- [Zach] I'm a few
years late to the party,
but 2016 was an insane
year, even in wrestling.
AJ Styles made his WWE debut,
the brand split was brought
back, Goldberg returned,
and a WWE Hall of Famer became president,
so yeah, kind of a crazy 365 days,
but while all that was
happening on the national stage,
there was also some controversy happening
down here in our very own
YouTube wrestling community.
It got pretty ugly at points,
so let's go back to the beginning
and follow this series
of unfortunate events.
All right, so regarding the
YouTube wrestling community,
I'd describe 2016 as one
of the first big years.
A lot of the major channels
had been around for awhile
and now had amassed large audiences.
With so many people watching,
it made the idea of having
a meetup specifically
for wrestling YouTubers
more of a possibility
and that's just happened
with the creation of The
Internet Darlings Live.
The event would take
place during the weekend
of WrestleMania 33 in Orlando, Florida,
and would feature a number of the biggest
YouTube wrestling personalities.
The meetup was orchestrated by Brian Zane
from the Wrestling With Wregret channel
and the first two names
announced were Adam Blampied
from WhatCulture Wrestling,
and Kevin Scampoli
and Ryan Van Vleet from
The Whole F'n Show, TWFS.
The event was officially
announced on June 24th, 2016,
and things fell apart almost instantly.
All three channels uploaded
a video announcing the event
and the drama started from
either what someone said
or what someone forgot to say.
We'll start with Adam Blampied's video
on the WhatCulture Wrestling channel.
The announcement was fine
except that there was no mention of TWFS.
WhatCulture's video made
it seem like the event
was just between them
and Wrestling With Wregret,
only saying that other
wrestling YouTube personalities
were gonna be there.
The reason for WhatCulture
leaving out TWFS was because
of some bad blood that had
developed between them.
While that jab WhatCulture
made was bad enough,
things only got worse when TWFS
uploaded their announcement video.
First, the host, Kevin Scampoli,
insulted both Brian Zane and Adam Blampied
and also made claims he
was gonna beat up Adam
as well as Brian if he got in the way.
We'll go into more detail on
threats later, but both Zane
and Blampied actually
weren't upset by them.
It was other comments Scampoli
made that caused outrage.
Towards the end of the
TWFS announcement video,
Scampoli joked that he had
a domestic violence record.
Now, to give some
context to the situation,
The Whole F'n Show has
a lot of adult humor
and their comedy is made
to shock and offend.
It's also worth mentioning
that when Brian Zane
was messaging Kevin Scampoli privately,
Scampoli said that the
trash talking he does
is part of his act and he
doesn't mean anything by it.
So even though joking
about domestic violence
fit with TWFS's humor, the
higher-ups at WhatCulture
were still mad that such a serious subject
was used for comedic purposes.
The Whole F'n Show's
announcement video also created
friction between Brian
Zane and Kevin Scampoli.
As I mentioned earlier, there
was already some tension
between WhatCulture and TWFS
before the event was announced.
To try and defuse the situation,
Brian Zane had messaged Scampoli asking
if he could tone down
the threats of violence.
Not only did Scampoli refuse,
but in the TWFS announcement video,
the private message was shown
and Zane was mocked for it,
so yeah, the event was off
to a very rough start to begin with.
Now before going on,
let's talk a bit about
the threats Scampoli had
made about beating up Adam.
During the earlier stages
of The Internet Darlings,
Kevin had pitched Brian the
idea of doing a Scampoli
versus Blampied storyline
with Zane in the middle.
This was all going to be kayfabe of course
and it would come to a head
at The Internet Darlings,
so when Kevin was talking
about beating up Plumpy,
he was getting the feud started.
Brian Zane later revealed that
he never wanted to do any storylines
and for the event just to be a
traditional panel discussion.
However, he never flat out
turned down Scampoli's idea
because he wanted to keep
things going smoothly,
which ironically is the exact
opposite of what happened.
That was the first problem.
Another was that TWFS
and WhatCulture never spoke to each other.
During the whole planning phase,
Brian Zane was the middle
man between the two.
Had all of them been able
to talk to each other,
some of the conflicts
could've been worked out.
Kevin Scampoli did say
later that they were gonna
have a Skype call a few days after
the announcement was made,
but by then, it was too late.
Anyways, let's recap where we left off.
WhatCulture ignored TWFS,
Scampoli joked about domestic violence,
which made WhatCulture upset,
and Zane was mad that Scampoli
had made his private
message public, so day one
and The Internet Darlings
event was already on fire.
