Video of the incident made the rounds on social media.
As a part of the 2023 MomoCon convention in Atlanta, Georgia, those in attendance could check out a Outlandish Paradise show presented by IMPACT Wrestling talent Zicky Dice. Throughout the weekend, there were multiple Outlandish Paradise shows.
At one of the shows, there was a match involving Dillon McQueen, Dani Jordyn and Brooke Havok. After the match, an individual who was present for MomoCon, got physical with McQueen on the outside of the ring and then proceeded to get in the ring and put Dani on his shoulders and dropped her on the mat.
Video of the situation was captured and it circulated on social media. Cultaholic was able to chat with Zicky Dice for an in-depth discussion about what occurred. He first stated that Outlandish Paradise was an attraction to MomoCon. There were over 50,000 people at the convention. Dice and his Outlandish Paradise show was recommended to MomoCon as they were not pleased with the pro wrestling that had taken place at prior conventions.
And to be fair, Zicky Dice’s Outlandish Paradise was an attraction to MomoCon, okay? This wasn’t a wrestling show per se. MomoCon had over 50,000 attendees, most of them dressed up in costumes. You could not tell a professional wrestler from a cosplayer there this weekend and MomoCon had contacted me about bringing Outlandish Paradise there because they are huge fans of professional wrestling. I guess there was professional wrestling there the years prior before and they were not happy with it and it was close to being canceled. So I was referred and I was contacted to bring in Zicky Dice’s Outlandish Paradise for the entertainment for the weekend. What we did was two shows a day, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 12 PM and 4 PM.
Dice addressed the comments about there not being barricades. He stated that he enjoys the intimate settings and would prefer his shows to have no chairs and the crowd to surround the ring.
I see a lot of comments about, ‘Where were the barricades?’ Or, ‘Where were the security?’ Me personally, I like the close, intimate setting. There’s a lot of shows that I work at where there are no barricades. Matter of fact, I would love to not have chairs. I would love to have people surrounding the ring and give us the space that we need.
Diving into the situation at hand, Dice said the video going around does not show when the people in attendance began chanting ‘Spider-Man’ at the individual who had the physical interactions with Dillon McQueen and Dani Jordyn. Said individual was cosplaying Spider-Man.
Zicky stated that he knew the person had a disability because he’s spent over a decade working with people with disabilities. If Dice was not wrestling full-time, he would still be in that field of work. He brought up the crowd chanting ‘Spider-Man’ and said he did not want to disrupt the moment for the individual as it was innocent until it wasn’t.
As far as security goes, they were at different posts and could not see what was happening in the ring. He feels Dillon and Dani did not call for security because they were protecting the business and added that Dani had the same mindset when she sold the individual’s slam to the mat. Zicky was upset about what was going on and concerned about the talent and reiterated that it was innocent until it wasn’t anymore. When they got said individual to the backstage area, he was in tears and continuously apologized.
They had a talk with him and he told Zicky, police and security that he thought it was his audition. Both Jordyn and McQueen opted not to press charges and the individual was kicked from MomoCon for the weekend. Dice added that he felt bad and almost let him stay.
