's where the world sits right now. Will Ospreay is IWGP World Champion because rape culture is entrenched from the top down. You can cancel NJ World, a good idea don't get me wrong. Then you turn on WWE, and boom, there's Matt Riddle, or Austin Theory, or any number of British sex pests they handwaved and let stay on NXT UK.Switch over to AEW, and wow, it's Darby Allin prominently on the show every week, or sex-offender defender Ivelisse Velez, at least before she got into hot water with yet another wrestling company. You then turn off wrestling, but the NFL broadcast every Sunday in the fall and winter might feature any number of scumbags like Tyreek Hill or Ben Roethlisberger. The other sports might expose you to someone like Derrick Rose, Patrick Kane, or Aroldis Chapman. The movie channels still feature films by Woody Allen and Roman Polanski. Anywhere you go, whether locally, nationally, or worldwide, you find support structures for the worst of humanity for the sheer reason that they can do something that can be exploited for profit. They never pause to ponder the human cost of these practices, but that negligence is built into the economic system.

I have no real good way to close this blog entry because there's simultaneously no defensing the state of things and no real recourse outside of wholesale protest, which in a bourgeoisie country like the US where population centers are spread out and partially brainwashed to think government can't be overturned in a "civilized" country (forget that the French have been civilized longer than the US has and riots effectively every other week as if there were a schedule) can be a mixed bag at best and a temporary solution that backslides as soon as the public pressure wears off at worst. It's a real bummer that the torments of the world are so pervasive that they creep into the things folks use to get away from those torments. It's comforting that the tide is changing, but that change makes gradual look like Sonic the fucking Hedgehog.

Maybe the point is to recalibrate what it means to engage in entertainment, especially in wrestling. There is no unified theme to most of these shows anyway, so if you can't separate art from artist, there's nothing that says you have to watch the people who trigger bad memories. I hate that the onus has to be put on victims and the marginalized to make their experiences in dealing with the pain of living in order to make that analgesic palatable and effective. It's a hard reality in a world that makes it hard to live for anyone who isn't among the richest or most powerful. The alternative is going through life without any recourse for the heaping bullshit that comes your way from work and from the obstacles of living set by politicians with their heads stuck up the asses of lobbyists. That's absolutely no way to live.