By David Futrelle
On Wednesday night, pro wrestler Nyla Rose was crowned All Elite Wrestling Women’s World Champion after defeating rival Riho in a scripted match. What made this an especially dramatic moment in the already plenty dramatic world of pro wrestling was that Rose is a trans woman.
Rose’s win, not surprisingly, triggered a transphobic backlash, with some of wrestling’s more backwards fans attacking Rose on social media. But no one seems to be quite as mad about her win as retired pro wrestler Val Venis, who has been loudly broadcasting his displeasure on Twitter for several days straight now.
Here’s a little sampling of his, er, work. As you’ll see, his ALL-CAPS key has been getting quite the workout.
Naturally, he’s trying to present himself as the champion of “REAL WOMEN” against evil soyboy SJWs and “the male species” in general.
He’s also trying his hand at humor, but he’s basically only got the one joke.
Or maybe two jokes?
I would offer some sort of rebuttal to all of these but I’m not sure I have anything to add to this tweet from Twitter MuFo and self-designated “wrestlebitch” Rivka Gheist, describing VEnis, fairly accurately, as a “fucking haggard old pissbaby” and declaring that
Trans women are women, I would happily have them in my locker rooms and face them in the ring. Wrestling is for everyone, including those gender-expansive identities. … Congratulations Nyla Rose, on your historic win!
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
H/T — Thanks to Lizuka, who alerted me to Venis’ meltdown
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[OT] Something’s broken somewhere.
The “recent comments” is claiming that someone named Raven necro’d an old thread titled “If you can’t be with the dick you love, love the dick you’re with”. There’s no comment by Raven there and indeed no comment newer than 2014(!), but the “recent comments” at the top of its page also shows the alleged Raven comment.
I attempted to comment on that thread myself but the comment just disappeared without a trace. It neither got appended to the thread nor added to “recent comments”.
Looks like something’s bugged with that thread.
@surplus
we’ve been over this, Refresh and then look at it. I’ve seen their comment. Nothing is broken. Stop freaking out about the same shit. I also saw and replied to you, it’s all fine.
I did refresh. Twice.
Well here is something strange. The missing comments are now there … inserted above comments timestamped 2014.
I hold firm to my opinion that something is broken with that post.
@Surplus
Good for you buddy, keep searching for that mysteries answer. I’m gonna go to bed while the Nyquil is kicking it. Let me know what you’ve uncovered in the morning.
@Sera and @banned
Don’t give Vince or the WWE any credit for this one. Nyla is signed with AEW, a newer promotion set up by Cody Rhodes, and IIRC he did it because he was treated so badly by WWE that he basically went “screw this, I’m going to set up my own promotion and do it better”.
@Naglfar : I guess the current situation is proof enough, but Jesus’s teaching tend to be exceptionally straightforward and not subject to interpretation as far as religion go.
The conservative do refer mostly to the old testament more than the new one in my experience, despite the new one explicitely taking precedence. That’s even the main point of christianity compared to judaism …
Relevant KayfabeNews article.
Oh, on that note, second relevant KayfabeNews article.
@Kei-O-What I really didn’t even mean that as a slight to Nyla. She’s already gotten very good in pretty short order. It’s just a fact she hasn’t really been doing it very long and can sometimes be a bit hit and miss. I’ve still really been enjoying her on the whole, she’s handily my favorite part of AEW’s women’s division.
And yeah, I do think it needs to be reiterated that WWE has nothing to do with this. The only real WWE connection to any of what he’s complaining about is the renaming of the NXT Women’s Championship and that’s already been undone anyway.
This isn’t out of character for AEW either. Cody has shown that he definitely listens to his POC wife Brandi (https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/bt93pt/cody_rhodes_on_how_being_in_an_interracial/) and they’ve had sensory inclusive shows as well. They seem like an excellent company with good values.
@Surplus
I saw the same thing (not sure why Raven is going through all the old threads commenting, but none of my business), but it seems to just be a bug. It’s annoying, but it doesn’t affect us much so I wouldn’t worry about it.
@Surplus
Yeah, there is/was a bug where if people commented on a thread from the alert link in their email, then their comment would consistently be pushed to the bottom of the thread until a new page was reached. You’ve probably stumbled across one of those.
