Former AEW Video Editor Levies Claims of Hostile Working Environment

Benson claims that Cody didn’t like him from the start as he apparently thought Benson was a “stalker fan” from an experience at All In. He says that he was asked to not be in the building when Cody would come on site, though he notes that Cody was always nice to him when they would encounter each other. Benson says that he was not allowed to mention his AEW work on social media despite the fact that others being able to. He notes that when he received a production assistant credit on the first “Countdown” video and was tagged in a Facebook post by his boss (not Cody), he put a single post out thanking people for their support. That post, he was told, was allegedly screenshot by Cody and sent to Benson’s boss with a thumbs down emoji, and Benson claims he was told to delete all of his social media or be fired. When he asked his boss if he had read the tweet, he claims his other boss yelled at him, “Don’t f**king talk to him that way” and that it “led to me 6’5″ Hall of Famer boss getting in my face, intimidating me into deleting all my social media in front of him.”

Benson goes on to say that when his girlfriend and him had to move from their apartment, he was being “lazy” for asking for three days off and not just one day and adding his weekend days to it which he says wasn’t an option. He also had to take seven days to quarantine after his girlfriend had a COVID scare and while he offered to work from home, they didn’t send him any work at that time and afterward he had a meeting with his boss and two coworkers to tell him that he didn’t offer hard enough to work from home. They told him to “come up with a plan to keep his job” and that they wanted him to “impress them” by working 60 hours a week and learn additional skills relevant to his job outside those hours.

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. He closes with:

“If you read all of this, thank you. It feels cathartic to finally write it. 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.”

I'm very nervous about this, but I'd rather share my story just in case I don't make it through covid-19. This is the story of my year with AEW, and the bullying and gaslighting that came with it. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/Dn8npa6Ha4

— Louie Benson (@TeamLouie) November 19, 2020