Former Comeback Studios video editor Louie Benson took to Twitter to make allegations of “bullying and gaslighting” against Cody Rhodes and AEW.
Comeback Studios has been working with AEW on their videos. Based on Benson’s statement, it appears that he worked for the company for about a year and parted ways sometime in the last few months. Benson also described his role somewhat as a producer, but acknowledged his employers did not refer to him as such.
Based on the statement, Benson alleged that from the beginning of his tenure he was told that Cody “didn’t like me and thought I was a ‘stalker fan’.” Benson also described how he was asked to not be in the same building when Cody would come on-site. Despite these warnings, he noted that Cody was always seemingly very nice to him when they would run into each other.
During his time working alongside AEW, Benson was also apparently asked not to speak about the fact that he worked for AEW on social media. Despite many of his peers being allowed to freely speak about their involvement with AEW, he says he was pressured to delete innocuous posts acknowledging his association. At one point he even describes his “6’5″ Hall of Famer boss getting in my face…” about offending Cody with an off-hand, positive post about his employment.
On top of the repeated instances of bullying and intimidation, Benson also alleged that he was coerced to work while his wife was dealing with a COVID-19 scare. He spoke about asking for time off to quarantine and also, at one point, for he and his wife to move. In both instances he says he was pressured to keep working and take less time off.
“If you read all of this, thank you. It feels cathartic to finally write it,” Benson tweeted after posting the statement. “This isn’t anti-AEW at all. This is just a log of what I went through at the time. And I have friends and screenshots that can prove a lot of this for the people who I’m sure won’t believe me.
“I’ve also been told that I’ll ‘never work in the wrestling business again’ if I tweet this, and I’m prepared for it. I’m not saying that everywhere is like this, but if it is, I wouldn’t want to work there anyway.”
The full statement from Benson, along with text message screen grabs with his video manager Steve Yu, are embedded below:
