It’s hard to miss Monday night Raw has been largely built around Riddle and Austin theory lately. One half of the hugely popular RK Bro tag team champions with legend Randy Orton, Riddle looks set to be on course to direct the company’s next PPV. You may be wondering why he’s not “Matt Riddle” anymore. We’ll get to it. Theory is now the new U.S Champion and was often positioned alongside McMahon, including at WrestleMania. There is nothing more at the heart of the company. He’s only gone from “Theory” lately, too. You may be wondering why he dropped his first name. Funny, it can be for the same reasons as Riddle.
Whatever you think of them as wrestlers – Riddle is undeniably magnetic and overly talented, while we’re simply told that Theory are those things – their presence at the top of the map is unsettling to some fans. That’s because both were major names in the #SpeakingOut movement of August 2020, when a number of fans went public with indecent actions they had suffered at the hands of pro wrestlers, ranging from merely inappropriate messages to outright open attacks were enough.
That allegations against Riddle were some of the toughest, stemming from a former pro wrestler, Samantha Tavel, who claimed Riddle raped her. Tavel sued both Riddle and WWE, but eventually dropped both lawsuits. Riddle himself tried to get a restraining order against Tavel, but the The whole process was extremely strange and he dropped his pursuit of the order only days before he was due to appear before a judge. After that, Riddle’s first name was dropped, and the conspiracy theory goes that it would make all of this much harder to google. The name bisection also came around the time Riddle was beginning to work his way up the map.
At the same time as the allegations against Riddle came out, A young girl claimed this theory had sent her inappropriate pictures on Snapchat when she was just 13. None of the messages were released as the girl said Theory demanded that she delete them after they were sent. Not much more came out of it, apart from a main roster run, which Theory had started at the time was canceled by WWE, and Theory was off TV for a few weeks before returning to NXT. His rejoining the main roster wouldn’t come for a year or so. And now that he’s becoming a big name on the list, he’s also dropped his first name. Fooling me once and all… Riddle vehemently denied the allegations, while Theory has never commented on any of them against him.
It’s hard to decipher what should happen to a wrestler based on internet claims. Some of the defendants, such as Marty Scurll and Jimmy Havoc, were not employed by a large company over the past year. You’ll probably never do it again. Others, like Riddle and Theory and Will Ospreay, are having the biggest runs of their lives. As always, it probably comes down to how a company like WWE or AEW views your worth. Havoc was a mid to low carder. darby allin, who had his own allegations thrown at him can hang out with Sting every night.
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Still, it’s not as if WWE has completely ignored the claims against Theory. He was removed from television after the allegations surfaced. He was “demoted” back to NXT, so the company can’t claim they never knew about them or worried about what it would be like to have Theory around. Apparently they were just waiting for the dust to clear.
Still, that wasn’t enough to save Velveteen Dream. That allegations against him weren’t much different from the ones against Theory, except that Dream sent a message to an underage boy. However, this person kept the messages. Still, it’s hard not to feel that WWE sidestepped #SpeakingOut allegations for cast members who wanted to push them and used them as an excuse to release other talent they may have had less interest in, into the main roster or rise to the top. Not that Patrick Clark, Dream’s real name, deserved less than what he got with his eventual release and necessary removal from the business. But couldn’t one just argue that Theory and Riddle deserve the same?
Vince has long kept his own personal projects, and when he’s chosen them, it looks like he’s doing whatever it takes to prevent more people from learning about her past. You and I may know it, but most fans just being introduced to these two won’t. Which leaves him free to put her on the map. But WWE is hardly alone in flipping morale on and off when it suits them and when it doesn’t (see: MLB and Bauer, Trevor). Corporations and sports leagues have routinely penalized those they can do without while posing rad to protect those they can’t do without.
Still, it’s harrowing to see Theory getting the star treatment while a really good guy in Mustafa Ali is thrown out in the cold for months just because he doesn’t take what the company is offering him (and it wouldn’t take much imagination) . finding out what Ali refused to do when offered by McMahon, you know, considering his name is Mustafa Ali). That’s the way of the world, I suppose.
