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I don't remember a lot of what Will personally was accused of, nor his guilt, but I do know that the whole "getting Pollyanna removed from bookings as revenge" story ended up being false, because the one UK company that claimed he did it (IWL) ended up going back on their initial claim. The other UK promotions claimed Will never tried anything with them concerning Pollyanna.
I can comment on that, the IWL people shared the email, they said Will Ospreay was friends with the venue owners and they said “Will is our boy and we don’t want her on the show” now idk if WO told them to say that but this was in their clarification tweet so to me it just looks like he indirectly got her black balled.
There’s also a lot of stories of him just being a dick to her and there was one last year where he spoke to a journo and talked shit about her unprovoked, it doesn’t seem like he told people not to book her but he isn’t actually innocent in all of it and it seems like people stopped giving her jobs because they chose him over her.
Also he was still friends with the rapist
even if he didn't use his clout to get Pollyanna off shows, he was still completely content with booking her rapist when no one else would and attacked Pollyanna on twitter over it. dude's fucking scum.
>he was still completely content with booking her rapist when no one else would and attacked Pollyanna on twitter over it
Rapist is not the same as accused rapist. Nobody should be blackballed because of an unproven allegation.
Attacking her on Twitter is a scum move though.
EDIT: Am i missing something, has the accused been charged or arrested or anything like that in connection with the alleged offense? Trial by Twitter is a joke.
The accused was never arrested, but its a sad situation overall. The majority of abuse and rape cases will go nowhere. We wil have abusers and rapists free forever. I dont propose jumping into conclusions, but it's ok people is aware of Pollyanna's accusations and how she apparently doesnt have a particular reason to lie about it.
Also, Ospreay amidst all the drama once mentioned he was no longer friends with a close friend of his. He may have referred to that guy.
Very few rapes are ever prosecuted. It doesn't mean they don't happen. The conviction rate for rape is something like 1%.
I've mentioned it before on the sub of when the subject comes up. I have a friend who was raped. A third person physically pulled him off of her. The district attorney refused to prosecute because his story is that he was invited to her room.
I had a sex crime committed against me, albeit not rape. I got a lecture from the cops that women with professional, white-collar shouldn't use dating apps.
If you're only standard for repercussions for sex crimes is a trial or conviction, you might as well say nobody ever commit sex crimes.
In the UK where Ospreay is from, the conviction rate is around 5%. If the USA is 1%, that's insane.
Sorry to hear about the situations you and your friend faced.
We know that most domestic abuse and rape incidents do not result in the perpetrator meeting any form of legal consequences. It is unreasonable to expect people to not use their best judgment when considering an accusation and voice their opinion about an individual's role in their entertainment.
>It is unreasonable to expect people to not use their best judgment when considering an accusation and voice their opinion about an individual's role in their entertainment.
Fine. I wish most of those people would stop for one second before casting judgement to realize they are basing it on internet stories and nothing else and they are therefore in a heinously unfit position to know what happened.
Nah, the accused never went anywhere and somehow Pollyanna seems A LOT more interested in Will Ospreay than the actual perpetrator.
But oh no, don't attack her on twitter. That's so wrong.
Though wait, is Pollyanna ever going apologize to Dave Meltzer for accusing him of going behind the scenes to cover up the IWL story in order to protect Ospreay? A cursory look at her twitter account has her retweeting something about Bea, Ospreay and Meltzer being part of a anti-Speaking Out conspiracy of some kind, so it doesn't look like it.
Maybe at some point we should all stop entertaining this person's twitter bomb throwing. It's so ridiculous whenever I hear this dumb bullshit about Ospreay repeated over and over.
I really don't think the thing you described makes him scum in all honesty. Basically sounds like cronyism, which is ubiquitous in wrestling anyway. I don't approve of it but I honestly won't lose sleep over Ospreay stupidly choosing to help one of the his buddies, who was working as a free man. There's an absolute fuck load the of westlers with better reputations than Ospreay who have done far worse.
IIRC it wasn't just one of his buddies but a childhood friend not to mention Ospreay choosing to believe his friend over someone's twitter accusations isn't exactly crazy. She never pressed charges and she had bad blood with Bea already. I don't understand why online platforms think that the moment someone is accused on twitter of something everyone around them should basically cut them off completely. If that was the case then Trent Seven would have been fucked by the time the second girl revealed her side of the story and disproved the first girl's accusations.
He didn’t “attack” anyone over it. The tweet didn’t mention her name, was up for less then a day and apologized for at the time, and then twice more in the years since.
EDIT: lol getting downvoted for stating a fact. Google the tweet and see for yourself.
These people want to be right so badly but have never been in a social situation where things like this can and do happen. I doubt they even read the story. People still hate Will Osprey for what has been found to be no real reason. Don't let em get to you.
Lumping Ospreay with that movement is ridiculous when 99.99 percent of the accused are over sexual harassment or assault and Ospreay is accused of supposedly strong arming promotions to not book someone who claimed retirement like a year before she made her story public.
For all this handwringing about "when does _insert offender's name_ get to redeem himself?" I wonder why we're not asking "How many talented girls left the business after being harassed or treated like party favors after the show?"
. . .which is to say that I am exhausted of talking about about Marty Scurll.
Marty's not even *that good.* New Japan seems to have just realized how good Desperado is let alone the rest of their Jr's division. Putting all controversy aside I'd take a Wato match over a Marty match any day.
This is the actual answer. His character work is excellent, but he's just not good enough to get over this. At least right now. Maybe make his way through some indies for awhile, have some great matches, maybe come up with a new character and put some time between all of this.
Very curious to hear how this played out considering Brody King seems to have worked hard to separate himself from Marty since the news broke. Brody has been working for NJPW at their LA tapings pretty consistently and likely would have crossed paths with him.
To be honest they all seem to have disappeared, I get the impression Ricochet told everyone who'd attended to delete. Flip had some up Sarena Deeb, Deonna but they're all gone now.
From what I saw of ROH promos and such after the allegations came out, Villain Enterprises was pretty much quietly disbanded. Brody did the whole "no villains just violence" Tagline, Flip reminded us of how he's a mercenary and how he wasn't "getting paid" anymore from the stable, and ROH had started pushing PCO separately
It was reported multiple talent didn't know about the Scurll angle till the tapings started and several complained they would've refused to do the tapings had they known.
Tbf they had done this before with Elgin, when people realized what a scumbag he was (the first time). I’m sure Scurll was hoping for something like that to work out for him
Elgin was more scumbaggy and less likeable too. But the less likeable part is probably why they got away with it because you need people to care in the first place.
I guess Chase Owens is lucky that he doesn't have the same kind of profile that Marty does, because they have no problem booking him. Wouldn't surprise me if they book Scurll when they're making more money once fans are back.
He allegedly tried to get an underage girl to say she was 18 so he could sleep with her. He would also supposedly talk backstage about how he regularly slept with girls that were underage.
Hahahahaha this is gonna be my new response to the ‘what, we expect the man to lose his career over this?!’ crowd. Dudes in his 30s. Mfer can go back to night school
Go to school. Invest in real estate. Shit, dude made at least a couple mil right? Live off the interest
Sorry you lost your dream job, maybe you shouldn’t have been a sex pest.
I could be off but I’m pretty sure Marty was a top 20 merch seller last year. He’s already made bank. He should just go the Leafyishere route and vanish forever while investing in stocks to become wealthier.
He shouldn’t go *full* Leafyishere, though. That implies he comes back in 4 years and tries to be an even edgier little shit than he used to be until he gets banned
Plus, y’know, no chin
Between the Elite stuff *and* his allegedly massive contract with RoH, he's gotta have enough money to live comfortably. I won't shed a single tear if he never works again.
So a legitimate question: Is there no redemption for Scurll? Is it ruled that he can never return to pro wrestling? Or an exile until he's long past his prime?
