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| TNA's newest signing Photo Credit: Mission Viejo Dispatch |
Then, they signed King Mo Lawal, who has yet to appear for the company outside his short participation in the Bobby Roode/James Storm feud as guest referee. I wonder who'll make his appearance for TNA first. My money is on "neither," for the record, but I'm unbelievably cynical and snarky when it comes to any wrestling company run by a troll who uses it to get more followers to her Twitter feed.
More troubling is that TNA welcomes yet another sexual harasser into their fold. Jackson is known for three things: being a fighter, his acting prowess, and harassing the hell out of whomever he damn well feels like. Don't believe me? Here are the Bing, Google, and just for shits and giggles, Alta Vista search pages for the keywords "rampage jackson sexual harassment." He's a repeat offender, and all his fans and even some of his former UFC coworkers like Joe Rogan are enablers.
Remember when Maggie Hendricks dared call Jackson out for harassing her colleagues, and Rogan called her "cunty?" And then all the meathead UFC fanboys (note, all UFC fans aren't meatheads, just the ones who invaded the With Leather column) and his podcast listeners came out and bashed Brandon for being "cunty" too? Then I was called "cunty" for agreeing with the premise that maybe Hendricks shouldn't be derided for not wanting to work with hostile interview subjects? GOOD TIMES WERE HAD BY ALL, AND BY ALL I MEAN NONE.
Jackson didn't learn his lesson from that. If anything, he was empowered to the point where he, you guessed it, again got himself into hot water by making a video showing the best way to possibly rape a woman. The man is sick, and he needs to be rehabilitated of the notion women are things for his amusement. He needs to be away from the aggro MMA and pro wrestling locker rooms that enable him to believe the things he believes rather than see the light and not act like a misogynist, homophobic hooligan.
And the worst pro wrestling locker room in the world to step into is BY FAR TNA's. This is a company that has had Austin Aries stick his crotch in Christy Hemme's face without any real tangibly announced repercussion, has had women employees quit because of sexual harassment from the front office, patently ignored injuries suffered by Daffney on the job, and where the reigning and defending Knockouts Champion was recognized working at Sunglass Hut to make ends meet. TNA is a chauvinist's paradise, and it's being presided over by an attention-starved woman who would be treated just as bad as the rank and file if she wasn't the one who owned the place.
Of course, the big caveat here is that like Lawal, Jackson's appearances for the company may be sporadic at best. But then again, the rumor is (and it's only a rumor at this point), that Jackson signed with Bellator so he could get into wrestling, not the other way around. He's legitimately a fan, and because he, unlike most other fighters, has an aversion to training, he may have a lot more time to dedicate between fights to an in-ring career than, say, Lawal or Lashley. Either way, it's troubling that TNA is either tone deaf to the problems that Jackson might bring, or they're ignoring them because it's a culture that rewards the kind of awful behavior towards women that Jackson has showed in the past.
Personally, I don't care how much star power someone brings to the table. If they show tendencies towards violence and sociopathy without any sign of rehabilitation, they should not look appealing to your company. For TNA, who has just showed how toothless a company it is when it comes to dealing with real life sexual harassment on their goddamn television cameras, it's absolutely the wrong move. If I were Christy Hemme, I would start running. I would quit and pursue a career in something other than pro wrestling, because it's clear that TNA thinks more highly of those who would mean to do her wrong than they do herself.