More than a month after it’s first reported, PWInsider’s Mike Johnson has learned that Brad Rheighans is headed to Japan with Brock Lesnar.
Mike Johnson of the PWInsider wrestling news website reported on Thursday news that many wrestling fans learned over a month ago.
When word first broke in late May that WWE’s Brock Lesnar would be wrestling in Japan, the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer reported that Lesnar was open to the rare house show appearance because he and Rheighans wanted to go to Japan to visit and pay respects to Masa Saito, who isn’t doing very well.
According to a report, titled, “Interesting Name Heading to Japan with Brock Lesnar” Johnson has only just become aware of this, writing:
“Former AWA and WWF wrestler Brad Rheighans, a legend in the Minnesota collegiate wrestling community, is traveling to Japan with Brock Lesnar for this weekend’s WWE Beast in the East WWE Network special in Tokyo, Japan, PWInsider.com has learned.”
This was, however, to those who follow the wrestling scene closely, not news at all. At least, not on July 2nd.
Even WrestleZone, back on May 29th, picked up on the story at the time, reporting Meltzer’s news on the rationale from the F4Wonline BOARD~!
Dave Meltzer posted on the F4WOnline.com message board that Lesnar wants to go to Japan to visit Masa Saito, a retired Japanese wrestler.
“Lesnar and Brad Rheingans wanted to go to Japan to see Masa Saito,” Meltzer wrote. “Just figured since he was going anyway, make it tax deductible, get his trans paid and work one show.”
According to some wrestling news industry insiders, this is far from the first time PWInsider’s Johnson has run with a story where he insinuates his site is the first place the news had been made available.
Journeyman wrestling reporter David Bixenspan was quick to point this out on Twitter as well, writing, “Always amusing when someone reports something days or weeks after other sites and acts as if they’re breaking news… At least now I believe those guys when they say they never read other wrestling sites.”
Bixenspan offered Johnson some constructive criticism as well, writing “[Johnson] is actually really good at his job most of the time, but to not keep up with other reporters makes him do a worse job than he should be doing.”
PWInsider and Bixenspan have a storied past dating back to 2010 when the intrepid reporter penned an open letter to the staff of the site for Cage Side Seats lambasting them for their “reckless” use of malware in their endless advertising on the free version of their website.
In his 2010 letter, Bixenspan also took a shot at PWInsider’s well-documented litigious, antagonistic relationship with other wrestling news websites, and–at times–their own readers.
“You at spyware-ridden PWInsider.com believe that you own the news that you report, which is laughable, but also rather pathetic.”
Ultimately, after Bixenspan became a contributor at Bleacher Report, PWInsider would react by updating their Privacy Policy for the site, even going so far as to cite Bixenspan in the policy—a reference that remains to this day despite never having offered any concrete evidence as to what Bixenspan actually did to cause the change.
Please note that we have a feature enabled that will allow us to deny the ability to view the page to specific IP addresses. This feature is enabled due to so many websites copying and pasting our work, stealing it and passing it off as their own. If we can get the IP address of someone who we know steals our work, we can then block that person from being able to read the site. It started due to a person named Bixenspan. Unfortunately, there are some seriously deranged wrestling fans out there. Please note that IP addresses are not collected or stored by PWInsider.com.
Perhaps the latest example of PWInsider reporting news with blinders on, offering it up as fresh weeks after it was first broken elsewhere, is an example of how proprietary they believe “news” (a word that literally has the word NEW at its root) to be in 2015.