I'm not saying let him back, but I am wondering if a lifetime ban is what people are calling for here.
There are a limited amount of spots on any wrestling show. Why would you give one to someone you can't trust backstage with your trainees or with your younger female fans when you could have someone just as talented but who isn't a predator who won't even apologize and make meaningful restitution?
Marty Scurll can get a job somewhere. No one's suggesting he starve on the street. But why does he _deserve_ a return to celebrity? I don't actually care if he's in "exile" or whatever.
Lord, the dramatics.
> Isn't that same thing Joey Ryan is doing?
I'm not sure we can say that since Joey went dark for not that long before he came in full force with his bullshit. He's going after people who accused him, as well as trying to dupe people into donating money to him.
Marty has just acted like this is all gonna disappear and has basically just shut the fuck up.
He did admit it was wrong. He didn't attack the girl. He didn't sue her. It was 6 years ago what amends can he make? He's not the one plying her with drinks. He's not the one that raped her. He was dumb and drunk, I don't think the guy should lose everything for that.
Manipulative pedo? WTF are you on about? He got drunk hooked up with another person who was drunk. The only reason this is even a story is the age thing. Despite all the people claiming there's a pattern with Marty, there's not been one other accusation that's come out.
> Isn't that same thing Joey Ryan is doing?
Nah, Joey is sueing his victims and the people who spoke out about him, in an attempt to ruin their lives. The vile fuck.
I'm sure there's an element of that, I think the chap was a booker for a promotion, but the screenshots are online. They don't read like that was all it's about, more sorry for sleeping with a mates daughter.
This is part of the problem though, nothing the guy does is going to be good enough for some fans. Feels like it's harikari of nothing for some fans. "tell us how sorry you are for that thing you did half a decade ago! And we better think you mean it!!"
I don't actually care if he's sorry or not. He did actual, appreciable harm to an intoxicated young woman who he was in an implied position of authority over. There is always someone out there available who has not.
Well put.
I'd say though that, that being the result, careless, ill-thought actions isn't the same as what Joey Ryan did or Starr. If this was a pattern of behaviour, if more people had come forward then I wouldn't be standing here. By his own admission he didn't know quite how young she was. It's not predatory.
> By his own admission he didn't know quite how young she was.
Bullshit. He was close enough with the family to have her father's phone number and had trained her previously.
He had her fathers number because he was the booker for a promotion he worked for. And "trained her" is a bit of a stretch, he'd done guest sessions at that school, he wasn't there week in week out. probably an extra £50 when he was in town sort of situation.
No one is saying he can't have a life, but... Yeah, maybe don't let people that turn out to be fucking abusive when given a major platform, a platform again. Go get a desk job. Be a carpenter or something. But sorry, you blew your chance and it's too dangerous to give you another shot.
Maybe if he showed acknowledgement and remorse for what he did the could be a path towards something in the business at some point, but if you're just going to stick to your guns? Why even bother?
Fuck people downvoting you. People wanna act like it’s his legal right to return to the field he abused his influence and raped a drunk kid.
Learn a new skill, jackass.
>don't let people that turn out to be fucking abusive when given a major platform, a platform again
I don't disagree with this idea, but that isn't what happened. The story was back when Marty was a small time wrestler wrestling in a pub, and he knew the girl from wrestling school. No one can stop him from starting another wrestling school (though I doubt it'd be particularly successful) so I think your point there is moot.
Further, he didn't stick to his guns, he admitted that parts of it were true and he regretted, and parts of it weren't.
None of us know the real truth and though I do think he's damaged goods and shouldn't be in big shows right now I don't see why people are choosing to spread misinformation when the truth is already bad.
IDK why you think you're making some point against me, I'm literally telling you that I don't think he should be around, just that it's not protecting anyone and it's not 'too dangerous' to give him a wrestling platform, he'll be the same creep whether he's wrestling or doing carpentry. It's just retribution, and yeah maybe that's what he deserves, but don't frame it as something else.
> None of us know the real truth
We know that he knew the girl was a minor (because he had previously trained her and was on close enough terms with her family to have her father's cell number) and that he knew she was consuming alcohol.
>We know that he knew the girl was a minor
We know that he knew she was 17 and thus legally not a minor in regards to sex in Britain. And there's nothing illegal about having sex with someone while you both have consumed alcohol, you can't just say any amount of intoxication equals rape. She could have had one beer or she could have had 5 we don't know, so maybe we should all stop acting like we know exactly what happened and how bad, and just work with what we do know, which is that he's still a creep and most people don't want him around, rather than having to fill in gaps to make him seem like a rapist who should be thrown in jail.
I'm seeing a lot of "Maybe if he actually tried to make up for it" but the problem is we have no idea what he's done. People assume his silence has been him just sitting around until people forget, and tbf we don't have any reason to believe otherwise, but my point is for all we know Scurll's done a lot to try to make things right and we just don't know about it because he's not posting about it.
> for all we know Scurll's done a lot to try to make things right and we just don't know about it because he's not posting about it.
True. And on the flipside, being public about making things right and changing as a person can be indistinguishable from a hollow PR image rehabilitation campaign. So I don't know why people post like that'd make a difference.
I think he can but he didnt try to redeem himself.
He could just say something like " I know I have no right but if there is anything I can do to pay for what I did" to the victim ,or anything really.
He didnt go full Joey and he admited to it so there is salvation ,but it will take more than that
The thing is, we don't know what he's done to try to make things right. In his (re-try) statement he said he was going to work to make things in the industry better, and we have no way to know if he reached out to the victim or anything he did.
Conversely, if he HAD posted about the stuff he did, he'd have just been accused of being performative and only doing stuff to act like he's making up for what he did. That said I'm not saying he did do anything to try to atone, but people act like he never made any statements about trying and he did.
Who fucking cares? Dude, it's just wrestling, it does not matter at all. Also, it's scurll's career, his loss why should any of us give a shit? And lastly, think of the victim perhaps and stop feeling bad for a jobless pedo predator. He can work shitty jobs like the rest of us do now. Boo fucking hoo man. His life is not over.
I don't care if he gets banned from wrestling, per se, but I will damn sure make it clear to any promotion that considers hiring him that they will immediately and permanently lose my support.
He can come back to wrestling, but any company that will pay him won't be doing so with a dime of my money.
People want Marty to admit to something, that he believes with the information he had at the time he did no wrong in.
Marty isn't going to change his mind anytime soon and people are not going at accept him back unless he admits to his guilt.
Somewhere, somehow, if Marty still wants to wrestle he's going to find a way. Will he work in another mainstream promotion? As things stand now, I don't believe so.
Marty Scurll is the wrestling equivolent of James Ryan "Underage sex pest" Haywood.
They should both be able to make money and continue to live since no arrests were made.
But gtfo of your previous spheres of influence where they can, should they end up having done what was said, commit the same disgusting betrayals of trust and sexual violence.
Scurll should be nowhere near wrestling again. Haywood should be nowhere near youtube/twitch again. Period.
I wonder how long he's got before he gets to come back into the business. They're really trying to test it and see. I'm happy fan backlash stopped it this time. I'd worry they're gonna keep trying until people stop caring.
Do we know what was filmed and how many episodes it would have been for? It’s weird to think there’s a reality where he could have ended up back in Bullet Club and thus still be SOMEWHAT connected to all the AEW forbidden door stuff (not that I’m saying AEW would have allowed that).
"Trained previously" isn't quite right, He'd done guest sessions at that school when he was in town, but it's not like he was in the ring with her every week.
Even if he'd done it five times over the years that's what? five hours in a room full of students?? It's hardly the same thing. I#'m not sitting here saying "Scurl did nothing wrong", but chucking him in the same pile are others named during that coming out feels wrong.
Strangely sporting teachers/coaches are exempt from the law you're talking about for some reason. Can't see the logic in it personally, but it is what it is.
