Patreon Flashback — Ep. #67: Titangate Part 1

Since we want everyone to be able to learn from our Patreon series on the 1992 "Titangate" sex and drug scandals in WWE, want to be able to direct everyone to the shows, and don't want to give anyone the idea that we're trying to make money off of the awful new lawsuit against WWE, we're releasing all four Titangate shows for free. Permanently. We're really proud of the work we did on these, and we hope that everyone can learn from them.

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Content warning: By necessity of covering this topic, though it is not the sole focus, this episode contains a significant amount of discussion of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and child sexual abuse, a non-trivial amount of which is descriptive. If you have any concerns that this content may be triggering or otherwise upsetting to you, then skipping this episode may be advisable.

It’s April [2022], and you know what that means: Time for a new Patreon-exclusive deep dive. This time, it’s part 1 of a series on what became known as Titangate, the overarching collection of scandals that hit the WWF in 1992. We start in February 1992 with the attempted DEA raid of the locker room at a St. Louis house show as well as Barry Orton going public with sexual harassment allegations against Pat Patterson and Terry Garvin, which was actually the first public trace of that side of the scandals. After skipping the first week of March because we just covered it in-depth on the main show (ep. #344), we move on to what are probably the two longest weeks in the history of our Patreon shows to date.

The week of March 9,  everything starts to blow up with the Village Voice story that unleashed Murray Hodgson on the world, San Diego-Union Tribune article about drugs and the abuse of ring boys that introduced Tom Cole and Chris Loss, a bizarre WWF press release, the Los Angeles Times story that dwelled on Hulk Hogan’s cocaine use way too much, and more, including Vince McMahon heeling on Bruno Sammartino on Larry King Live. And in the week of March 16, we get the legendary Titangate episode of The Phil Donahue Show and all of the related chaos, Phil Mushnick going scorched earth on Vince McMahon in the New York Post while revealing Vince’s shocking admission about what he suspected of Mel Phillips, Wade Keller hitting the nail on the head about the direction of the media coverage, and more.

And that just scratches the surface: There’s tons more, including Hulk Hogan’s gun charge, the WWF still using underage ring boys after being contacted for Jeff Savage’s Union-Tribune story, how heavily Savage’s article was edited before publication, Dave Meltzer spotting Hodgson’s true nature early on, tons of media criticism including Alex Marvez’s less than ideal handling of a rape allegation blurted out by Orton, Dave Meltzer’s handling of the Vince/Phillips stuff, and the degree to which media went way too hard on Hogan/drugs to the exclusion of the more important story, and MUCH more.

This is the longest Patreon show to date, and it’s a doozy. We put a lot into it, so we hope you appreciate it.

Timestamps:

0:00:00 Weeks of February 17 & February 24, 1992

Check out BTS episode #344 for the week of March 2, 1992, which includes the resignations of Pat Patterson & Terry Garvin and everything else that happened that week in extreme detail.

0:58:56 Week of March 9, 1992 

3:23:11 Week of March 16, 1992

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