#juno speaks

as soon as speedball x something lost the dpw tag team championship, speedball announced that was their last booking and that the tag team was done, they (speedball) were done, going back to canada, and then soon after, they show up on aew

jake would go on to represent dpw as their world champion until either shortly before or right as dpw goes on an indefinite hiatus (this and the above point are why i specify kayfabe because once you start dealing with stuff outside of aew and adding that into the lore it gets a bit dicey), and he was still connected to tna until shortly after wwe/tko's hostile takeover

essentially, before jake went to aew, the state of the last 2 promotions he was in were fucked.

shortly after speedball debuted, jetspeed, that's speedball and kevin, would form, with them winning the trios champions with both hangman adam page (who, along with his rival swerve, were not great influences) and mistico.

in january of this year, jake would then join aew, immediately siding with the don callis family and attacking jetspeed offscreen (this was likely not supposed to be executed like that, but i think there were flight issues which led to jake's 1st on screen appearance feeling very random, that and the fact that he immediately tore his bicep in a tag match against ftr in a freak accident).

around this time, kevin also won the tnt championship after kyle fletcher vacated it due to injury

jetspeed supported... fuck it it's chronological information, jetspeed supported darby allin in taking the world championship from mjf, which he would (inexplicably imo) go on to do, and the turn started right after mjf won the belt back.

kevin's always been a tag guy after he broke out of the la dojo in njpw, first it was the intergalactic jet setters with kushida, and then it was jetspeed, which almost immediately formed after speedball debuted, just to note. and kevin wanted to be recognized by himself, he was a champion but his role was still on the side supporting darby in his efforts and still being seen for his trios runs rather than the fact that he was, you know, fucking tnt champion.

speedball, in what i note as a little bit of hypocrisy, addressed that on the dynamite the following week, stating how kevin's impatience and his specific form of ambition leads to mistakes, including attacking darby (a very right decision imo). speedball, as much as they are the good guy, was also scolding kevin, telling him to apologize on national television like he was a child.

like i have in that messy ass chart above, no i don't think speedball is the bad guy, but if we want to include dpw in the lore, they have the habit of envisioning their friends alongside them and struggle to acknowledge their own desires and how they might have to achieve them differently than speedball does. literally 2 of the first things speedball said in response to jake joining the dcf was 1) they had room for jake to join jetspeed, they wanted him with the team and 2) they miss jake something, fuck jake doyle (obviously this one is more of a joke but it also thematically fits with how they saw kevin's choice to attack darby, 'why can't you keep the way of honor i knew you had?').

i feel there is a big distinction in speedball and kevin making their own big moves, speedball left dpw as they were, without changing who they were, because they didn't have to, they were making a personal choice to go back home for a bit. while kevin accepted that in order to get what he really wants (solo recognition, being seen for HIS work, not his work with someone else) he might have to become the villain in order to achieve it because with the fact that he has a belt around his waist right now, there's no break, it's all bets.

that's why i really loved that detail of kevin feeling some guilt as he attacked speedball. like, maybe he doesn't want to stoop this low but in order to get somebody who clings this close to him off his back, he felt no choice but to do that. and it hurts, it fucking hurts. but it's about time he's seen for him, not him and his partner.

both breakups were essentially on the line of 'i want to take time for/bet on myself, even if i have to leave this thing that meant a lot to me'. abandonment runs deep as a theme, the need to leave things behind in order to seek out the next chapter for yourself (which is maybe why i, someone who had to stop volunteering at a place i loved after almost 2 years in order to take on so many new opportunities, am particularly feeling it this morning).

there are still loose ends imo, like why, of all things, would jake feel the need or desire to join the dcf to get into aew even though he had practically the same connections as speedball on a national (US) level. same as to why kevin would think joining the dcf would assist with his desires unless if this was squarely to form this fucked up triangle between them 2 and speedball.

i mean i don't mind it, but its still a pair of questions.

Rothernberg: Because I wasn't with him in in Madrid or Rome and you were - can I ask what the Jannik Sinner press conference experience has been like lately? Caroyal: [laughs] It's been tough! I mean, look, Jannik's a player who is very guarded. And again, I mean, it's his prerogative. And you know, considering you know what's happened in the past - obviously there was a positive test - there's a reason why he's guarded. And I mean, as he says constantly, like he's, he's only interested in the people around him, right? Those are the people he's playing for, those are the people he opens up to, shows his kind of full personality to, and that's how it is. But I mean, certainly, it makes trying to cover him and speak to him and just tell his story, it certainly makes it more difficult.

this snippet is preceded by them talking more broadly about the players speaking - or, not speaking - about the boycott and negotiations with the slams. i can sympathise with their feelings tbh, because they were saying that they had been encouraged to ask questions about it (by a behind-the-scenes "PR push") in miami, but then essentially got completely stonewalled/shutdown by multiple athletes, sinner and sabalenka included, although obviously both have gone on to speak at length in rome following the news with roland garros.

but i think the difficulties are largely tied to an occupational identity shift due to major changes in access and image control over the past 20 or so years, which nathan writes about in changeover, in one of the most compelling parts of the book in my opinion.

