Stefanie Sassypants

How many people are watching any show at any time? Well, spin this roulette wheel and depending on your bet, we'll make an assumption...

It's the standard that was in place at the Olympics for three decades, specifically after they dropped genetic testing, and worked perfectly fine. Genetic testing is inconsistent and assumes only binary sexual characteristics exist, which just isn't true. All it'll take is one cis woman testing finding out she has Swyer syndrome and getting disqualified by a bunch of doofuses who think "b-b-b-but XY is a boy!" to get an uproar over that testing being reinstated. Hormonal levels are also a good benchmark with all the testing that's come out in the last decade that shows trans women are actually at a physical disadvantage against cis women in nearly all sports (imagine that! Long-term testosterone suppression makes you weaker and slower to recover!), which only even started when people stopped doing studies like the one trying to determine trans women's muscular recovery and VO2 max peaks with one trans woman and 20+ cis men because they couldn't find enough trans women to participate, then presuming that the trans woman's results were simply an anomaly and surely the more accurate results were the cis mens'. (Yes, that was a real study. Yes, it has rightfully been laughed out for years now.) EDIT TO ADD: Have I mentioned how tired I am lately? I'm very tired.

The real key is if you hoped Tony Williams would rough him up.

The recordkeeping of any non-WWF/WCW promotions in the United States until, say, 1995 is almost non-existent. Unless you fell within PWI's driving radius or someone was a fledgling subscriber to the Observer, a lot of results just got lost to time. Even 1995 to about 2001 can be pretty absent. Shane Helms is a perfect example; he was working pretty much from 1992 on in North Carolina indies, but his Cagematch lists one 1993 date and then everything thereafter is 1997. There's a solid 150-200 matches from that timeframe that's missing just because nobody had the records. Heck, even his PWI 500 ranking in 1993 just went by name only and assumed he was a Sid Vicious knockoff because his name was "Kid Vicious", and billed him at 6'0", 250 when he was lucky to even be 150. Even this match in 1994 bills him at 142:

That was also the time when WCW was trying to help the LPWA along (a few months prior, if I remember correctly, Susan Sexton defended the LPWA title on a Clash), and LPWA was working a lot with the original JWP. Of course, it didn't help that Jim Ross refused to learn anyone's names and landed his "where I'm from, we call sushi bait!" staple line whenever he had to call a match with Japanese talent. Dusty Rhodes freaking out and proclaiming Miss A to be his girl was much, much better.

Huh. Well, about that. So on one hand, a place that booked him said he was humble and professional and asked to help. On the other hand, a guy that did not book him expected free labor from him solely because of the mindset that a warm body entitles him to said free labor, and tried to shame him via social media for it when it didn't work. Likely because the kid did what the promoter asked of him. The more I hear about this, the more I think Arik Cannon's got some kind of weird axe to grind against AJ Styles and is taking it out on his kid.

I may have missed something, but my understanding of the chain of events is: - Man who did not book AJ's kid demands he does something - Man who made demands slimes AJ's kid on Twitter - AJ defends his kid What exactly is the teachable moment for the kid here, outside of "don't engage with people upset that I didn't follow through with their demands of me when they weren't the one that booked me"?

That's all well and good because, by your own admission: Your experience is not relevant to the situation at hand. The moment the kid became a fly-in, his age and experience level went out the door, so did the "pay your dues" argument. The promoter has decided that this kid is an attraction worth spending a plane ticket on and billing as an attraction, but the guy who's renting out the ring has a problem? I'll stretch and say okay, maybe they were using Arik Cannon's license and it was a co-promoted show with his group, but really, that's moot. Once this kid is deemed enough of an attraction to fly in, he should not be expected to perform the same duties as a local greenhorn unless it was explicitly stated to him by the promoter as a condition of his booking. I'll admit that it's possible, but frankly, I'd be shocked. And the whole "well we're a small organization, we're setting everything up ourselves" argument isn't relevant either. What small show is flying in five match rookies from across the country? It stinks of "but we're a family" from small businesses in an attempt to get more labor out of someone rather than just ask for it. Either he's a 19 year old greenhorn with five matches who should be lucky to get the booking or he's an attraction worth flying in. He cannot possibly be both; it is patently ridiculous to expect to treat him as such.

Says here it's not available in the states.

I could see this being valid if the kid was doing something a couple of hours from his house to get in reps, but he was a fly-in to a show on the other side of the country. I only ever saw fly-ins helping with chairs out of kindness, not obligation. Like that's the conundrum people are in, where yeah, he's a 19 year old kid who is only getting flown in because he's AJ Styles' kid, and there are people itching within the business to see him get knocked down a peg because he got flown in way before he should have, but I can guarantee you that most fans give not a single solitary shit that this kid didn't pick up chairs after the show.

Personally, I'd rather pile onto the 44 year old for acting like a 19 year old. Arik Cannon is giving off big "man whose life has peaked being a shift manager at Wendy's" vibes, mad because he had to come in to cover for another dumb untrustworthy kid called out on the day before an exam to study. An actual professional pulls the kid aside and says "hey, here's what the expectations are when you're new". If that doesn't work, shrug your shoulders and let the kid be someone else's problem by not booking him. Going on the internet and whining that you didn't get free labor on a show that's not even yours when you were just there for the ring rental is pathetic.

They don't. Most sources seem to be slicing in half the old IOC policy of two years of hormonal transition, but the only thing I can find on that is a ChatGPT hallucination. The WNBA's rulebook says you have to be a woman to play, and that's the "gotcha" that Anus Freedom and Royce White are trying to play under. They're trying to say they're women now and eligible because they think that's what trans women are; men who just decided to flip a switch one day. To that, I say call their bluff. Royce White won't show up anyway (flights are still required to participate in high level pro basketball). If Freedom's ego can take being called a woman for the next eight months just to enter the draft where nobody will select an absolutely washed 35 year old center more concerned with scoring social media points than actual points, by all means, she's welcome to it. To show how out of touch these doofuses are with the WNBA, they don't even have the whole "Freedom would be the tallest player in the WNBA" factoid right; Han Xu still exists, although I guess a Chinese person not existing in Anus Freedom's delusional bubble shouldn't surprise me. Then you have Robin Lopez's take:

Heck, I can even make some suggestions on good feminizing dosages and how to ease into their body changing so they don't lose 40% off their 1RMs in the first three months like I did. I mean, I can. I won't, but I can!

Very fitting of ol' Anus Freedom.

"And pay no attention to the fact that I'm following the same exact playbook every other grifter has done so I can have a cushy Outkick position waiting for me when my on-court production doesn't match my contract value at the end of the year."