Funny how the guy never went so hard promoting any of the other dozens of events he goes to then.
Ewww this can of worms is getting nasty.
Not even talking specifics of revelations, but do you then call out the sponsors themselves for the affiliation with tournaments were the community is being treated badly? They could react by saying ‘you know what, how were we to know about this? This isn’t worth the hassle/bad rep’ and cease sponsoring players at all. 
Or they could come forward and apologise etc… which wouldn’t be so bad.
ANYWAY, the OP will come forward again asking us to stay on topic about JN. So… yeah… umm… ‘shady stuff’.
Champ made it sound like he was forced by his sponsor Complexity to actively tell his loyal stream viewers to sign up for Revelations.
LOL yeah right. Mike Ross is also a player for Complexity, but he didn’t promote Revelations at all. In fact, Ross did not even attend Revelations.
I’m not invested in this situation in any way at all, but I’ve been reading this topic and think I can say something smart as a neutral observer so I’d like to ask you (and others who hold similar positions to this) to really think about the situation from the perspective of these top players.
If they were directed by their sponsors to do these things, they can’t disclose anything obviously. Think of their sponsors like employers. If you make your employer look bad in public, you expect to get fired.
If they were acting on their own but nevertheless engaged in shady dealings, they still can’t say anything because this isn’t just a hobby to them; it’s a job and they work as agents of their sponsors in everything FG related they do. Are they going to risk being dropped by their sponsors for admitting to wrongdoing? Even if they don’t think they’ll get dropped, they likely undestand that their actions reflect on the brand of their sponsors whether they were directed or not, and as “good employees” they don’t want to bring the “company” into disrepute. The involvement of the sponsors at all makes this far beyond a personal matter of coming clean; it’s the same way that if something shady is going on at work at a typical job and you’re involved, you are likely not going to report anything to anyone. It’s just not in your interests at all and is really risky to do so. The time to take a stand is before things go down; after the fact all you can really do is button down and try to ride the storm.
Likewise, even if there’s really nothing wrong, knowing that they can’t reveal anything if something is wrong, them saying everything is fine is meaningless. Their only options are saying everything is fine or saying nothing. They know a long-winded “everything is fine” is pointless since unless they can offer proof of that (which even if they did nothing wrong is probably really hard to do!), what they say will have no credibility.
I’m not trying to say that demanding answers for shady dealings is wrong; it’s actually a critical thing for the community to do that. I’m just saying that demanding answers from these players is unproductive because in all possible worlds they’ll either tell you everything is fine or tell you nothing at all. The only thing to be done is to take the testimony from those reporting problems as what it is and demand answers from the top, from those believed to be the source of the problems (in this case, the touranment organizers). If they refuse to comment you can draw whatever conclusions you will and act based on that, but trying to involve players in this way is just not going to be productive.
Also, honestly, if you feel like you were personally wronged by their soliciations (maybe you attended and had a bad experience? I dunno), calling them out or even going so far as to call out their sponsors might make sense seeing as then you believe them to be directly responsible for hurting you not just being a vaguely complicit third party in wrongdoing, but I haven’t seen a single person actually say “I personally went to Revalations because [insert top player] solicited me to go on a stream, I think he was deliberately trying to mislead me, and I feel I’ve been harmed because of that”. Unless someone wants to actually step up and claim exactly that which I doubt is going to happen because I doubt anyone could do that honestly, is there any point in continuing this line of attack on players who by all appearances would greatly have preferred if the event went well for everyone and there’s no evidence had any say or even knowledge of what was going on with events they weren’t participating in regardless? It’s certainly a leap to try to give them responsibility for keeping up with every event the tournament was running even if they were asked to promote it especially since their promotions would be understood by a reasonable person to pertain to the events they themselves were going to enter. Unless, of course, you think that hyping up a tournament (even if they were asked to do it or even paid to do it) should have obligated them to spend some time on smashboards working out how things were going to go for the Brawl guys the same way they were apparently supposed to know all about KoF and SFxT and whatever else…
i can’t believe this thread went on this long.
there will be no conclusion to this. john nelson isn’t going to come out and confirm and say “yep moneys all mine!”
there is more than enough information from first hand accounts (thank you andyocr) and also feedback from gahleon, markman, etc. any player already has more than enough info in here from reliable source to make a judgement call for whether they want to go to a TL tournament.
but this thread is just continuing to accumulate a lot of trash in the form of dumb posts arguing over something that has some connection to the main topic. like seriously what–if you’re a top player and RT a TL tournament then now you’re a shady dude? ok so when are jwong and flipchamp going to run majors and promise pot bonuses like JN? …yeah, like it’s not even relevant
ugh just close this, or if you’re reading through this, just exit the tab now.
Which could all be easily explained by having different contractual agreements.
Fact: Fchamp did a lot of promotion for Revelations to his stream viewers and on Twitter.
FChamp is a good friend of Alex Valle. You really think FChamp hasn’t heard about the corruption that went on with Tournament Legacy? Gootecks and Mike Ross understood this and didn’t go to Revelations, they didn’t even bother to promote the tourney.
Ross is also with Complexity, but acted in a completely different way than FChamp. Complexity is a good sponsor, Ross acted honestly, it was only FChamp that acted in a shady way.
You are correct that the players like FChamp who went to Revelations will either say “everything is fine” or say nothing at all, because they will make more money in the long run if their actions in promoting a shady tournament are swept under the rug. Which is exactly what those top players and their fans are trying to do.