The notion of a player today submitting themselves to the critical eye of a journalist, for meaningful conversation, was essentially unthinkable. Storytelling is consolidated in the hands of the players. Sports media is dead, most of what's left is window dressing for online sports gambling firms. Print journalists have become unnecessary middlemen for athletes who can instantaneously transmit their idle toughts to fans on social media. To expand his popularity, a player relies not on a ferrety writer, but on a well-cut highlight reel or a high-end photoshoot. I understand the calculus: When you own time becomes so valuable, why give away access to your life story for free? There has to be something in it for them, too. The image has fully stomped out the written word in sporting culture, if not culture full stop. Players with enough clout can even partake in another current pastime: the hagiographical docuseries, where the player gets full editorial veto power. What we lose, in this new media ecosystem, are the thornier narratives that the players themselves don't want to share.

sorry for the extremely lengthy pull-quote! so basically, nathan is saying that 1) players are no longer reliant on journalists to tell or present their story and persona to the masses, and 2) this resultingly "flattens" sports storytelling because now its not biography, its autobiography, its complete self-portraiture. and ofc these players (and/or their teams) are typically going to want to present themselves in the most palatable, digestible and least-controversial way possible. nathan actually spoke about this further in conversation with rothenberg on no challenges remaining when promoting changeover:

Ben Rothenberg (BR): So what was access like, and how did being at a bit of a distance influence your your writing in this book? Giri Nathan (GN): [...] first I delivered this proposal where it's very clear, like the book's success is not predicated on access, hopefully my point of view is interesting to read. And then, you know, as part of my research, I was reading these classic sports books from like 70s, 80s, 90s. And then I'm like, wow, these people are just - can be a fly on the wall in these outrageous scenarios. And it just, this is so far beyond anything doable in 2025 that like, oh, I'm envious of it, but also like it's, it's so far out of the scope that I can't even- BR: It reads like fanfic now. Like the way that like, Venus Envy, one of my favourite tennis book came out in 2000 or 2001, I guess, it was about the 2000 season of women's tennis. And John Wertheimer wrote it and, yeah, all at the back behind the scenes, like gossip and like sources got from like, the players themselves, right. [...] There was just like, so much detail. [...] You just - no one gets that anymore at this level of sports. GN: So it was like part of it was like, okay, slightly mournful for that era, but then I was like, honestly, there are cool things we have now, which is the never-ending surveillance state of smartphones, and fandoms. And there are interesting little snapshots we get of these players, which I incorporate like, pretty generously throughout the book. And I was like, you know, there are actually pretty great things about being able to catalogue and organise videos from over the course of the tennis season effortlessly. I'm like, okay, we have some advantages, too.

i think its fascinating what nathan points to when he does go on to talk about what he considers the upsides of this new era - talking a bit tongue-in-cheek about the 'surveillance state' players navigate now, but also more practically being able to literally just watch back matches in their entirety, or sort through transcripts of interviews and press conferences. these things are evidently the other side of a development which in many ways has disadvantaged, or at least majorly transformed, the role of the journalist. and it does feel like now journalists are often put in a position to draw from sources or engage in spaces which have negative bearings on players (e.g. the constant filming, lack of privacy), which further disrupts and changes what used to be perhaps a more symbiotic dynamic.

so now, journalists still see their role as disseminators of player’s stories and sports narratives, but they feel somewhat spurned by how their access to players has shrunk. they have pre-tournament press and post-match conferences, but that’s about it. their job is often to dissect and interpret the same surveillance images and footage everybody else already has. and further, they are kind of pushed to share their work and try to generate interest in internet spaces which are additionally populated by fans, fandom accounts, bad faith actors, etcetc. goodbye separation of church and state!

it's honesty a little tragic to have this idea of a journalist, and what that means as an identity and role, and then once you arrive its so different to what it was like when you were aspiring towards it. and i think thats why you have journalists like lewis, who can write keenly about how the media landscape around tennis has made players more reticent and guarded as a pre-emptive response to how their words will be treated, but with no acknowledgement of the way many journalists themselves now occupy those same spaces and engage in the same practices.

he writes about this in a defector article, about his experience after asking american players about how they felt about the u.s. at ao26:

A question about such a sensitive subject would of course be better asked in a one-on-one setting, but access in tennis has largely been obliterated with the rise of social media, player-run podcasts and YouTube channels, and in the aftermath of COVID. In my case, it also would have been difficult to make the time for eight separate sit-downs. It's not that there are no opportunities for freelance tennis writing, but in today's media environment, they pay such that you have to stack up quite a few of them before you can cover the bills.  After her next round, she told another journalist that the question had "obviously" been intended for a clickbait headline, so she'd tried not to answer it. It wasn't. That Anisimova thought it was is representative of tennis players' general distrust of the media, though. The Tennis Letter is arguably the main context criminal here, but not the only one. Sites like The Tennis Gazette and Sportskeeda excel in sensationalist or misleading headlines, which produce controversies over things a player didn't even say. To some players, the worst of tennis media has come to represent the entire body; anybody asking them a difficult question is somebody who must intend to make them look bad. 

i understand lewis’ focus on these specific accounts which at best spare little thought to the intention of journalists and nature of their work, and at worst purposefully use these moments to drum up discourse and conflict. but in narrowing the scope of his critique, he fails to mention the frankly vast number of professional journalists who are also on these same platforms, reacting to the same posts and offering up the same uninformed, thoughtless responses to engagement bait, clipfarming and other situations. the line has truly blurred between these groups, so why wouldn't players take things in bad faith, as even if the person asking it doesn't have malintent it could still be posted and shared with such? the thing is, its very hard to be on these social media platforms, especially if you are trying to promote yourself and your work, without abiding by their terms, and without giving into the type of engagement they reward.

faced with guarded players and slimmed access, i think probably a lot of journalists feel like the only tools left at their disposal are the very ones which devalued and continue to denigrate their work in the first place. with how fast the internet and online culture develops and expands, its not surprising that a lot of journalists are still figuring out how to pivot, or how to rework their role.