I see him (the fan) get up on the ropes and you have a thousand people — this is what the clip doesn’t show. He gets back down, you get a thousand start chanting, ‘Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Spider-Man.’ Let me tell you something, when I get 50 people chanting ‘Zicky Dice’, when I get 100 people chanting ‘Zicky Dice’, 1,000 people chanting ‘Zicky Dice’, that’s the drug that we chase. Now I saw in this young man’s eyes, I was able to identify that there was a disability. I spent 13 years in the field working with adults with mental disabilities, I spent three years working with special ed in high school and if I wasn’t doing this full-time, that’s where I would be working and I’m grateful and I’m thankful that this happened at Zicky Dice’s Outlandish Paradise and here’s why, it was innocent until it wasn’t. You have the fans chanting ‘Spider-Man, Spider-Man.’ You see it in this young man’s eyes, you see he’s living his moment and that’s all it was. We didn’t wanna take away from the moment that Dani Jordyn, Brooke Havok and Dillon McQueen created and it wasn’t the time. Was I upset? You bet your bottom dollar. My plan was Dani raise his hand, turn to the left, raise his hand. You can see Dani Jordyn try to escort the gentleman out of the ring multiple times. Keep in mind, there’s over 50,000 people there. We had security by the post up front, security by the other post and they couldn’t really see what was going on in the ring, okay? Dillon didn’t call for security as he felt it wasn’t needed. He continued to stay on the sell because I feel they were protecting the business, they were protecting the moment that just happened and I applaud them for being professional in that moment and there’s a lot of people bringing up the controversy, ‘Oh, why did Dani sell? Why did that sell?’ They were just keeping the moment alive and I gotta say, I love that everyone says, ‘Oh! This has to be a work.’ That’s fine, that’s fine. But at that moment, as they’re chanting ‘Spider-Man’, she raises his hands, she goes to get him out of the ring. He turns around and bucks up on her and does this little karate pose so Dani kind of improvs and karate poses with him. He goes to shake (her) hand, he yanks her up, goes up for the Fireman’s Carry slam. Now, is it my concern that wrestlers could have been hurt? Absolutely. But thankfully, they were not this time. The plan was get him out of view of the cameras, get him in the back and get it handled. So that’s when I knew, the slam, something that went from innocent turned serious and thankfully, no one was injured, Dillon wasn’t injured, Dani wasn’t injured and the gentleman involved wasn’t injured. So at that point, I tell security. It’s very hard finding the right time to get him out and as soon as it happened, I said, ‘We gotta get him out of the ring.’ We get him out of the ring and I look up and I see about 990 phones pointing at the situation. I grab this man, this gentleman, with actually holds that I was trained with in my 13 years of working in the field, all safeholds. Keep myself safe and keep him safe and we escort him to the back. He throws himself on the ground and I look in his eyes and he is crying, he is terrified, he’s begging for forgiveness, he is saying how sorry he is and I realized that this man has an intellectual disability. So we bring him to the back and everyone’s surrounding him. I have everyone separate themselves from him and I tell him to get up off the floor and we talked to this gentleman about his behavior and how wrong that was. We had to explain to him the size difference between him and Dani, we had to explain to him that we are trained professionals, we had to explain to him that what he did was not okay and that took a little while to do. He thought, and what he said to myself and the security at MomoCon and the police at MomoCon was that he thought this was his audition. That’s what he believed in his head. Now, this situation could have been handled a whole lot worse. If I had a different group of people booked on my show, if this was at a different promotion but what it comes down to at the end and this is what makes me so damn proud is the character that Dani Jordyn, Dillon McQueen and myself are deep down. Because the last thing I would do is result to violence and let me tell you, if I would have roughed this kid up or any one of my crew would have roughed this kid up, they would have felt sick to their stomachs, and, not only would that have been illegal, what we did was the right situation. We removed him from the situation, detained him, contacted security and it was handled. Now, I explained to security — they asked Dani Jordyn and Dillon if they wanted to press charges. They did not choose to press charges. Security then asked me what I wanted to do. I let them know that I could not have this gentleman around the ring as we still had five more shows to go that weekend. So the outcome was they kicked him out of MomoCon for the weekend, not for forever and you should’ve seen the look on this kid’s face. It broke his heart. He was crying, begging for forgiveness. The fact that they took away his pass literally broke him, to the point where I almost let him stay. I almost let him stay, but, there are consequences for these behaviors.
After everything unfolded, Dice shared that he was approached by MomoCon representatives who said they’d like to have him back next year and they were proud of how things were handled.
And you know what MomoCon said to me? They came up to me and said, ‘Zicky Dice, we would love to do this again next year because we are proud of how you and your team handled that situation because it could have been a whole lot worse for not only Zicky Dice and Outlandish Paradise and the crew, but for MomoCon.’ But for MomoCon.
Dice is paired with Johnny Swinger on IMPACT Wrestling on AXS. The duo had a quick singles match against one another on the 4/27 program.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Cultaholic with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
