YeastMonger

The duel was between Viennese royal Princess Pauline von Metternich and the Russian-born Countess Anastasia Kielmansegg.

They agreed to a duel in the summer of 1892 after a dispute over how the upcoming event -the Vienna Musical Theatrical Exhibition- would be decorated, on which they vehemently disagreed on flower arrangements.

It’s been dubbed the first ‘emancipated duel’ as there were no men present. Two women played mediators to the duelists, the third was standing medic Baroness Lubinska.

It was Baroness Lubinska, a female medic from Warsaw, who suggested they remove their top garments as a safety precaution! She explained that when stabbed by a sword, small bits of clothing could enter the wound, making it more difficult to clean and putting one at higher risk of sepsis/infection even with minor injuries. Thus, the topless duel was born.

The conclusion? The Paul Mall Gazette (August 23, 1892) wrote:

Zeliina Vega was released from WWE yesterday [13/11/2020] just 10 minutes after she tweeted the following:

A short statement from the company simply read: “WWE has come to terms on the release of Zelina Vega. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors.“ 

The news of Zelina’s release got fans talking, with many taking to Twitter to vent their fury at Vince McMahon’s, whose name was trending on Saturday.

The word backstage however is that Zelina’s release was decided on well before she posted the tweet and it was noted that Zelina was extremely vocal about maintaining her twitch account. Her starting a OnlyFans page was not a popular decision either and there are some people in WWE who are wondering if Vega was released to “send a message” to others in the company, to make sure they follow the third party platform edict. 

Zelina made it clear that she would be returning to Twitch and also tweeted out her thanks to the WWE universe, posting:

Thanks to All…

a lot of wrestlers’ income dropped because they stopped doing live shows. That meant less pay, and it also meant less merch sales.

So a lot of folks started live streaming on Twitch and YouTube, and picking up some extra cash from ads and memberships. And some others started doing custom videos on Cameo.

And the WWE, who employs(*) all these people, basically said “We don’t want you making any money that we don’t get a cut of, if not all of it” and said everyone had to stop streaming.

They claimed since they owned the trademarks of the wrestlers’ names, they should be the ones making money on them.

So the boys said “No problem, we’ll just use our real names on the streams” and the WWE claimed that they also owned the wrestlers’ real names.

They wanted to have everyone turn the stream channels over to the company, and then they could keep streaming, but any income from it would count towards their downside guarantee, AKA, the minimum money a worker could make in a year. 

The wrestlers are all understandably VERY angry about this.

Now, let’s look at that (*).  Wrestlers are not technically employed by the WWE, they are “independent contractors”, which is the company’s way of getting out of paying them an actual salary, and (very important) giving them medical benefits. They’re responsible for all their own expenses, travel, etc. And yet somehow, the WWE still has the ability to restrict the wrestlers from working anywhere else, where they make appearances, etc, things not ordinarily possible for contractors.

This business model has been under fire for some time now, both in the industry as well as outside - John Oliver did a scathing analysis of it back in the spring which got a lot of tongues clicking, but very little actually achieved.