space jam orange shirt massaro wm kendrick

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The WWE was not aware of the affidavit and its contents until Kyros released it this past week.

She said that in 2007, she was one of four performers sent to visit troops in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on a two-week tour with Maria Kanellis, Ron Simmons and Jimmy Hart.

She said that in Saudi Arabia, even though she was wearing a burqa, she was treated badly by men. She said that while in Kuwait, she suffered from menstrual cramps. She said U.S. Army soldiers said she was suffering from dehydration. It should be noted that it has been confirmed she was treated at the time for dehydration and she was taken to a military base in Kuwait and hooked up to an IV.

She claimed another man showed up in an orange T-shirt and cargo shorts and put an IV of another substance in her other arm. She said the man and another woman took her to another room that didn’t appear to be a treatment room, and placed her on a table. She said the woman guarded the door and the man injected her with a drug that left her unable to move, and claimed at that point she was raped and sodomized. She said the drug made her temporarily paralyzed and unable to defend herself, but she was completely conscious. She gave a harrowing description of this, and said that she told the story to Kanellis, and that Kanellis told the story to Jimmy Hart, Gary Hart (actually Gary Davis, the WWE agent who accompanied the wrestlers on the tour) and Simmons.

She said that later she told the four of them to not tell anyone what happened.

In a 2017 affidavit, she said that she had needed knee surgery due to a torn meniscus for a year. She said she hadn’t gotten it because it would cause financial hardship and she was afraid to take pain medication after surgery because of her prior issues with pain pills.

She claimed that while wrestling, she took pain pills to perform while injured, which only led to worsening of the injuries.


“The quantity of pills we were given and the strengths of the dosages were so high that even after the injuries healed, our bodies were addicted to the medication itself and would be in pain without it.

She returned to television for angles in June but didn’t wrestle until July. Two weeks later she broke her hand and was made the manager of Paul London & Brian Kendrick. Her hand was put in a cast and she was told to keep the cast on four for weeks. She said that two weeks later, Vince McMahon wanted her back in the ring and ordered her cast sawed off so she could wrestle.

At the 2007 WrestleMania, she faced Melina (Perez) for the WWE women’s championship.

She suffered another left leg injury which loosened a screw from the surgery and was out for another two months. Then they shot an angle where Vince McMahon suspended her which was a storyline reason for her departing to do the “Survivor” season.

She actually only lasted six days on the show before she was voted off.

After her death, Kyros released a long affidavit she had given Judge Bryant regarding her time in WWE. She had given the affidavit in 2017 and a version of the story was reported at the time in the Boston Globe and denied by WWE.

The WWE was not aware of the affidavit and its contents until Kyros released it this past week.

She said that in 2007, she was one of four performers sent to visit troops in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on a two-week tour with Maria Kanellis, Ron Simmons and Jimmy Hart.

She said that in Saudi Arabia, even though she was wearing a burqa, she was treated badly by men. She said that while in Kuwait, she suffered from menstrual cramps. She said U.S. Army soldiers said she was suffering from dehydration. It should be noted that it has been confirmed she was treated at the time for dehydration and she was taken to a military base in Kuwait and hooked up to an IV.

She claimed another man showed up in an orange T-shirt and cargo shorts and put an IV of another substance in her other arm. She said the man and another woman took her to another room that didn’t appear to be a treatment room, and placed her on a table. She said the woman guarded the door and the man injected her with a drug that left her unable to move, and claimed at that point she was raped and sodomized. She said the drug made her temporarily paralyzed and unable to defend herself, but she was completely conscious. She gave a harrowing description of this, and said that she told the story to Kanellis, and that Kanellis told the story to Jimmy Hart, Gary Hart (actually Gary Davis, the WWE agent who accompanied the wrestlers on the tour) and Simmons.

She said that later she told the four of them to not tell anyone what happened.

She said that Dr. Rios from WWE set up a meeting with her and asked her what happened. She said she didn’t know how he knew and she said she told him the story but told him not to tell it to anyone. She said Rios then told Vince McMahon, who told Dunn, Laurinaitis and other executives who were all at a meeting with her later. She said Vince asked her at the meeting with all the key people to recount what happened to her. She said Vince then told her it was not in the best interest of WWE for her to make the information public.

“I was completely traumatized at that point and I just agreed. It was clear that there had already been a conversation and that they had reached a decision on their own prior to consulting with me as this was not a debate but rather Vince instructing me to keep this confidential.”

She said Vince apologized to her, but stressed to her that if she told anyone, it would ruin the relationship between WWE and the U.S. military.

“He told me not to let one bad experience ruin the good work they were doing. His lack of sensitively in referring to my ordeal as `one bad experience’ left me speechless. Vince went on to say that I would not be required to travel to the Middle East ever again and that the WWE would institute a new policy where any time a female WWE performer went to the Middle East, she would have a female WWE escort with her 24/7 to ensure this did not happen again. This did not make me feel better about the situation. It had already happened to me and the damage was already done.”

