Only ancillary to wrestling itself, but I want to talk about this: Adam Blampied is back. But that is also somewhat a problem.
For those that only read this thread because it’s on this forum, Blampied (or as he was for a time know due to losing a bet: “Plumpy”) is a wrestling YouTuber, best known as the initial presenter at WhatCulture Wrestling and somewhat of a founding father of Wrestling YouTube, known for his smug but charismatic presence and witty turns of phrase, particularly in his “How WWE should('ve) booked” videos. An example. He was extremely popular among internet wrestling fans.
However, he also abused his budding fame to get with female fans and bringing them to send him nudes. This is a fact that he revealed voluntarily and came to terms with, apologizing, going to therapy and taking all the blame on himself. He even wrote about this in a major british newspaper why he deserved having his life exposed. Of course, it is hard to take this at face value, as a lot of abusers have sworn betterment only to fall back into a pattern. However, in this case I was willing to extend the benefit of the doubt. He never made any excuses for his behavior or attempted to shift the blame on someone else or on circumstances beyond his control. Afterward he basically went into a self-imposed exile despite he and his close associates at the time about to launch a new website, Cultaholic, from which he distanced himself as not to bog them down. He went completely silent on twitter and stated that he did not intend to return to YouTube until he felt he had gotten his life in order. All of this happened in 2017, and it felt like this is the response you should see from someone who fucked up.
Before the Royal Rumble this year, another british wrestling channel Wrestle Talk had an episode on fantasy booking that Rumble with special guest Blampied. This was extremely popular and they managed to get him to do weekly Top 10 videos and have roped him in to the cringyly titled “partsFUNknown”, their gaming-centered sister channel where he does fantasy booking videos (only one released so far) and hosts a wrestling RPG series.
I am somewhat biased here. I always found Blampied’s content extremely entertaining and his new videos have a similar bite. The few times he broke radio silence on social media was to encourage people to vote Labour in british elections, so we seem to share a similar political outlook. He also seems to be an avid board gamer. During his exile when he was unemployed, he released two books with re-edits of his scripts from his fantasy booking videos as print-on-demand, which I bought. Does that make me a sucker?
As said, he did the things I would want an abuser to do, to be repentant and to correct the behavior. However, at the same time I am kind of worried. I really, really hope he has become a better person, but at the same time it is difficult to trust someone whose crime is the manipulation of others.