WWE has leaned on “it’s a work” to wave off every uncomfortable thing that’s ever happened on one of its broadcasts, and that excuse just ran into something it was never built to survive: a courtroom. A security guard is suing WWE and Montez Ford, along with the staffing company that put him on that barricade in the first place, and I can’t find one person in this story who thinks “it was a bit” is going to hold up in front of a judge.
The facts, confirmed across more than half a dozen outlets now covering the filing, aren’t complicated. On the July 6 episode of Raw, live on Netflix from Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois, Ford and tag partner Angelo Dawkins made their entrance through the crowd. The man working the barricade that night was Noel Lucas, an off-duty Cook County Sheriff’s deputy picking up arena security to help support his kids — the type of second job a lot of cops take because the first one doesn’t cover everything.
According to the filing, a WWE employee put Lucas directly in the Street Profits’ entrance path before the cameras rolled. Calling what happened next “spontaneous” is bullshit the moment you learn someone on WWE’s payroll put him there on purpose. The complaint, filed against Ford under his legal name, Kenneth Crawford, states it plainly: “Defendant Crawford then began performing a sexually provocative dance immediately in front of and over Plaintiff, repeatedly thrusting and gyrating his hips and pelvis towards Plaintiff, performing a sexualized ‘lap dance.’”
The clip went viral within hours. Lucas says coworkers at his actual job, the Cook County courthouse, started imitating the dance in front of him. He says his kids got mocked and ridiculed at school because of the footage. That’s the part of this story that never makes WWE’s weekly hype package: a sheriff’s deputy’s kids getting bullied because their dad’s night job put him in the middle of a wrestling entrance.
Lucas’s attorney, Whitney Barr, said it without any spin: “Like so many law enforcement officers, Mr. Lucas works a second job in order to better provide for his children.” That line doesn’t need embellishing. The indignity is the fact pattern.
The part that should worry WWE’s legal department more than the dance itself is this: the lawsuit names WWE itself, not just the wrestler, as a defendant, along with Event Services LLC, the third-party security staffing firm that assigned Lucas to that spot. Fourteen counts, including assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and violations of Illinois’ Gender Violence Act, aren’t written for a storyline. They’re written against a company.
WWE controls every camera angle, every entrance, every beat of crowd interaction on its broadcast. This is the same Raw broadcast Netflix already edits for content before it ever airs. WWE wants you to believe a bit like this is spontaneous the same way a Vegas magic act wants you to believe the assistant actually disappears. It only works if nobody looks at the mechanics. A company with that much production control doesn’t get to call an improvised security bit spontaneous and then act surprised when a real person who never auditioned for the role sues over it.
Wrestling fans reacted almost as soon as the filing hit:
https://twitter.com/FadeAwayMedia/status/2110891245904216123
Lucas isn’t asking WWE to admit the segment wasn’t real wrestling. He’s asking a court to treat it like what it actually was: a company using a real person as a prop without asking him, then leaving him to deal with the fallout at his other job and his kids’ school on his own. He’s also asking for an order barring WWE and Ford from using his identity or likeness again, which is not the kind of request a guy makes if he thinks he was ever part of the show.
WWE hasn’t responded publicly.
A case management hearing is set for December 10. “It’s a work” has gotten this company out of a lot of embarrassing moments. It has never had to survive a plaintiff with a badge, a lawyer, and fourteen counts behind him.