She said she then asked Vince and the others in the room to keep the incident quiet because she was uncomfortable with the thought of all the other wrestlers finding out and they agreed

She said she was never able to have a rape kit administered and wasn’t in the right mental state to determine how to report a crime that happened on a military base in Kuwait and was committed by someone who she didn’t know. --

She said the incident haunted her to that day, and she can’t count the number of times she has relived the incident in her head. She said that obviously she should have received counseling or therapy but neither Rios nor Vince suggested it.


~~~~~

page 9

“WWE is saddened by the death of Ashley Massaro, and we reiterate our condolences to her family,” said WWE in a statement to the Observer. “However, we regret that her attorney, Konstantine Kyros, who filed multiple cases against WWE, lost all of them, and was sanctioned multiple times by the Court for repeated misconduct and false allegations, is using Ashley’s death to further his malicious campaign against WWE by releasing an affidavit that she submitted to the Court and later apologized to WWE for being involved with, so we wish to make certain things crystal clear.

1) At no time was Vince McMahon or the management of WWE ever informed by Ashley Massaro or anybody else that she had been sexually assaulted, drugged, raped or sodomized by a military doctor with a nurse standing guard while on a goodwill tour in 2007 to U.S. military bases in Kuwait. In fact, if she ever articulated such a claim to WWE, we would have reported it immediately to the Base Commander.

2) At no time was there ever a meeting with Vince McMahon, Kevin Dunn, John Laurinaitis or other company executives in which she told them of such a claim and was instructed to keep it quiet.”

McDevitt said that nobody has been able to corroborate the story, and that the idea there was such a meeting that she described with McMahon, Dunn and Laurinaitis was complete bullshit. He said those named as knowing, Hart, Davis and Simmons who she said were told by Kanellis, have all denied knowing anything or being told anything. He said that when Kanellis was asked, she said she didn’t recall the story.

“If she was told something like that, there is no way she wouldn’t recall it,” he said. “If somebody told you that, you would remember it for the rest of your life.”

The only thing confirmed is that the part of the story that she was treated for dehydration on that tour is accurate.

John Pollock unearthed the diary of Davis on-line and there was a passage that referenced her being hospitalized.


~~~~~
(near top of page 11)

She also claimed to have suffered a hairline fracture of her spine, several back injuries and had a herniated disc in her cervical vertebrae.

In 2015, she was trolled by someone on Twitter pretending to be Stephanie McMahon inviting her to Raw and she responded very excited about the prospects.

In 2017, she said she was taking medication for depression, suffered migraine headaches and severe short-term memory loss. .