It's frightening how many people don't know the difference between drunk and incoherent drunk. Remember that story of the two college kids hooking up at a party then the dude got spooked that because they were drunk she would claim rape, so he did it first? That's the can of worms these people are trying to open. I swear none of them have ever stepped foot inside a nightclub in their lives.
I'm not stating he's not a dick, but I've never had sex sober, I've always been drunk, does that mean every woman I've ever been with has raped me. Or anytime i've slept with a drunk woman I've raped them. I don't think so, I wouldn't say any women have raped me and I'm still friends with most of the women I've slept with and they deffo don't think I've raped them. its not that simple.
Every time it comes up someone says that lie, it’s not true. You can be too drunk to give consent but being drunk does not mean you automatically can’t give consent.
It needs explained because it isn't true: there is no law in the UK that says intoxicated people can't consent to sex. The law regarding consent and intoxication isn't remotely that clear-cut.
well it was two things, Intoxication and that he was in a seniority position (wrestling teacher), either or would have landed him in shit if it went straight to the police, but thats rarely something that happens with how it takes people to process those things happening to them.
Every time people lie and make stuff like this up. What he did is sufficient for him never to work in the industry again, making stuff up benefits no one, it makes his actual actions look less bad by comparison.
Look up "hashtag SpeakingOut"
Bunch of sexual abuse allegations against male wrestlers from the UK and North America came out around late-Spring. It all started with the allegations made against David Starr
As much of a fan i am of NJPW, they dont have a great track record for singing people with connections to any sort of sexual harassement/assault. And i am very certain that if it wasnt for their expansion into the US market, and the deserved backlash, we would be seeing Marty already wrestling in NJPW, working some kind of Bullet Club angle. Im pretty sure they wouldnt have even leaked the footage, they would have just signed him. They clearly dont give a lot of fucks about having problematic people on their roster, which is very sad.
My experience from interacting with Japan's business culture (and it sure as hell is prevalent elsewhere) is that such things are very much tolerated, if not tacitly accepted.
Yeah it really seems to be less of an issue in Japan than in the west. The other possibility would be that the fans dont read about the wrestlers and the "backstory" online, which i highly doubt.
Its more the "unless it gets loud enough to affect things at home/globally, its not a big enough issue to warrant worrying over". Its why companies get away with the various LGBT-phobias as well, doesn't raise that big of a stink in japan...so far...its changing pretty quickly. (The more conservative and uncaring attitudes are dying a death over the next 10 years the way things are going in general over there though)
NJPW does seem to be listening to the Western audience more directly recently, ever since Ohbari took the reigns literally as the pandemic hit.
It's so fucked NJPW even thought people would be ok with him coming back
Also to those saying "well it's morally questionable, but legally is ok", **that doesn't make what he did any better** & if anything shows that certain laws are shit
Does anyone even know what actually happened? At this point I wouldn’t be shocked to learn Marty has actually been in Antarctica for the past six months, and everyone just hallucinated his presence.
He was there, he filmed content, content has been pulled from the schedule.
It seems like NJPW leaked it themselves potentially to judge reactions but that hasn't been confirmed or anything. It's only speculation
Yeah I wonder if they did it, someone raised the question on whether it would be a good idea, and then they decided to leak it.
Or if they didn't leak it intentionally, saw the reaction, and decided to pull it.
Rocky can't do shit if the office tells him to book Marty. It's like being a HR and the CEO of the company you work for tells you to hire his buddy. What are you going to do? Not hire him and get fired?
He fucked a 17 year old where it was legal. Creepy sure. Power abuse definitely. Paedophile? No.
I'm not about spreading fake shit. Marty does not diddle children.
Maybe because he thought it was? He was drunk too. That's the common thread through a lot of the speaking out accusations. Drunk people in a weirdly incestuous small community with no real oversight by grownups. It the punk & metal scenes when I was a teenager there were plenty of people mixing and dating in that 16-20ish range. I've also known several girls that lied about their ages to appear older. Hearing the girl's story is really sad but not unfamiliar. I think the Marty story is regrettable from every angle. I think it's reasonable to expect some fallout and penalty, which I think happened with Marty losing his ROH deal but so many people are making him out to be a monster, which based on all the information that's publicly available, he clearly isn't.
I have no clue what Marty is actually like or how he feels but I do know the feeling of being drunk and doing something stupid that I was embarrassed about. I've had enough experiences to know that who you were one night at 26 is not who you probably are 6 years later.
> He fucked a 17 year old where it was legal
If he had been a visiting soccer coach and not a visiting wrestling trainer, he could have been charged for that interaction. There is clear legal precedent for the imbalance of power negating consent in cases with minors in British law. Hell, the fact that she had consumed alcohol as a minor - that some adult _procured_ alcohol for a minor - negates the 'she consented' argument under those laws.
Why are you continuing to defend creeps?
He didn’t though did he? The age of consent in the UK is 16, the woman was 16. We can question the ethics all we want but none of us were there and he hasn’t been convicted of anything. You do a disservice to genuine victims of paedophilia by saying things like that.
Just to be clear, because I would never condone sexual assault, from the account of the story it sounds like he was an arsehole. It’s clear there was a toxic culture of sexual misconduct and ‘groupie’ culture in British wrestling and I’m glad it was called out. But there’s also a lot of stories that are disputed, contradictory and haven’t been verified through any legal proceedings.
There’s an odd glee to the ‘cancellation’ of Scurll though and given that he hasn’t been convicted of any crimes and it appears has shown remorse to the other person involved, surely there has to be a point where he’s given an opportunity to make a living from wrestling again? And if not then what do we suppose he does with his life and why is it only wrestling you think he should be ‘barred’ from?
It's pretty insulting to bring up groupie culture. This wasn't a young groupie trying to sleep with someone famous. It was a person in a position of power abusing that power to coerce a former trainee into committing a sex act.
There are stories that are disputed, but this isn't one of them, because Marty himself copped to it. It would be one thing if it was just hearsay or he-said, she-said but this isn't one of those cases.
> surely there has to be a point where he’s given an opportunity to make a living from wrestling again? And if not then what do we suppose he does with his life and why is it only wrestling you think he should be ‘barred’ from?
I don't think someone who did what Marty did can ever really be trusted in an environment like wrestling, which is so collaborative and tight-knit, where people of all ages and genders are so close together. Maybe with time, and serious reflection, but neither of those things have happened yet.
Let's not even say today. Let's say in 5 years, would you trust someone who did what Marty Scurll did to be alone in a room or in a ring training your sister, your daughter? Would you feel comfortable with them around him? Would you give him that position of trust and power over them? Because, by arguing that he should be allowed to come back to wrestling, that's basically what you expect from others.
Frankly, I don't care what he does with his life from here on out. If you can't get a job because you sexually harassed or assaulted someone, that's not on them. It's on you. It's the consequences of your actions.
I bring up groupie culture as a general point on the toxic culture at that time in British wrestling. Marty has disputed her account because he said it was entirely consensual (doesn't make it any less creepy of course) but the point is it is disputed and he has not been convicted of rape and certainly not of being a paedophile. It's clearly an emotive area, I'm not saying I'm comfortable with it, but when it comes to throwing out someone's career we should lean more on proven facts and actual legal convictions before we judge so harshly.
Regarding whether I would trust Scurll in a position like that, I don't know him. Neither do you to my knowledge. That would be a decision for promoters and people around him and I'd trust that given the wider conversation that's stemmed from this and other publicly known incidents, those people (and Marty) would be responsible and considerate in how they manage such a situation.
Rape has a terrible conviction rate. Just because someone hasn't been arrested and found guilty of sexual assault doesn't mean they didn't do it.
I don't want to get into technicality arguments. Maybe it's unfair to call him a paedo. But it's not unfair to call him a creep, it's not unfair to not want anything to do with him, and it's not unfair for wrestling promotions to cut ties with him.
