10 Seedy WWE Stories Vince McMahon Wants You To Forget
4. The 1992 Sex Scandals
Benefitting from the typical indifference to most things in pro wrestling, Vince McMahon wants you to forget about this one because just about everybody else in the media did with very little trouble.
Beyond a few public (and partial) acts of contrition via making patsies out of the fingered few at the time, WWE never really experienced further outside scrutiny on accusations that - 27 years after they were originally levied - speak to the latterly-exposed ugly underbelly of the entertainment industry. James Dixon's Titan Sinking summarises it succinctly as such, noting that "The allegations against them were numerous, but all involved the exploitation of young ring boys, and promises of more lucrative positions (pushes) for opening act wrestlers in exchange for sexual favours."
Former ring attendant Tom Cole and prelim wrestler Barry Orton (uncle of Randy) were most notable with claims of sexual misconduct and wrongdoing against Pat Patterson, agent Terry Garvin, ring announcer Mel Phillips and the company as a whole for a profound failure to deal with known issues.
Rather tragically, the actions of the accused were only dragged across the usual circuit of daytime television and early evening news while the story was hot - without that sort of pressure from outside forces, WWE had little need to act again or look at proactive prevention rather than quickfix cures. Confusion reigned for years, not least because of the other scandal the company had lingering around...