It seems Ring of Honor officials have had a change of heart and have announced that a controversial angle involving a possible “rape” will not be cut from a future ROH DVD after all.
During their latest live event on Feb. 23, ROH ran an angle involving Larry Sweeney, Bobby Dempsey and Allison Danger that has since become a hot topic among ROH and pro wrestling fans.
I originally posted about this incident on Feb. 25. Recently I was able to find some pictures of the incident, so once again, here's what happened only now with p-i-c-t-u-r-e-s:
Larry Sweeney, who plays a heel sports agent gimmick, had a talk show segment during the event.
He was in the ring with another wrestler named Bobby Dempsey, who is rather overweight and is constantly berated by Sweeney because of it.
Sweeney’s talk-show guest was Allison Danger, a female wrestler on the ROH roster.
Sweeney allegedly calls Danger a “slut”. She's not having it and goes to leave the ring.
Before she leaves Sweeney knocks her out with a microphone from behind (remember kids wrestling is “fake”, so she isn’t really knocked out). He then reportedly tells Dempsey to have his way with the unconscious Allison Danger.
When Dempsey refuses, Sweeney knocks him out as well and he falls on top of the woman.
According to an article from Gerweck.net, ROH Booker Gabe Sapolsky released a statement on the ROH Message Boards regarding the matter:
"Well, I was a little hasty in pulling "The Larry Sweeney Show Starring Larry Sweeney" from the 6th Anniversary Show DVD (mostly due to my lovely & beautiful wife yelling at me over it). After putting together the DVD last night, I felt that this segment needed to go on so you could judge it for yourself.
I stand by my apology and once again apologize if you were offended. Our goal in ROH is not to be controversial or offensive like some promotions. Our goal is to give you an enjoyable wrestling product. I still maintain that you will not see anything like this from ROH again."
It sounds bad and it looks bad from the pics, but I do agree with Sapolsky in that people should be allowed to see it and judge what happened for themselves.
This isn’t the first time the envelope has been pushed a little too far in pro wrestling. It’s sometimes kind of hard to forget WWE’s Katie Vick angle involving Triple H and Kane in 2002:
-Rey Mysterio announces that he is going to have surgery to repair his torn bicep and will miss Wrestlemania. He is then put into a match against ECW Champion, Chavo Guerrero. Rey goes on to win that match but is destroyed by The Big Show afterwards.
I’m really looking forward to the outcome of the Edge/Taker match at Wrestlemania. Edge just got the World Heavyweight Title in December and I think it would be a shame for him to lose the belt so quickly. However, Undertaker is 15-0 at the event and it would be a shame for him to lose that streak to Edge [although I like Edge, I just don’t think he should break Taker’s undefeated streak].
MVP is the WWE United States Champion, yet he constantly loses matches and holds on to the title. Hopefully he gets something to do with the belt soon.
Blonde hair and all, Shelton Benjamin being added to the Money in the Bank ladder match is a huge positive, since he’s been in the first two and provided tons of highlight reel material. The MITB match is usually one of the highlights of Wrestlemania and I think that trend will continue this year.
If Chavo Guerrero is the ECW Champion, keep him on ECW. Despite that, I thought the Chavo/Rey match was pretty good.
TNA Notes ~TNA held house shows (non-televised events) on Friday and Saturday in Westbury and Elmira, NY, respectively. The results from both shows were pretty identical so here’s what went down:
Results from ROH's Sixth Anniversary Weekend Shows ~ROH celebrated its 6th year in existence with two NYC shows. On 2/22 in Deer Park, NY, several ROH wrestlers missed the show due to a blizzard. As a result, the show centered around a one-night tournament where the winner would recieve an ROH World Title shot in the future. Here's the results:
-Rocky Romero & Davey Richards defeated Ruckus & Jigsaw to retain the ROH World Tag Team Championship.
-Roderick Strong defeated Necro Butcher & Erick Stevens in a NO DQ match to retain the FIP World Championship.
-Nigel McGuinness defeated Bryan Danielson to retain the ROH World Championship.
There’s a bit of controversy stemming from the Saturday show. According to various reports, here’s what I've gathered as to what went down:
Larry Sweeney, who plays a heel sports agent gimmick, had a talk show segment during the event. He was in the ring with another wrestler named Bobby Dempsey, who is rather overweight and is constantly berated by Sweeney because of it. Sweeney’s talk-show guest was Allison Danger, a female wrestler on the ROH roster.
Sweeney allegedly calls Danger a “slut” and she goes to leave the ring. Before she leaves Sweeney knocks her out with a microphone from behind (remember kids wrestling is “fake”, so she isn’t really knocked out). He then reportedly tells Dempsey to have his way with the unconscious Allison Danger. When Dempsey refuses, Sweeney knocks him out as well and he falls on top of the woman.
I haven’t seen the angle so I don’t know how bad it actually came off, but from what I’ve reading it was pretty…bad. I’m sure it was only done to get Larry Sweeney over as a heel and wasn’t meant to be done as in poor taste as it ended up (not that I’m condoning it in any way). But, some ideas should just never leave your imagination.
ROH even mentioned the incident on their latest news wire:
“ROH officials are embarrassed and apologetic over the actions of Larry Sweeney last Saturday at the Manhattan Center. We won't go into details here, but Sweeney proved to be an absolutely reprehensible and despicable individual. Sweeney has stated that he will lead Sweet & Sour Inc. to a "hostile takeover" of ROH. Sweeney was bragging to ROH officials that he will personally change the face of ROH. We have seen that there is nothing too disgusting for Larry Sweeney. ROH officials are definitely on edge with Sweeney's recent "hostile takeover" statement.”
