UPDATE x 2: As we reported earlier today,
several talent who worked yesterday’s evening half of Hardcore Roadtrip’s
double-header found themselves unpaid and without travel arrangements after
promoter Mark Livingston and his wife disappeared. The situation continues to
look bleak as the Facebook pages for both Livingston and Hardcore Roadtrip were
deleted on Sunday.
Livingston reportedly left his championship belt at the show along
with a laptop that was being used to record the iPPV audio and several cameras
that were used in shooting the show. These were taken by the talent in order to
make up for the lost money.
I contacted promoter Mark Livingston twice today – once at 9:30AM
and again at 7:30PM and have not received any reply as of this writing. This is
VERY similar to what happened several weeks ago with the Extreme Rising
promotion. The Hardcore Roadtrip promotion even came out and blasted them,
offering discounted tickets to their event due to Extreme Rising cancelling
their events and then deleting their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
We’ll keep you posted as we hear more.
UPDATE: Here is the end of last night’s
Hardcore Roadtrip event where the talents who got stiffed on money GO OFF on the
promoter. At the end of the video, the talents ask the fans for rides home as
they have no transportation due to the promoter leaving and screwing them over
on flights, rental cars, etc. We placed an email to promoter Mark Livingston at
9:30AM EST this morning and have not received a response as of 3:45PM EST. This
is pretty insane and is clearly not an angle ….:
ORIGINAL: Mark
Livingston, the promoter for Hardcore Roadtrip, disappeared during the evening
portion of last night’s doubleheader event. Livingston was nowhere to be seen by
the end of the show and most of the talent had not been paid for the evening
show, nor had transportation arrangements been made for workers to go from the
London, Ontario area into the US so they could catch flights back home at the
Buffalo and Detroit airports.
The show actually ended with an
announcement about the situation; after the final match between Jesse Amato and
Masada, the locker room came out to applaud them and then got into the ring.
Ring announcer Stephen DeAngelis explained the situation, thanked the talent and
asked any fans who had passports and could transport talent to help out of
possible.
Another report from the site noted that talent who worked only
the matinee show were paid, along with those who had requested their money up
front. It was only those who had waited until after the show for their pay who
were left out.
There was a story running around backstage that
Livingston’s wife took him to the hospital, but that is not confirmed and no one
was officially told that. Gregory Iron noted in a post to his Facebook page that
he hurt his neck taking a bad bump, acknowledging that it was his own fault but
saying that he may have hurt himself unpaid because Livingston “faked a heart
attack”.
The promotion has an iPPV scheduled for tonight but that’s
entirely up in the air at this point and may well not happen. Livingston has
been unavailable for comment since he disappeared.