Not long after the
announcements were made,
an ultimatum was given to
Brian Zane, either kick TWFS
off the show or Adam
Blampied wasn't gonna appear.
The face of Wrestling With Wregret said,
while it was a decision he hated to make,
it was easy for him to go with WhatCulture
since they have a larger audience.
A few hours after The Internet Darlings
announcement videos were uploaded,
Brian Zane officially announced on Twitter
that The Whole F'n Show
was out of the event.
Now, a Twitter user named @Ramondinho_
tweeted a screenshot of a text message
between Brian Zane and
presumably Kevin Scampoli.
The text said that
TWFS' announcement video
would contain similar humor from Scampoli
and that this was how Kevin
and Ryan Van Vleet would
roll into the event.
Brian Zane didn't deny the
authenticity of the text,
but did respond by say, quote,
"Not featured: I'm going
to put you on blast
"for having the temerity to ask
that I show some restraint."
Basically, what I get from this
is Zane knew Kevin Scampoli
was gonna use his brand of
humor in the announcement video,
but didn't know the specifics
or that he was gonna
bring up Zane's message.
Now, what's interesting is Scampoli said
that he got a message from Brian Zane
after the TWFS announcement
went up saying,
quote, "Good stuff,"
and yet later said he was upset
with his private message
being made public.
If that's true, perhaps Zane was still
wanting to go along with things
and avoid sharing how he felt
just to keep the event running smoothly.
Furthermore, Kevin said
that he thought WhatCulture
not mentioning TWFS was perfect
for the storyline he had,
but Brian Zane later said both he
and Scampoli were upset about it.
Maybe Kevin Scampoli was
mad about WhatCulture
ignoring TWFS, but still
thought it would work well
with the storyline?
I don't know, but either
way, The Whole F'n Show
being taken off The Internet Darlings
created a wave of backlash.
Things were made even
worse when WhatCulture
filed copyright claims against TWFS.
More fuel was added to
the fire when Brian Zane
took a shot at the domestic
violence joke on Twitter.
He later admitted his
emotions got the better of him
and he had no right
attacking another channel.
Kevin Scampoli also got involved
and began attacking
both Brian Zane's family
as well as Adam Blampied's.
The drama continued to
linger on for a while,
with Brian Zane still addressing
it in December of 2017.
As for the actual Internet Darlings event,
a total of seven channels attended
and about 230 fans packed the venue.
The response was mostly,
if at all, positive,
so it seems like it worked
out well in the end.
Now, with it approaching four years ago
since all this drama
happened, everyone seems
to have moved on and
gone their separate ways.
There's a lot to learn
from this whole fiasco
and I don't think anybody was perfect.
Of course, TWFS making Zane's
message public wasn't right
and Kevin Scampoli's attacks
and comments afterward were out of line,
even if he was doing it as an act.
It's unclear if it was Adam Blampied
and/or management at
WhatCulture's decision
to ignore TWFS, but either
way, that wasn't right either.
To elaborate on that as well,
it seemed like WhatCulture
didn't want anything
to do with The Whole
F'n Show, which is fine,
but then why did they agree
to do an event with them?
It seems like they wanted to
have their cake and eat it too,
and if that's the case, I
guess they got their wish.
Brian Zane isn't without
fault in all this,
but I do feel for the guy.
He wanted to put together
this really cool meetup
and help bring the YouTube
wrestling community together,
and in addition to the stress
and cost of getting an event put together,
he had to deal with a lot of abuse
directed towards himself
and his loved ones.
Nevertheless, he should've been
more firm with how the event
was gonna go and made sure
everyone was on the same page.
I do understand, though,
why he let things go on
since why rock the boat
and potentially ruin your
event if you don't have to?
It's easy to look back at things now
and say what should've been done,
and while the past can't be
changed, I think that anybody
can learn something
from what happened here.
Brian Zane did do a second
Internet Darlings event
in 2018, but hasn't
done another one since.
He said in December of
2019 that he's moving away
from that format for the time being,
but implied he's gonna
do more live events.
I do hope The Internet Darlings
or something similar
happens in the future.
It seems like it was a good event
and I love seeing the wrestling community
on YouTube come together,
but as for all of this drama,
let's treat it like the Old
Day and leave it in 2016.
Phew, another one of
these essay-type videos
is in the books!
Speaking of which, I did
a second video like this
called the Rise and Fall... And
Rise Again? Of Adam Blampied
and you can check it out here.
Anyways, I'm Zach from Tap
Out Corner and take it easy.