I only have this to say, please listen to Lloyd Banks - Make Money
Here’s a sample of the lyrics
“You need it, go get it
7 days committedYou need it, go get it7 days committed, n-gga
make money, make money, make moneymake money, make money, make moneymake money, make money, make moneymake money, make money, make money”
This song will provide you with all the answers.
Only I don’t think your sponsor has anything to do with that tournament. Everyone stayed clear of JN for a reason.
It’s pretty amazing that Champ is trying to say that Jason Lake forced him to not only go to the tournament but promote it as well. Stop trying to paint yourself as some spineless lackey that is taking orders from Complexity suits in a dark room on the other side of the country. It is insulting to everyone’s intelligence.
After reading through the thread it is pretty obvious why individuals such as fanatiq and champ have carved out a niche audience for themselves deep in the ass crack of the internet.
That is pretty much the same conclusions that I came to. Though Justin Wong may be a different subject, I don’t know.
But what if… that were actually true? We have no information either way regarding this. So why are you jumping to these conclusions?
For the record, i also am slightly uneasy at the idea of ‘what the top players have done’ but I’m smart enough to know I’m not privy to all the details.
I’m very excited to learn who gets payed what after this tournament. Then at least I can define why some people (players mainly) were heavily promoting this, while others were suspisciously silent (no EVO or Eventhubs coverage at all btw) or even attacking (the OP and a few at Twitter) it.
Guys, I don’t think it’s hard to understand at all that, even if the tournament or the people involved in the tournament have done questionable things, those things won’t necessarily affect everything and everybody in the tournament. Trying to reprimand players for promoting problems they may not have even experienced is ridiculous.
I said this earlier but I think it warrants saying it again, as far as the top players go, its not a matter of them being shady, its not a matter of hating on them. They are players just like any of us and they dont owe the rest of us anything. What this is however, is a matter of accountability, its been well established already that JN/TL are not trustworthy, there’s no point debating this now unless new evidence came out that proved or at least hinted otherwise, a probable reason why attention has shifted so much towards the players. However ultimately we really dont know the details and its just as easy to speculate about a self serving purpose, coersion or some other reason, this speculation does not really help.
The only real issue, as far as I can see, with the top players, is a simple matter, they are respectable figures in the community, as such what they say holds weight, if they promote an event that turns out to be shady the people who listen to them and follow them have the right to ask them why did you recommend this event? They dont have any obligation to answer in this thread if they dont want to, there is a lot of hostility going around, and while I dont want to speculate consider the possibility that one or more of them mightve gotten screwed over this as well, if it was me, getting scrweed over and then listen to people blaming it on me wouldnt really put me in the mood to talk. But again that is just speculation.
What it comes down is a very simple matter, with prominence within any circle comes a choice to use that prominence, if you dont use it then people cant really demand anything of out, but the moment you do the people who listen to you have a right to at least ask why. The players however have a right to answer or stay silent (which is an answer too), they dont need to answer us where we chose or how we chose, its up to the people to see if the answer satisfies them whether its a silent one or a vocal one, if it doenst or you feel you cant trust that player anymore then just dont follow his advice next time he advertises something, go to sources you can trust, and if it does or youre willing to give them a second chance keep listening to them.
Thats all there really is to it, theres no point in trying to burn them at the stake or demonize them, I think everyone can make up their minds on their own if their answer be a silent one or not is enough for them, thats a personal thing and doesnt require a witch hunt of the players who assisted, they are entiteld to go to the events they chose and promote what they chose for the reasons they chose, just as each person has the right to chose whether to listen to them or not.
tl;dr People have the right to ask top players why they promoted a questionable event, top players have the right to answer or stay silent, people can chose if that is enough for them to keep listening to said top players or not without needing to flame, attack or witch hunt
We won’t know until after a month since people had to fill out W-9’s. Although if Nelson lies on the W-9’s he’ll be in a lot more trouble and the high profile players like Wong and Champ will be the least of his worries.
From reading this thread this seems to be the main points of interest; or someone just update the OP idk…
Cross Counter:
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did not like Revelations since Ross and Gootecks did not promote the tourney
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Gootecks got dicked hard by Nelson and was accused of stealing set ups
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Champ promoted the hell out of LA 2012 and was trying to get his fans/stream monsters to join despite the (at the time) allegations and other shady dealings regarding 2k11.
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Wolfkrone was denied a room for winning an online tourney and was stranded, also Omniscythe was as well in 2k11.
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KoF people wanted proof that there was an additional prize pot to their winnings but Nelson/other people could not provide, so most people, if not everyone, left.
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Pretty much any/all of redrapper’s post since he had to work first hand with him.
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CEO was created out of it so there is that silver lining
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Honzo Gonzo going to fight Nelson in the ring or some shit UFC style
In all actuality the best anyone can do at this point is just not attend Nelsons tourney’s in the future with the information they know as well as other information that people are hinting at but don’t want to share for probably very good reasons. I’m sure if Champ/Wong/Fanatiq got screwed out of their respectable games (since AE/Marvel are the big 2) it’d be a pretty different scenario.
CEO was created out of the failure of GAMME, not Revelations. The only direct connection between Revelations and CEO is that Reveloations 2011 scheduled itself for the same date 2 months after CEO 2011 had its date set.
You guys should play Alpha 2 on GGPO and avoid this “FGC” nonsense
The hell is this detective shit going on? Even if people were right about Champ and JWong being “corrupt” or something, what does that do? There’s really no point in people trying to be Sherlocks and making assumptions about things they know almost nothing about.
The thread’s called “John Nelson, Tournament Legacy, and Team HORI,” not “Fuck John Nelson and everyone and everything that has ever been affiliated with him.”