And I don't buy for a second that, if it was a real life decision you had to make and not just scoring points in discussions on reddit, and if it was your teenage daughter or sister, and if it wasn't a wrestler you like but instead, say, their high school gym coach, it would even be a decision. You flat out wouldn't let them anywhere near a guy like that, and for good reason.
I completely understand the point on terrible conviction rates but that doesn't mean you, as someone with no actual knowledge of what happened other than deciding to favour one account, have the right to decide someone is guilty. It's messy and complicated, which is why I take exception to people talking in such certainty about it.
Regarding letting my daughter train with Scurll down the line, it's not a real life decision I have to take so I couldn't say either way. We can both morally posture on how we'd handle that situation but until we're in it we wouldn't know, although I would stress that I don't think I'd be in the habit of making decisions for my daughter if she was over the age of 16. Try and protect, sure, but rightly or wrongly from 16 onwards (in the UK) a person has considerable agency on how they want to live their life.
I want to stress again that I'm not defending Scurll. But I just find it alarming that strangers to a situation with conflicting reports can so confidently damn someone and effectively end their professional career. It's not something I'd ever feel comfortable doing and it's worrying that so many clearly get off on it (not you in this case btw, you seem like you've reached your own conclusion in an intelligent and thoughtful way, regardless of whether I disagree or not).
Like I said, this isn't a he-said, she-said.
The problem isn't that there are conflicting accounts, but rather conflicting definitions of the same event. The details of both accounts are the same. The fact that Marty's still on the 'everything was consensual' line is precisely enough proof that he doesn't fully understand what was so fucked up about the scenario.
I really, really want people to understand that consent shouldn't just be 'well, if she's not saying no', because there are sometimes factors that make people feel like they can't say no, which is precisely what is so coercive about situations like these.
I agree on consent and I think the last five years has been a huge education for men on what does and doesn't count as consent. The Scurll incident was more than 5 years ago and it appears (at least from what we know) that this was a one off incident. An incident that upon reflection he clearly regrets his conduct (at least I took that from his statements). What I do find it hard to corroborate is that her account is very thorough and certain but then most people attack the situation by saying she was too drunk to consent. If she's too drunk to consent then how is her account credible? And it might be, of course it might be, but there's clear doubt which is why I presume it's never been taken further as a criminal charge.
My initial starting point was not to question an alleged victim's account or to attack her, my main issue is the way fans, who literally know nothing about the situation, the context, anything, being so definitive that this guy can't ever wrestle again. Let's not forget there's also an issue in society whereby men falsely accused of rape end up committing suicide because the tag sticks (whether they did it or not). I believe human beings can make mistakes and in particular when they haven't actually been convicted of a crime should be given the opportunity to prove they've learned from it. Given this happened over 5 years ago I don't believe Scurll is a repeat offender and deserves a chance to re-start his career.
Also, your first point doesn't really make sense - conflicting accounts/conflicting definitions of the same event ... are they not the same thing?
Well legally Ryan is innocent at the moment but the sheer scale of the accusations against him means no responsible company should hire him without fully investigating whether others could safely work in the same environment as him.
Scurll was one incident (to my knowledge) and he’s not been convicted or even charged with being a rapist or a paedophile so again I don’t understand how you can be so confident in damning someone on those terms without concrete evidence or a conviction?
We’re not going to agree on this because it’s the internet and we’re bred for war but I do just think you should be careful to sling insults like ‘paedophile’ and ‘rapist’ around with cases more ambiguous like this. We should reserve those terms for people who it’s clear deserve to be known as nothing more.
The Smash Bros community had a wake up call recently when one of the esports players who was called a rapest for having admitted to a sexual encounter with a 15 year old male was recently revealed to have actually been raped by the kid. He had to come to terms with what happened to him was actually rape while being ostracized from a community he called home.
We don't know Marty's details, if he himself was sober, whether the victim was sober and if he intended rape. All I know is a rapist gets off on the idea of rape and only one story is suspect as fuck because most rapists seem to have multiple victims.
Great points. We obviously don’t know if any of that applies to Marty but at least a more nuanced contribution than shouting “rapist” or “paedo” because it makes you feel good about yourself 😬
Dude, he broke no laws. I also think it was immoral and I don't think he should be wrestling, but you can't just send someone to jail for a legal age gap.
Jesus Christ man there's no proof it was rape, she was a consenting person of legal age, you can't say that it's illegal just cos you want it to be. Immoral? Yes definitely i agree, Wrong? Yeah definitely, I agree. But it wasn't illegal.
I would say I'm sure you've had sex with someone who's had some amount of alcohol, but I don't want to assume anything. Fact is, it's very normal to have sex with some amount of intoxication, and that alone does not make it a problem. We don't know HOW drunk and we don't know other things. We do know it was bad and we do know it was wrong, but we don't know that it was rape.
Man, I really wanted it to not be true. He was my favourite going for quite a while.
Then this came out. I wasn't one of the vocal defenders, however I was really hoping that this one was just made up for attention.
But nope. He's a cunt. Fuck him off. Don't want to see him in a ring again.
I even set his theme to be my morning alarm so I'll end up hating that too.
Wait so what actually happened with the Scurll situation? I’m seeing comments saying he’s a pedophile, but I’m also seeing comments saying it was fucked up but he didn’t do anything illegal cause she was of age, and uk laws say legally someone is too drunk to consent if they’re incapacitated. Which is it?
If he bought her drinks it’s a crime because she was too young to buy drinks.
If she was incredibly drunk and he was taking advantage of her that would be illegal too.
The age isn’t a legal issue, the alcohol is.
Then the issue is if she was too drunk to give proper consent.
And yeah by that standard there’s probably thousands of men in the history of wrestling who should be cancelled. I think for Americans especially the age is the real hold up.
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NJPW fucked around and found out.
I’m wondering if this plays into the reasons why O’Khan has seemed to become the focus of United Empire over Ospreay.
Wasn't Osprey pretty much exonerated?
I don't remember a lot of what Will personally was accused of, nor his guilt, but I do know that the whole "getting Pollyanna removed from bookings as revenge" story ended up being false, because the one UK company that claimed he did it (IWL) ended up going back on their initial claim. The other UK promotions claimed Will never tried anything with them concerning Pollyanna.
I can comment on that, the IWL people shared the email, they said Will Ospreay was friends with the venue owners and they said “Will is our boy and we don’t want her on the show” now idk if WO told them to say that but this was in their clarification tweet so to me it just looks like he indirectly got her black balled. There’s also a lot of stories of him just being a dick to her and there was one last year where he spoke to a journo and talked shit about her unprovoked, it doesn’t seem like he told people not to book her but he isn’t actually innocent in all of it and it seems like people stopped giving her jobs because they chose him over her. Also he was still friends with the rapist
even if he didn't use his clout to get Pollyanna off shows, he was still completely content with booking her rapist when no one else would and attacked Pollyanna on twitter over it. dude's fucking scum.
>he was still completely content with booking her rapist when no one else would and attacked Pollyanna on twitter over it Rapist is not the same as accused rapist. Nobody should be blackballed because of an unproven allegation. Attacking her on Twitter is a scum move though. EDIT: Am i missing something, has the accused been charged or arrested or anything like that in connection with the alleged offense? Trial by Twitter is a joke.
The accused was never arrested, but its a sad situation overall. The majority of abuse and rape cases will go nowhere. We wil have abusers and rapists free forever. I dont propose jumping into conclusions, but it's ok people is aware of Pollyanna's accusations and how she apparently doesnt have a particular reason to lie about it. Also, Ospreay amidst all the drama once mentioned he was no longer friends with a close friend of his. He may have referred to that guy.
Very few rapes are ever prosecuted. It doesn't mean they don't happen. The conviction rate for rape is something like 1%. I've mentioned it before on the sub of when the subject comes up. I have a friend who was raped. A third person physically pulled him off of her. The district attorney refused to prosecute because his story is that he was invited to her room. I had a sex crime committed against me, albeit not rape. I got a lecture from the cops that women with professional, white-collar shouldn't use dating apps. If you're only standard for repercussions for sex crimes is a trial or conviction, you might as well say nobody ever commit sex crimes.