In her affidavit, she also complained about being labeled an independent contractor.

~~~~~
page 14

Even if that wasn’t the case, as noted, they didn’t want a draw.

The word is that with surprises and changes made, that the new scenario is better. That’s a tall order to fill, because Page vs. Pac figured to be a great match.

As far as Pac goes, for right now he will not be working for the promotion. He won’t be at Fyter Fest, and likely angles or match announcements will be made coming off the show to make sense for however that main event is to be changed. He is not expected to be back until he loses the Dream Gate belt, because with the style of booking they are doing, they can’t do business with somebody who can’t ever lose. If they want to book someone to a long winning streak, they may, but he wasn’t the guy at this time. It is not a lock he’ll be back after he loses the title, but we’re told that everyone likes him personally and they don’t consider him unprofessional or any of the negative terms he’s gotten from this ordeal, but his situation doesn’t allow them to use him right now.

As an attempt at a make-good of sorts, they made arraignments to deliver the advertised match and shoot a storyline angle to explain everything.

Pac was scheduled for a three-way on 5/18 for the WrestleGate promotion in Nottingham, England, against Robbie X and Jody Fleisch. At the show, they announced that X was injured and Fleisch had transportation problems.

Pac cut a promo basically making an open challenge. Page showed up, looking noticeably bigger than ever after a storyline that had been doing on for months on BTE with the idea that he would both gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, because management didn’t like his physique, which even included a secret formula placebo angle out of the 1996 basketball movie Space Jam with Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny. Later, Cody revealed of course that it was just a way to motivate him to train harder.

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bottom of 18 to 19
Ric Flair, 70, underwent heart surgery on 5/20, which was deemed a success after significant health issues led to him being rushed to the hospital for days earlier.

Flair was first diagnosed with heart issues in 2002, at the age of 53, which at the time his doctor attributed to his drinking and steroid use. He himself has publicly attributed it to the drinking but said it was not due to steroids, which while he admitted usage of, said he was never a heavy user. After several months off, he was cleared and returned to in-ring action and continued to wrestle regularly for years.

Flair had a major health scare in August 2017, when he was placed in an medically induced coma for 11 days after rupturing his intestine. He underwent emergency surgery and was given a 20 percent chance of surviving the surgery, because of the complications he had that included his kidneys shutting down, heart issues and pneumonia. He needed dialysis for a period of time after surgery and has had multiple surgeries related to issues from that time period.

Flair was scheduled to undergo heart surgery last week, with the idea he would recover in time to appear at Starrcast this coming weekend in Las Vegas. But he ended up with a health scare that rushed him to the Gwinnett Medical Center in Duluth, GA, just outside of Atlanta, where he lives. Complications delayed his surgery until 5/20.

The family reported that the surgery went well. However, due to the timing, he was unable to go to Las Vegas this weekend. Son-in-law Conrad Thompson had promoted Flair as probably the biggest name for Starrcast, held in conjunction with AEW’s debut show, once WWE pulled Undertaker off the event.

Flair was back home on 5/22.

Her was scheduled for a panel discussion with Ricky Steamboat covering their feud, and in particular the 30th anniversary of a series of four different five-star matches the two had in a program over the NWA world heavyweight championship in 1989. The two, who wrestled regularly starting in the late 70s, had what is generally considered the greatest in-ring rivalry of that era.

He was also scheduled for a celebrity roast, which was going to appear as a television pay-per-view event as well as was the key event as part of the Starrcast iPPV package on Fite TV.

It was announced that the roast was being postponed and would take place at a later date.

Flair has said he hopes to be back on the road doing appearances in ten to 14 days.


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Bottom of 19 to 21

Brock Lesnar and Bayley were the winners of the Money in the Bank matches on a generally well regarded WWE PPV show on 5/19.

The show featured a Seth Rollins Universal title defense over A.J. Styles that may have been WWE’s best main roster match so far this year. The show featured a lot of short matches, most by design, one not by design, and a show-long angle culminating with the Lesnar win.

Lesnar, who was not advertised for the show, was kept away from everyone. There were people in the company aware Lesnar was there and would be part of the show, but most were not. Backstage, those who needed to know, were told that Ali was winning the Money in the Bank match, a change from Drew McIntyre, who had been said was the planned winner earlier in the week.

As noted last week, the angle where Sami Zayn defeated Braun Strowman to take his spot in the match was part of the storyline that paid off during the show. Zayn appeared early, going to HHH and fearing an attack by Strowman that night. HHH said that Strowman would be banned from the building. Later, Strowman was shown throwing things around backstage and looking for Zayn. After that, Zayn was found attacked, injured, and hung upside down. After the next match, HHH confronted Strowman, who denied doing it. HHH said that he wouldn’t allow Strowman in the match for taking out Zayn and told him to leave the building. HHH said he wasn’t going to call the police and just asked him to leave. He then said he was leaving. They said Zayn was injured and taken to a local medical facility.

The wrestlers in the match were all told that Ali was not winning, but that Ali would be on top when an eighth wrestler would arrive and he’d knock Ali off and be the winner. They were not told who the wrestler would be, but the idea was that they would believe it to be Strowman.

Right before the match started, Ali was told it was Lesnar, but told to keep it quiet.

The timing was silly, but it kind of had to be. Ali was at the top of the ladder. Everyone else was taken out. He was about to take down the briefcase when Lesnar’s music played. Ali had plenty of time at this point to unhook the briefcase and win. Instead, he just froze. Lesnar came down fast, with no care about human life, taking two cameramen out in the process. He then got in the ring, climbed the ladder, destroyed Ali and pulled the briefcase down to win. Ali was bleeding badly although the cameras were instructed not to shoot him.

The heat was that seven guys destroyed their bodies in a long match and then Lesnar just walked in and won. The entire scripting of that was designed to get the reaction that Lesnar was handed another thing again without working for it while the rest of the roster is out there killing themselves.

The finish was a great surprise pop, and the crowd went crazy for it, even with Lesnar as a heel, because they want surprises and happenings.

On the flip side, it was all about a momentary pop and surprise, as well as two weeks of television ratings. The feeling was that the Lesnar surprise would help ratings based on curiosity the next night, which it did. It was also used in an attempt to keep the audience into the third hour, by teasing Lesnar would cash in against either Rollins or Kofi Kingston. Lesnar came out, teased cashing in, backed out, but Paul Heyman said that next week on Raw, from Kansas City (what a weird coincidence that the Raw 20 years to the week of Owen Hart’s death in Kemper Arena would be booked for Kansas City, which is probably something that won’t be addressed on the show), Lesnar would say who he is cashing it in against.

At first, I thought the surprise of Lesnar winning made for a cool moment and it did get a huge reaction and helped the TV ratings. One could argue that it could have been used for a longer cash-in story given Rollins vs. Lesnar, if that’s the direction, was logically going to happen in Saudi Arabia anyway and didn’t need the briefcase to take place. The idea is it could have been used to help someone get over. However, with the nature of Vince McMahon’s booking, it was noted that if someone like Andrade or Ricochet or Ali would have won, Vince McMahon would see it as having done something for them and then would have beaten them regularly on television, thinking he could at that point having given them that big win, and it would within weeks negate the win and perhaps end up hurting them more than helping, particularly if McMahon decided against them winning the title.

It had been the plan since before WrestleMania for Lesnar to get his rematch with Rollins at the May Saudi Arabia show, which, of course, was then moved to 6/7. But on 5/21, they shot an angle to set up Kingston vs. Dolph Ziggler on that show, so in theory that would mean Lesnar’s decision almost has to be Rollins. There’s always the possibility of a swerve.