Another allegation of sexual abuse has surfaced in the fighting game community. Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar has been accused of paying a minor to see his genitals in 2001 as part of a “bet.” The victim of the alleged sexual abuse, who goes by Mikey (@Pyronlkari), was 17 at the time. Mr. Wiz is co-founder and president of EVO, one of the largest fighting game tournament organizers. However, he’s been put on leave from his position as president of that organization as a result of these allegations. (Evo has now been canceled and you can read more about it here.)
https://twitter.com/EVO/status/1278573278118899712
In a TwitLonger, Mikey explains some background to the situation. He was a regular at an arcade that Mr. Wiz hung out at and described some red flag behavior he witnessed in the years leading up to the incident:
“It wasn’t hazing, but a lot of the old boys club would often have us do stupid shit just for a laugh, and they’d give us tokens or buy food for us if we’d be willing to do whatever stupid thing it was. Most of it was genuinely harmless. Scream something dumb really loud, shit along those lines.
Wizard was especially into this. He would pay people hundreds of tokens to do things like take off their clothes and jump in the water hazard pools for certain amounts of times. 99% of the time, it was young boys. There is only a singular instance I know of where it wasn’t a young boy, and that singular instance, she was allowed to do it in the future, in whatever clothes she liked and only for a few seconds. But for all the boys (out of recollection 12-16) it was like 10-15 minutes, we HAD to be in our underwear (under the reasoning that it would be colder) and they were always challenges at the time so we couldn’t prepare change of clothes, towel, or anything like that.”
In September 2001, Mikey described that the incident began with the group joking about a peephole that had been sealed in the facility’s restroom:
“In the group someone made a joke about how “it’s mostly Asian people even if you were gay, why’d you want to look at a bunch of tiny penises”. And me… being who I am, who loved to research into things that are common myths and ideas said “That’s not true. Asians on average are as big as other races when erect. The average male penis is 5 1/4 inches when erect”
Again… if you knew me back then, this is 100% on brand for me to say, even though I was only 17 at the time around a bunch of guys 5-10 years older than me. So Wizard took a stab at me by saying “So you’re saying you’re average?”. I proclaimed back “I’m above average”. Because of course I’ve measured it when looking this all up because I’m a teenager and wondered how I compared.
Wizard said “I bet you’re not, I bet you $20 you’re not”. And so a bet was made. He later made stipulations, that he’d have to see it in person, and I argued how the hell am I going to be able to randomly get erect for you to see?
So I brought a bunch of porn to SHGL, went into the bathroom stall while he waited outside of the bathroom for me to call him in. It wasn’t an easy task to get erect, and when I did I took out the ruler, unlocked the stall door and called him in, I instantly got flacid as soon as he opened the stall door. I stared at the ruler and the thought in my head was like “this still better count it was over 5 1/4 by the time he opened the stall door”
He made a joke about it “Man you shrank hella fast” and gave me $20.”
Mikey states that Mr. Wiz was “5-10 years older than me” at the time, but Game Revolution couldn’t confirm his exact age. Mr. Wiz hasn’t released a statement about the accusations as of writing.
This is just the latest in a series of allegations that has rocked the fighting game community over the last few days. Yesterday, pro Smash players Cinnpie and Nairo were both accused of pursuing sexual relationships with minors as well.
