At the IFBB Tampa Pro last weekend Dave Palumbo was personally ejected by the higher ups of the IFBB from the evening finals, and then proceeded to have all future press privileges removed from his site, Rx Muscle. The USA's provided a dark foreshadowing into these events when media privileges for the finals was awarded to MD. As a result Rx Muscle was not allowed to record inside the venue, and forced to do their interviews outside in the dark. Since then things have only gotten worse, and came to a head at the IFBB Tampa Pro, as it was the events at this contest that ultimately served as the straw that broke the camel’s back of the relationship between Dave Palumbo and the IFBB, and resulted in the self-proclaimed #1 site for contest coverage no longer be able to cover contests.
Just a few months ago Mel Chancey was brought on board as one of the highest paid staff of Rx Muscle. From the beginning this was a weird business decision as clearly Mel provides no tangible skills that could be beneficial to the site, besides the occasional good ol' prison rape story and being perceived by some as a cool dude. It wasn't until the exodus of Aaron Singerman that he became the self titled ‘protector’ of Rx.
You would think for the 5K a month Dave pays him, that Mel would be capable of offering some of that high priced top-shelf protection. Instead, he was paid to party and hobnob at the show, all the while RX is badly in need of some protecting. This was demonstrated when Mel was present for the ejection of Dave from the Tampa Pro but did nothing to stop it.
During, or shortly after, the morning prejudging, Rx staffer Johnny Styles tweeted out a message from the Rx account that said Dave Palumbo strongly disagreed with the judging in Tampa. Unlike previous failed/incriminating tweets from the Rx account, this one was not blamed on a 'Intern', instead it was deleted and is nowhere to be found.
This was not done though before a screenshot of the tweet was captured and sent to someone in power. It was after the tweet was brought to the Judge’s attention at the night show that Dave was called up and ejected from the facility (Although he tells everyone it was due to "knee pain").
The IFBB Had not even doled out a consequence for Dave's actions yet when the site went ahead and made another major violation of IFBB policy. Shortly before the show another third-party media site bought rights to the stage video footage. All major media in attendance was informed of this, and told they were not allowed to video the stage. Nonetheless, even after his ejection from the facility, RX ran video of the stage footage during their wrap up. The Powers That Be looked at this disregard for thier rules as a slap in the face, and it just reiterated what they already thought of Dave Palumbo. He’s a trouble marker.
The end result of this blacklisting of Rx Muscle among NPC / IFBB is you won’t be seeing them at the NPC North Americans or even the Olympia. No passes will be issued and the only way they are covering the biggest show in bodybuilding is from their hotel rooms, or maybe the parking lot. Honestly, with the current climate as anit-rx as it currently is, I think they’d be best served by just taking a break till the end of 2013. I’d let things cool down, because knowing Dave he’ll just say or do something wrong and make everything even worse!
When Aaron Singerman was fired by Dave it was said that Rx had “Cut out the Cancer”... Well, 3 Months later it looks like cut out the wrong peice or somehow it spread! It’s been said that the Powers That Be in bodybuilding are very forgiving, so maybe you will see Dave Palumbo a press pitt again, but it won’t be soon.
What do you think, is this RIP for Rx?