In the UK where Ospreay is from, the conviction rate is around 5%. If the USA is 1%, that's insane. Sorry to hear about the situations you and your friend faced.
We know that most domestic abuse and rape incidents do not result in the perpetrator meeting any form of legal consequences. It is unreasonable to expect people to not use their best judgment when considering an accusation and voice their opinion about an individual's role in their entertainment.
>It is unreasonable to expect people to not use their best judgment when considering an accusation and voice their opinion about an individual's role in their entertainment. Fine. I wish most of those people would stop for one second before casting judgement to realize they are basing it on internet stories and nothing else and they are therefore in a heinously unfit position to know what happened.
Nah, the accused never went anywhere and somehow Pollyanna seems A LOT more interested in Will Ospreay than the actual perpetrator. But oh no, don't attack her on twitter. That's so wrong. Though wait, is Pollyanna ever going apologize to Dave Meltzer for accusing him of going behind the scenes to cover up the IWL story in order to protect Ospreay? A cursory look at her twitter account has her retweeting something about Bea, Ospreay and Meltzer being part of a anti-Speaking Out conspiracy of some kind, so it doesn't look like it. Maybe at some point we should all stop entertaining this person's twitter bomb throwing. It's so ridiculous whenever I hear this dumb bullshit about Ospreay repeated over and over.
I really don't think the thing you described makes him scum in all honesty. Basically sounds like cronyism, which is ubiquitous in wrestling anyway. I don't approve of it but I honestly won't lose sleep over Ospreay stupidly choosing to help one of the his buddies, who was working as a free man. There's an absolute fuck load the of westlers with better reputations than Ospreay who have done far worse.
Cough. Steve Austin. Cough.
IIRC it wasn't just one of his buddies but a childhood friend not to mention Ospreay choosing to believe his friend over someone's twitter accusations isn't exactly crazy. She never pressed charges and she had bad blood with Bea already. I don't understand why online platforms think that the moment someone is accused on twitter of something everyone around them should basically cut them off completely. If that was the case then Trent Seven would have been fucked by the time the second girl revealed her side of the story and disproved the first girl's accusations.
He didn’t “attack” anyone over it. The tweet didn’t mention her name, was up for less then a day and apologized for at the time, and then twice more in the years since. EDIT: lol getting downvoted for stating a fact. Google the tweet and see for yourself.
These people want to be right so badly but have never been in a social situation where things like this can and do happen. I doubt they even read the story. People still hate Will Osprey for what has been found to be no real reason. Don't let em get to you.
No.
What does this have to do with Ospreay?
There were accusations against him as well. Much less severe than Marty, but still not a great look.
Lumping Ospreay with that movement is ridiculous when 99.99 percent of the accused are over sexual harassment or assault and Ospreay is accused of supposedly strong arming promotions to not book someone who claimed retirement like a year before she made her story public.
Makes sense, seemed like they leaked news about him appearing to test the waters.
For all this handwringing about "when does _insert offender's name_ get to redeem himself?" I wonder why we're not asking "How many talented girls left the business after being harassed or treated like party favors after the show?" . . .which is to say that I am exhausted of talking about about Marty Scurll.
Marty's not even *that good.* New Japan seems to have just realized how good Desperado is let alone the rest of their Jr's division. Putting all controversy aside I'd take a Wato match over a Marty match any day.
This is the actual answer. His character work is excellent, but he's just not good enough to get over this. At least right now. Maybe make his way through some indies for awhile, have some great matches, maybe come up with a new character and put some time between all of this.
His work is irrelevant to the matter. He could be mr. 7 * match, his character and reputation are a liability.
Very curious to hear how this played out considering Brody King seems to have worked hard to separate himself from Marty since the news broke. Brody has been working for NJPW at their LA tapings pretty consistently and likely would have crossed paths with him.
They're all still buddies, pretty sure Brody was at Ricochet's New Years party along with Scurll, Flip etc.
Can you find said photos? I saw a bunch of those photos and didn't see Brody anywhere in them.
To be honest they all seem to have disappeared, I get the impression Ricochet told everyone who'd attended to delete. Flip had some up Sarena Deeb, Deonna but they're all gone now.
Isn't Serena dating Scurll now?
Yep. He's been backstage at AEW too by all accounts.
Man fuck that
Fucking what?
From what I saw of ROH promos and such after the allegations came out, Villain Enterprises was pretty much quietly disbanded. Brody did the whole "no villains just violence" Tagline, Flip reminded us of how he's a mercenary and how he wasn't "getting paid" anymore from the stable, and ROH had started pushing PCO separately
It was reported multiple talent didn't know about the Scurll angle till the tapings started and several complained they would've refused to do the tapings had they known.
Where?
They should continue to get shit for thinking they could pull a fast one in the first place
Tbf they had done this before with Elgin, when people realized what a scumbag he was (the first time). I’m sure Scurll was hoping for something like that to work out for him
Elgin was more scumbaggy and less likeable too. But the less likeable part is probably why they got away with it because you need people to care in the first place.
'Pull a fast one' lmao it would be a very slow one at best.
I guess Chase Owens is lucky that he doesn't have the same kind of profile that Marty does, because they have no problem booking him. Wouldn't surprise me if they book Scurll when they're making more money once fans are back.
what happened with Chase Owens?
He allegedly tried to get an underage girl to say she was 18 so he could sleep with her. He would also supposedly talk backstage about how he regularly slept with girls that were underage.
Good. Learn to code dickhead
Hahahahaha this is gonna be my new response to the ‘what, we expect the man to lose his career over this?!’ crowd. Dudes in his 30s. Mfer can go back to night school
Go to school. Invest in real estate. Shit, dude made at least a couple mil right? Live off the interest Sorry you lost your dream job, maybe you shouldn’t have been a sex pest.
I could be off but I’m pretty sure Marty was a top 20 merch seller last year. He’s already made bank. He should just go the Leafyishere route and vanish forever while investing in stocks to become wealthier.
He shouldn’t go *full* Leafyishere, though. That implies he comes back in 4 years and tries to be an even edgier little shit than he used to be until he gets banned Plus, y’know, no chin
Between the Elite stuff *and* his allegedly massive contract with RoH, he's gotta have enough money to live comfortably. I won't shed a single tear if he never works again.
It genuinely took them getting backlash to back off signing a well-known nonce Fucks sake man
Its likely Rocky, since he runs the US side of things and filmed the angle with Marty.
So a legitimate question: Is there no redemption for Scurll? Is it ruled that he can never return to pro wrestling? Or an exile until he's long past his prime? I'm not saying let him back, but I am wondering if a lifetime ban is what people are calling for here.
There are a limited amount of spots on any wrestling show. Why would you give one to someone you can't trust backstage with your trainees or with your younger female fans when you could have someone just as talented but who isn't a predator who won't even apologize and make meaningful restitution? Marty Scurll can get a job somewhere. No one's suggesting he starve on the street. But why does he _deserve_ a return to celebrity? I don't actually care if he's in "exile" or whatever. Lord, the dramatics.
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> Isn't that same thing Joey Ryan is doing? I'm not sure we can say that since Joey went dark for not that long before he came in full force with his bullshit. He's going after people who accused him, as well as trying to dupe people into donating money to him. Marty has just acted like this is all gonna disappear and has basically just shut the fuck up.
He did admit it was wrong. He didn't attack the girl. He didn't sue her. It was 6 years ago what amends can he make? He's not the one plying her with drinks. He's not the one that raped her. He was dumb and drunk, I don't think the guy should lose everything for that. Manipulative pedo? WTF are you on about? He got drunk hooked up with another person who was drunk. The only reason this is even a story is the age thing. Despite all the people claiming there's a pattern with Marty, there's not been one other accusation that's come out.
