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Time for some more shouting into the void on this Will Ospreay/Pollyanna/Dave Meltzer thing because quite frankly I need to put all the facts, as I'm aware of them, together so I can figure out just why the hell Meltzer has been so weird about this. LET'S REVIEW!
At some point (I believe sometime in 2017) Pollyanna accused Scott Wainwright, Ospreay's friend, of raping her. Ospreay famously calls her out over it on Twitter, the first sign that he's kind of a dick. Soon after that, Pollyanna, who was a UK fixture, is slowly (continued)
phased out of promotions like Progress. She last wrestles in March of 2018 while Ospreay goes on to become a world class performer who occasionally makes a really dumb post on social media (i.e. the Sadie Gibbs mess). Only when Speaking Out comes along does this re-emerge.
Once that happens Pollyanna claims that Ospreay blackballed her. Ospreay gives an apology that's, in the words of Sonic the Hedgehog, no good. Backlash ensues. And then along comes Dave Meltzer, after a week of people asking him to look into things.
This is a big thing because a lot of people seem to assume Dave never looked into the Ospreay thing. In fact, he did, in the July 29th edition of the Observer where he devoted six paragraphs to the situation. So he did cover it...and that's honestly become part of the problem.
Here is what Dave reported; after contacting a number of people who promoted UK wrestling and those close in the scene, Dave was told that Ospreay did not blackmail Pollyanna. The only one to do so (who apparently didn't speak to Dave directly) was the IWL.
Dave covers that too. According to him, there's a paper trail (???) that shows the venue IWL was going to use (which I believe Will Cooling and Bix have confirmed was owned by Lucha Britannica, where Ospreay received training) contacted them and told IWL not to use Pollyanna.
The reason cited was that wrestlers on the show, primarily women's wrestlers according to Dave, would be upset if Pollyanna was on the show. The IWL promoter reluctantly agreed (as he's documented I believe). This is then followed by an interesting wrinkle.
Some time after the venue contacts IWL again and tells the promoter he can in fact use Pollyanna on this show. The promoter, at that point, decided not to do it (again, according to Dave). Dave goes on to say there was a complaint made, but the name was a name he didn't know.
Dave then goes on to detail the rest of Ospreay and Pollyanna's history, including issues between her and Bea Priestley (where both claim they were bullied by the other). In fairness to him, he tells both sides and doesn't seem to take a side himself in said issue.
Now the problem is since then he's very, VERY clearly been on Ospreay's side, pretty much since the word got out that Ospreay was having suicidal thoughts or whatever was going on with him. It appears to have reached the tipping point tonight with his latest barrage of tweets.
So looking through all that there's a few conclusions you can make. First; Ospreay being Dave's boy (and let's be real; they're boys. It's not a state secret) has led to Dave, ironically making the same mistake Ospreay made three years ago; blindly defending a pal at all cost.
Second; Dave knows something the rest of us don't and for reasons only he knows isn't sharing that even though it would help him a great deal.
So which is it? Honestly; I think a little of both. It's quite clear, given what's available, that there's enough circumstantial evidence Ospreay had someone at Lucha Britannica call IWL to get Pollyanna taken off. I'd need to learn something different to be swayed there.
At the same time, and I think this is a big problem here because most people don't know this, Dave did look into it. He did get info that jives with a lot of what others have said about this situation. And that's what makes what has happened since so much more bizarre.
My best guess is that the one discrepancy, where IWL was then told to use Pollyanna later on, has convinced Dave there was no blackball attempt. And that frankly does need to be explained; if she was blackballed, why was she later allowed back on? That does need to be answered.
But even if you answer that, there's still enough there that it seems something went down. So if I'm Dave, I either need to look this over again or I need to take the advice I gave Triple H in the latest Observer; show us what you know. Otherwise, what you're doing? Bad look.
Honestly all this isn't that important. What is important is that Pollyanna, a very talented person, was likely abused and then cast aside because people just inexplicably can't bring themselves to believe victims. It should've never happened. We can't lose sight of that
