Nick LoPiccolo just gave BJ Bethel’s firing the full burial treatment.
After ESPN killed Bethel’s WWE story and SEScoops showed him the door, Nick mocked his sourcing, his journalism career and the fact that he somehow got fired by what LoPiccolo called a “Temu dirt sheet.”Bethel claimed ESPN had already decided not to renew its five-year, $1.625 billion agreement with WWE once the contract expired. ESPN directly denied it.
“There is no truth to the report that we have decided not to renew.”
SEScoops then retracted the article in full, admitted ESPN and WWE were not given a proper opportunity to respond and announced that it had parted ways with Bethel. LoPiccolo jumped into the mess on September 1 and immediately went after how the story spread. He accused Bethel and Dave Meltzer of pointing to each other while wrestling websites treated the same claim as multiple-source confirmation. Nick compared the entire sourcing process to the Spider-Man pointing meme.
“BJ Bethel, Mr. 500K on Max, Mr. Tony Khan’s message board friend from 15 or 20 years ago and Mr. Double Source for Dave Meltzer, wrote a story claiming ESPN had already decided to walk away from WWE.”
“Bethel pointed at Meltzer, Meltzer pointed back at Bethel, everybody else cited both of them and one person’s bullshit became supposedly independent confirmation.”
“Dave said BJ knew, BJ said Dave knew, the same wrestling websites repeated both of them and the entire sourcing operation became the fucking Spider-Man meme—just a group of people standing in a circle pointing at each other and claiming everyone else was the source.”
Then LoPiccolo got to the part that really set him off. He claimed Bethel’s attempt to contact ESPN amounted to emailing customer support instead of reaching someone in public relations or communications.
“Then ESPN called the story completely false and said Bethel never contacted them. How did this supposedly connected media insider attempt to verify a story about a multibillion-dollar media rights agreement? He emailed ESPN customer support.”
“If you couldn’t even find ESPN’s PR email or get somebody in communications on the phone, and your best effort was clicking customer support on the fucking website, how did you imagine you had anything resembling the relationships I have or the people around me have?”
Nick said Bethel wasn’t working with sources—he was filing a support ticket and acting like it counted. That’s when LoPiccolo dropped the “Temu dirt sheet” line and completely unloaded on Bethel for getting fired by SEScoops.
“In my world, you had no fucking relationships. You were a consumer with a support ticket pretending it was a source.”
“ESPN publicly destroyed the story, then SEScoops, which isn’t even a real dirt sheet, it’s a fucking Temu dirt sheet, retracted it in its entirety and fired him.”
“How do you call yourself a journalist when your credential is contributing to a Temu dirt sheet in the first place, and how the fuck do you then get fired by the Temu dirt sheet?”
Nick wasn’t finished. He compared Bethel’s firing to a defective product being shipped back to a discount store. Then came the knockout shot.
“You weren’t fired by The New York Times. You were returned as defective by a bargain-basement wrestling website that orders its credibility in bulk.”
“Imagine being so completely full of shit that even the discount knockoff version of a dirt sheet says, ‘No, this is beneath us.’”
“Bethel didn’t fail the standards of journalism. He failed the standards of a Temu dirt sheet. He wasn’t drummed out of the Fourth Estate. He got a refund notification.”
LoPiccolo said he had been warning people about Bethel for the last year and didn’t need ESPN to tell him the WWE story was false.
“I didn’t need ESPN to tell me BJ Bethel was full of shit because I told you last July, I told you last August and I’ve spent the last 12 months telling you.”
“ESPN finally walked into that little bubble, looked around for five minutes and publicly confirmed everything I’d already said.”
Bethel already lost the story and his job. LoPiccolo made sure he walked away with something else—a brutal new label as the guy who got “returned as defective” by a “Temu dirt sheet.”
What did you think of Nick LoPiccolo’s takedown of BJ Bethel and SEScoops? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