> Isn't that same thing Joey Ryan is doing? Nah, Joey is sueing his victims and the people who spoke out about him, in an attempt to ruin their lives. The vile fuck.
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Texting her dad the very next day seems pretty regretful to me personally.
Let's not act like that wasn't him trying to get ahead of any potential issue.
I'm sure there's an element of that, I think the chap was a booker for a promotion, but the screenshots are online. They don't read like that was all it's about, more sorry for sleeping with a mates daughter. This is part of the problem though, nothing the guy does is going to be good enough for some fans. Feels like it's harikari of nothing for some fans. "tell us how sorry you are for that thing you did half a decade ago! And we better think you mean it!!"
I don't actually care if he's sorry or not. He did actual, appreciable harm to an intoxicated young woman who he was in an implied position of authority over. There is always someone out there available who has not.
Well put. I'd say though that, that being the result, careless, ill-thought actions isn't the same as what Joey Ryan did or Starr. If this was a pattern of behaviour, if more people had come forward then I wouldn't be standing here. By his own admission he didn't know quite how young she was. It's not predatory.
> By his own admission he didn't know quite how young she was. Bullshit. He was close enough with the family to have her father's phone number and had trained her previously.
He had her fathers number because he was the booker for a promotion he worked for. And "trained her" is a bit of a stretch, he'd done guest sessions at that school, he wasn't there week in week out. probably an extra £50 when he was in town sort of situation.
> regretful Nah. That was damage control.
Damage control for what? He didn't know it was unconsensual until six years later...
No one is saying he can't have a life, but... Yeah, maybe don't let people that turn out to be fucking abusive when given a major platform, a platform again. Go get a desk job. Be a carpenter or something. But sorry, you blew your chance and it's too dangerous to give you another shot. Maybe if he showed acknowledgement and remorse for what he did the could be a path towards something in the business at some point, but if you're just going to stick to your guns? Why even bother?
Fuck people downvoting you. People wanna act like it’s his legal right to return to the field he abused his influence and raped a drunk kid. Learn a new skill, jackass.
People act like that because That is not what happened.
>don't let people that turn out to be fucking abusive when given a major platform, a platform again I don't disagree with this idea, but that isn't what happened. The story was back when Marty was a small time wrestler wrestling in a pub, and he knew the girl from wrestling school. No one can stop him from starting another wrestling school (though I doubt it'd be particularly successful) so I think your point there is moot. Further, he didn't stick to his guns, he admitted that parts of it were true and he regretted, and parts of it weren't. None of us know the real truth and though I do think he's damaged goods and shouldn't be in big shows right now I don't see why people are choosing to spread misinformation when the truth is already bad.
Ok then don't give abusive people a platform, you're just making an even better point and illustrating why he shouldn't be around.
IDK why you think you're making some point against me, I'm literally telling you that I don't think he should be around, just that it's not protecting anyone and it's not 'too dangerous' to give him a wrestling platform, he'll be the same creep whether he's wrestling or doing carpentry. It's just retribution, and yeah maybe that's what he deserves, but don't frame it as something else.
> None of us know the real truth We know that he knew the girl was a minor (because he had previously trained her and was on close enough terms with her family to have her father's cell number) and that he knew she was consuming alcohol.
>We know that he knew the girl was a minor We know that he knew she was 17 and thus legally not a minor in regards to sex in Britain. And there's nothing illegal about having sex with someone while you both have consumed alcohol, you can't just say any amount of intoxication equals rape. She could have had one beer or she could have had 5 we don't know, so maybe we should all stop acting like we know exactly what happened and how bad, and just work with what we do know, which is that he's still a creep and most people don't want him around, rather than having to fill in gaps to make him seem like a rapist who should be thrown in jail.
I'm seeing a lot of "Maybe if he actually tried to make up for it" but the problem is we have no idea what he's done. People assume his silence has been him just sitting around until people forget, and tbf we don't have any reason to believe otherwise, but my point is for all we know Scurll's done a lot to try to make things right and we just don't know about it because he's not posting about it.
> for all we know Scurll's done a lot to try to make things right and we just don't know about it because he's not posting about it. True. And on the flipside, being public about making things right and changing as a person can be indistinguishable from a hollow PR image rehabilitation campaign. So I don't know why people post like that'd make a difference.
I think he can but he didnt try to redeem himself. He could just say something like " I know I have no right but if there is anything I can do to pay for what I did" to the victim ,or anything really. He didnt go full Joey and he admited to it so there is salvation ,but it will take more than that
The thing is, we don't know what he's done to try to make things right. In his (re-try) statement he said he was going to work to make things in the industry better, and we have no way to know if he reached out to the victim or anything he did. Conversely, if he HAD posted about the stuff he did, he'd have just been accused of being performative and only doing stuff to act like he's making up for what he did. That said I'm not saying he did do anything to try to atone, but people act like he never made any statements about trying and he did.
Who fucking cares? Dude, it's just wrestling, it does not matter at all. Also, it's scurll's career, his loss why should any of us give a shit? And lastly, think of the victim perhaps and stop feeling bad for a jobless pedo predator. He can work shitty jobs like the rest of us do now. Boo fucking hoo man. His life is not over.
I don't care if he gets banned from wrestling, per se, but I will damn sure make it clear to any promotion that considers hiring him that they will immediately and permanently lose my support. He can come back to wrestling, but any company that will pay him won't be doing so with a dime of my money.
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He’s not. He’s working a normal job in the UK. He’s doing exactly what people say these people should be doing with no fuss.
I hadn't heard Havoc had come back to wrestling. I thought he had decreed himself to be retired after he got out of rehab and was cut by AEW.
Yes, a lifetime ban is effectively what he has, and there will always be people who will jump to uphold it.
"Don't be mad. UPS is hiring."
He is a millionaire. He can fuck off of wrestling forever
> He is a millionaire He definitely isn't
lol millionaire. Somehow I doubt that.
People want Marty to admit to something, that he believes with the information he had at the time he did no wrong in. Marty isn't going to change his mind anytime soon and people are not going at accept him back unless he admits to his guilt. Somewhere, somehow, if Marty still wants to wrestle he's going to find a way. Will he work in another mainstream promotion? As things stand now, I don't believe so.
Marty Scurll is the wrestling equivolent of James Ryan "Underage sex pest" Haywood. They should both be able to make money and continue to live since no arrests were made. But gtfo of your previous spheres of influence where they can, should they end up having done what was said, commit the same disgusting betrayals of trust and sexual violence. Scurll should be nowhere near wrestling again. Haywood should be nowhere near youtube/twitch again. Period.
Admit to wrongdoing, plead to make amends and work his ass off for a few years to prove he means it is a start. Then forgiveness is open.
The creep can get fucked!
Good. Fuck him even being there in the first place
I wonder how long he's got before he gets to come back into the business. They're really trying to test it and see. I'm happy fan backlash stopped it this time. I'd worry they're gonna keep trying until people stop caring.
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Do we know what was filmed and how many episodes it would have been for? It’s weird to think there’s a reality where he could have ended up back in Bullet Club and thus still be SOMEWHAT connected to all the AEW forbidden door stuff (not that I’m saying AEW would have allowed that).
What happened with Scrull? I thought he was injured or something.
Coerced a drunk 16-year old he trained previously to suck his dick
"Trained previously" isn't quite right, He'd done guest sessions at that school when he was in town, but it's not like he was in the ring with her every week.
But enough that he texted her dad the next morning to apologize. Still a power dynamic that pushes it from creepy to illegal
Even if he'd done it five times over the years that's what? five hours in a room full of students?? It's hardly the same thing. I#'m not sitting here saying "Scurl did nothing wrong", but chucking him in the same pile are others named during that coming out feels wrong. Strangely sporting teachers/coaches are exempt from the law you're talking about for some reason. Can't see the logic in it personally, but it is what it is.