I haven’t seen any happening recently, so it’s possible that the bug got fixed at some point and doesn’t cause that any more.
G’morning, Mammotheers! Had a lovely commute into work on this slushy Tuesday morning. Had to shove my large rear between two people who decided that the middle bus bench seat would act as a buffer between them, much to their annoyance (but hey, it’s an open seat and the bus was packed). The weather had clearly delayed the bus, so the guy on my left was looking over my head to see how far the next stop was and he got off there.
But the middle-aged woman on my right… she was leaning way over to her right side (as I will do sometimes on that bank closest to the door), but was staring at me with daggers for a solid five seconds before I gla. I didn’t think much of it; I was listening to Majority Report, she was watching YouTube… but then my eye caught a familiar face.
She was watching Vox Day. Jordan Peterson was in her recommendeds.
She might have seen my wide-eyed reaction, because I got the same daggers when I stood up to get off. I mean, I dunno what’s scarier, than somebody on my bus route consumes white nationalist content or that it’s a 40-something woman as opposed to a Gen-Z 4chan user.
Maybe it was simply researching, but given it was a full podcast she was watching, I doubt it. Fwee, best start to the day ever!
@Katamount
That’s a way to start the day. You’re right that that doesn’t sound like the typical profile of a Vox Day fan, but there definitely are older white nationalists (where else did the current ones come from?) and they’re likely to watch that kind of content as well.
I would have had the same reaction. Although I don’t use public transport much because there really isn’t an effective mode of it where I live, I would certainly be rather disturbed by someone in my vicinity being alt-right.
Nah. She’s small, but she looks like a small adult. And people don’t seem to complain as much about smaller men facing much bigger ones. Could Rey Mysterio ever legitimately win over the Big Show?
The problem with Riho being the inaugural champion is that she was never there and that’s no way to build a title’s prestige.
He’s no more her co-worker than a programmer at Google and a former programmer at Facebook are co-workers.
AEW does have an open maga working for them (Jake Hager (formerly Jack Swagger, an anti-immigrant character, in WWE)) but if he has a problem with Nyla Rose, he’s at least been smart enough to keep his mouth shut about it on Twitter.
@Tabby, wait, Swagger’s a MAGA-head for real? I was under the impression that the anti-immigrant stuff in WWE was just a work because they had him feuding with ADR at the time.
Chris Jericho is very probably a MAGA- head for real though. He had Trump Junior on his podcast a couple of months back. I was so disappointed.
@Sillabub
I can be pretty certain that he likes the Orange Shitstain, seeing as he got annoyed on Twitter when people complained about that episode.
@Sillabub
Not Manitoba’s favourite son! *sigh* At least the Hot Rod isn’t around to see this.
Out of topic, but I am currently working on some language-related stuff for my job, and the tool we use accept the (greek) linear A and B, but not the Yezidi.
I though Yezidi to be a niche but still living language. Certainly feel strange to implement support for languages that people can’t even translate before living languages.
@Ohlmann
I was under the impression that Yezidis spoke Kurdish. Is there a separate Yezidi language?
Sillabub…
Sorry.
@Tabby
Oh dear.
Though admittedly that’s not as depressing as the knowledge that the Undertaker is a Republican.
Sillabub, on the other hand Jim Cornette is a Democrat so that’s no clear indication of being a good person.
However, Mick Foley is also a Democrat and as far as I know he’s one of the most decent men in wrestling.
@Naglfar
A cursory glance of Wikipedia tells me that they speak Kurmanji, or Northern Kurdish, itself deemed a dialect.
I don’t know if 40-something Torontonians being fans of the right-wing internet media machine are all that surprising, if still disappointing. Doug Ford got 33.73% of the vote in the 2014 municipal election; in the 2018 provincial election, the PCs got 11 out of 25 seats in Toronto. Jordan Peterson is (was?) a University of Toronto professor. Also keep in mind, if the woman actually is in her 40s, she’s probably familiar with the old World Wide Web, likely MSN, maybe Napster, maybe even DC++.
If anything, I suspect that the machine has less of an influence on younger folks than on the Millennial / Gen X range, especially nowadays.