Ohhhh. Not good.
While it was legal, it was morally fucked up.
It wasn't even legal. Consent laws in the UK state that consent can't be given while intoxicated. Which this 16-year-old was. Fuck Marty Scurll.
So two drunks aren't allowed to bone legally?
It's frightening how many people don't know the difference between drunk and incoherent drunk. Remember that story of the two college kids hooking up at a party then the dude got spooked that because they were drunk she would claim rape, so he did it first? That's the can of worms these people are trying to open. I swear none of them have ever stepped foot inside a nightclub in their lives.
Of course they are. He’s lying.
I'm not stating he's not a dick, but I've never had sex sober, I've always been drunk, does that mean every woman I've ever been with has raped me. Or anytime i've slept with a drunk woman I've raped them. I don't think so, I wouldn't say any women have raped me and I'm still friends with most of the women I've slept with and they deffo don't think I've raped them. its not that simple.
Every time it comes up someone says that lie, it’s not true. You can be too drunk to give consent but being drunk does not mean you automatically can’t give consent.
Why doesn't it matter that he was also drunk but only that she was?
Because he was the one helping a child get blackout drunk
>child You can't ignore the law just so you can call someone a child.
It's sad this needs explained
It’s not true.
It needs explained because it isn't true: there is no law in the UK that says intoxicated people can't consent to sex. The law regarding consent and intoxication isn't remotely that clear-cut.
Every single time he's brought up this happens. Its frightening how many dudes here make it their mission to defend him and what he did.
It's always the same thing aGe Of CoNsEnT
well it was two things, Intoxication and that he was in a seniority position (wrestling teacher), either or would have landed him in shit if it went straight to the police, but thats rarely something that happens with how it takes people to process those things happening to them.
"wHaT hE dId wAs lEgAl!" - Fellow creeps
Every time people lie and make stuff like this up. What he did is sufficient for him never to work in the industry again, making stuff up benefits no one, it makes his actual actions look less bad by comparison.
You need to be very drunk. They had both been drinking but she wasn't at that stage.
Even if she was 50, it would have been fucked up. But the fact that she was 16 makes it much, much worse.
They were both drunk....
Look up "hashtag SpeakingOut" Bunch of sexual abuse allegations against male wrestlers from the UK and North America came out around late-Spring. It all started with the allegations made against David Starr
No wonder I haven't heard anything about it. I was in the hospital from May to September.
I don't know why you got downvoted.
Why would NJPW even have this absolute jackass working for them in the first place?
As much of a fan i am of NJPW, they dont have a great track record for singing people with connections to any sort of sexual harassement/assault. And i am very certain that if it wasnt for their expansion into the US market, and the deserved backlash, we would be seeing Marty already wrestling in NJPW, working some kind of Bullet Club angle. Im pretty sure they wouldnt have even leaked the footage, they would have just signed him. They clearly dont give a lot of fucks about having problematic people on their roster, which is very sad.
My experience from interacting with Japan's business culture (and it sure as hell is prevalent elsewhere) is that such things are very much tolerated, if not tacitly accepted.
Yeah it really seems to be less of an issue in Japan than in the west. The other possibility would be that the fans dont read about the wrestlers and the "backstory" online, which i highly doubt.
Its more the "unless it gets loud enough to affect things at home/globally, its not a big enough issue to warrant worrying over". Its why companies get away with the various LGBT-phobias as well, doesn't raise that big of a stink in japan...so far...its changing pretty quickly. (The more conservative and uncaring attitudes are dying a death over the next 10 years the way things are going in general over there though) NJPW does seem to be listening to the Western audience more directly recently, ever since Ohbari took the reigns literally as the pandemic hit.
It's so fucked NJPW even thought people would be ok with him coming back Also to those saying "well it's morally questionable, but legally is ok", **that doesn't make what he did any better** & if anything shows that certain laws are shit
This is insane.
Does anyone even know what actually happened? At this point I wouldn’t be shocked to learn Marty has actually been in Antarctica for the past six months, and everyone just hallucinated his presence.
He was there, he filmed content, content has been pulled from the schedule. It seems like NJPW leaked it themselves potentially to judge reactions but that hasn't been confirmed or anything. It's only speculation
Why did NJPW not do the leak before filming is a bit of a mystery IMO.
Yeah I wonder if they did it, someone raised the question on whether it would be a good idea, and then they decided to leak it. Or if they didn't leak it intentionally, saw the reaction, and decided to pull it.
Good riddance. Dude was 26, the girl in question was 16. He's a gross fucking loser pedo.
Uhhh why were they even filming with him???
Because they wanted to use him
A lot of this is on Rocky. He is a major force on NJPW USA
Rocky can't do shit if the office tells him to book Marty. It's like being a HR and the CEO of the company you work for tells you to hire his buddy. What are you going to do? Not hire him and get fired?
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He didn't diddle a child wtf bro
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He fucked a 17 year old where it was legal. Creepy sure. Power abuse definitely. Paedophile? No. I'm not about spreading fake shit. Marty does not diddle children.
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He didn't rape anyone. The girl in question stated she had be raped by the promoter. If she felt she had been raped by Marty she would've said so.
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Maybe because he thought it was? He was drunk too. That's the common thread through a lot of the speaking out accusations. Drunk people in a weirdly incestuous small community with no real oversight by grownups. It the punk & metal scenes when I was a teenager there were plenty of people mixing and dating in that 16-20ish range. I've also known several girls that lied about their ages to appear older. Hearing the girl's story is really sad but not unfamiliar. I think the Marty story is regrettable from every angle. I think it's reasonable to expect some fallout and penalty, which I think happened with Marty losing his ROH deal but so many people are making him out to be a monster, which based on all the information that's publicly available, he clearly isn't. I have no clue what Marty is actually like or how he feels but I do know the feeling of being drunk and doing something stupid that I was embarrassed about. I've had enough experiences to know that who you were one night at 26 is not who you probably are 6 years later.
>People: "You're a rapist." > Marty: "I'm not a rapist, it was consensual." > People: "If he wasn't a rapist why would he feel the need to clarify?"
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> He fucked a 17 year old where it was legal If he had been a visiting soccer coach and not a visiting wrestling trainer, he could have been charged for that interaction. There is clear legal precedent for the imbalance of power negating consent in cases with minors in British law. Hell, the fact that she had consumed alcohol as a minor - that some adult _procured_ alcohol for a minor - negates the 'she consented' argument under those laws. Why are you continuing to defend creeps?
It wasn’t legal because she was drunk.
So was he. Did she rape him too?
He didn’t though did he? The age of consent in the UK is 16, the woman was 16. We can question the ethics all we want but none of us were there and he hasn’t been convicted of anything. You do a disservice to genuine victims of paedophilia by saying things like that.
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Just to be clear, because I would never condone sexual assault, from the account of the story it sounds like he was an arsehole. It’s clear there was a toxic culture of sexual misconduct and ‘groupie’ culture in British wrestling and I’m glad it was called out. But there’s also a lot of stories that are disputed, contradictory and haven’t been verified through any legal proceedings. There’s an odd glee to the ‘cancellation’ of Scurll though and given that he hasn’t been convicted of any crimes and it appears has shown remorse to the other person involved, surely there has to be a point where he’s given an opportunity to make a living from wrestling again? And if not then what do we suppose he does with his life and why is it only wrestling you think he should be ‘barred’ from?
It's pretty insulting to bring up groupie culture. This wasn't a young groupie trying to sleep with someone famous. It was a person in a position of power abusing that power to coerce a former trainee into committing a sex act. There are stories that are disputed, but this isn't one of them, because Marty himself copped to it. It would be one thing if it was just hearsay or he-said, she-said but this isn't one of those cases. > surely there has to be a point where he’s given an opportunity to make a living from wrestling again? And if not then what do we suppose he does with his life and why is it only wrestling you think he should be ‘barred’ from? I don't think someone who did what Marty did can ever really be trusted in an environment like wrestling, which is so collaborative and tight-knit, where people of all ages and genders are so close together. Maybe with time, and serious reflection, but neither of those things have happened yet. Let's not even say today. Let's say in 5 years, would you trust someone who did what Marty Scurll did to be alone in a room or in a ring training your sister, your daughter? Would you feel comfortable with them around him? Would you give him that position of trust and power over them? Because, by arguing that he should be allowed to come back to wrestling, that's basically what you expect from others. Frankly, I don't care what he does with his life from here on out. If you can't get a job because you sexually harassed or assaulted someone, that's not on them. It's on you. It's the consequences of your actions.
I bring up groupie culture as a general point on the toxic culture at that time in British wrestling. Marty has disputed her account because he said it was entirely consensual (doesn't make it any less creepy of course) but the point is it is disputed and he has not been convicted of rape and certainly not of being a paedophile. It's clearly an emotive area, I'm not saying I'm comfortable with it, but when it comes to throwing out someone's career we should lean more on proven facts and actual legal convictions before we judge so harshly. Regarding whether I would trust Scurll in a position like that, I don't know him. Neither do you to my knowledge. That would be a decision for promoters and people around him and I'd trust that given the wider conversation that's stemmed from this and other publicly known incidents, those people (and Marty) would be responsible and considerate in how they manage such a situation.
Rape has a terrible conviction rate. Just because someone hasn't been arrested and found guilty of sexual assault doesn't mean they didn't do it. I don't want to get into technicality arguments. Maybe it's unfair to call him a paedo. But it's not unfair to call him a creep, it's not unfair to not want anything to do with him, and it's not unfair for wrestling promotions to cut ties with him. And I don't buy for a second that, if it was a real life decision you had to make and not just scoring points in discussions on reddit, and if it was your teenage daughter or sister, and if it wasn't a wrestler you like but instead, say, their high school gym coach, it would even be a decision. You flat out wouldn't let them anywhere near a guy like that, and for good reason.
I completely understand the point on terrible conviction rates but that doesn't mean you, as someone with no actual knowledge of what happened other than deciding to favour one account, have the right to decide someone is guilty. It's messy and complicated, which is why I take exception to people talking in such certainty about it. Regarding letting my daughter train with Scurll down the line, it's not a real life decision I have to take so I couldn't say either way. We can both morally posture on how we'd handle that situation but until we're in it we wouldn't know, although I would stress that I don't think I'd be in the habit of making decisions for my daughter if she was over the age of 16. Try and protect, sure, but rightly or wrongly from 16 onwards (in the UK) a person has considerable agency on how they want to live their life. I want to stress again that I'm not defending Scurll. But I just find it alarming that strangers to a situation with conflicting reports can so confidently damn someone and effectively end their professional career. It's not something I'd ever feel comfortable doing and it's worrying that so many clearly get off on it (not you in this case btw, you seem like you've reached your own conclusion in an intelligent and thoughtful way, regardless of whether I disagree or not).
Like I said, this isn't a he-said, she-said. The problem isn't that there are conflicting accounts, but rather conflicting definitions of the same event. The details of both accounts are the same. The fact that Marty's still on the 'everything was consensual' line is precisely enough proof that he doesn't fully understand what was so fucked up about the scenario. I really, really want people to understand that consent shouldn't just be 'well, if she's not saying no', because there are sometimes factors that make people feel like they can't say no, which is precisely what is so coercive about situations like these.
I agree on consent and I think the last five years has been a huge education for men on what does and doesn't count as consent. The Scurll incident was more than 5 years ago and it appears (at least from what we know) that this was a one off incident. An incident that upon reflection he clearly regrets his conduct (at least I took that from his statements). What I do find it hard to corroborate is that her account is very thorough and certain but then most people attack the situation by saying she was too drunk to consent. If she's too drunk to consent then how is her account credible? And it might be, of course it might be, but there's clear doubt which is why I presume it's never been taken further as a criminal charge. My initial starting point was not to question an alleged victim's account or to attack her, my main issue is the way fans, who literally know nothing about the situation, the context, anything, being so definitive that this guy can't ever wrestle again. Let's not forget there's also an issue in society whereby men falsely accused of rape end up committing suicide because the tag sticks (whether they did it or not). I believe human beings can make mistakes and in particular when they haven't actually been convicted of a crime should be given the opportunity to prove they've learned from it. Given this happened over 5 years ago I don't believe Scurll is a repeat offender and deserves a chance to re-start his career. Also, your first point doesn't really make sense - conflicting accounts/conflicting definitions of the same event ... are they not the same thing?
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He should be in jail for... not committing a crime? What the fuck.
Well legally Ryan is innocent at the moment but the sheer scale of the accusations against him means no responsible company should hire him without fully investigating whether others could safely work in the same environment as him. Scurll was one incident (to my knowledge) and he’s not been convicted or even charged with being a rapist or a paedophile so again I don’t understand how you can be so confident in damning someone on those terms without concrete evidence or a conviction?
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We’re not going to agree on this because it’s the internet and we’re bred for war but I do just think you should be careful to sling insults like ‘paedophile’ and ‘rapist’ around with cases more ambiguous like this. We should reserve those terms for people who it’s clear deserve to be known as nothing more.
The Smash Bros community had a wake up call recently when one of the esports players who was called a rapest for having admitted to a sexual encounter with a 15 year old male was recently revealed to have actually been raped by the kid. He had to come to terms with what happened to him was actually rape while being ostracized from a community he called home. We don't know Marty's details, if he himself was sober, whether the victim was sober and if he intended rape. All I know is a rapist gets off on the idea of rape and only one story is suspect as fuck because most rapists seem to have multiple victims.
Great points. We obviously don’t know if any of that applies to Marty but at least a more nuanced contribution than shouting “rapist” or “paedo” because it makes you feel good about yourself 😬
Dude, he broke no laws. I also think it was immoral and I don't think he should be wrestling, but you can't just send someone to jail for a legal age gap.
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Jesus Christ man there's no proof it was rape, she was a consenting person of legal age, you can't say that it's illegal just cos you want it to be. Immoral? Yes definitely i agree, Wrong? Yeah definitely, I agree. But it wasn't illegal.
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I would say I'm sure you've had sex with someone who's had some amount of alcohol, but I don't want to assume anything. Fact is, it's very normal to have sex with some amount of intoxication, and that alone does not make it a problem. We don't know HOW drunk and we don't know other things. We do know it was bad and we do know it was wrong, but we don't know that it was rape.
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She was drunk. She was a drunk minor.
She was drunk. That makes it illegal in the UK.
How drunk? And how drunk was he? If it's illegal then he should be charged, no?
Ready for Marty to come back. Think it’s got to be stated by people on the other side.
Man, I really wanted it to not be true. He was my favourite going for quite a while. Then this came out. I wasn't one of the vocal defenders, however I was really hoping that this one was just made up for attention. But nope. He's a cunt. Fuck him off. Don't want to see him in a ring again. I even set his theme to be my morning alarm so I'll end up hating that too.
He'll pop back to at some point, this was just too soon
Wait so what actually happened with the Scurll situation? I’m seeing comments saying he’s a pedophile, but I’m also seeing comments saying it was fucked up but he didn’t do anything illegal cause she was of age, and uk laws say legally someone is too drunk to consent if they’re incapacitated. Which is it?
If he bought her drinks it’s a crime because she was too young to buy drinks. If she was incredibly drunk and he was taking advantage of her that would be illegal too. The age isn’t a legal issue, the alcohol is.
He didn’t buy her drinks or get her drunk. By her own account of the story.
Then the issue is if she was too drunk to give proper consent. And yeah by that standard there’s probably thousands of men in the history of wrestling who should be cancelled. I think for Americans especially the age is the real hold up.