Fraudulent Grabby Awards Just Gave Their “Performer of The Year” Prize To Someone Who Wasn’t Even Nominated
Who got enough fan votes to be named Grabbys 2021 Performer Of The Year last night? According to the Grabbys, it was a tie and there were two winners, which is an almost impossible outcome. (I’m no mathematician, but we’re supposed to believe that the top two got exactly the same number of votes, out of the thousands that were allegedly cast for 14 nominees?) But here’s what’s in fact literally impossible: One of the two “winners” was not even nominated as Performer Of The Year, meaning there was no way anyone could have cast a vote for him, and there’s obviously no way he could’ve won.
Here were the 14 nominees for Grabbys Performer Of The Year, as revealed back in April and seen on the nominations page of the Grabbys website:
After nominations were announced, fans were instructed to begin voting online for their favorites. Given their large fan bases (several of these performers have over half a million followers on social media), it’s conceivable that any one of the 14 nominees—Angel Rivera, Sharok, Cade Maddox, Austin Wolf, Joey Mills, Dante Colle, Rhyheim Shabazz, Max Konnor, Devin Trez, Adrian Hart, Colton Reece, Dillon Diaz, Skyy Knox, and Jake Nicola—could’ve received the most fan votes and won. But, as noted above, the Grabbys claimed there was a “tie” in this category (they couldn’t even make an attempt to be honest by just saying something like, “the top two vote-getters are the winners”), and the “winners” announced during the live broadcast last night were performers Sharok and Troye Jacobs. The Grabbys’ website reflected this later in the evening:
The problem, of course, is that Troye Jacobs was not a nominee for Performer Of The Year. So, no one could’ve possibly cast any votes for him as Performer Of The Year, and there’s no possible way he won this category. By the Grabbys logic, this means that Sharok “tied” with someone who received zero votes.
Who actually received the most votes and is the real Performer Of The Year? Maybe it was in fact Sharok. Or, maybe it was Angel Rivera. Maybe it was Cade Maddox. We’ll probably never know, and the Grabbys have refused to comment for over 18 hours now, leaving all of the nominees and their fans completely in the dark. Sadly, this is not a surprise, given the Grabbys’ embarrassing and ugly history of mistreating nominees.
The Chicago-based Grabby Awards haven’t been relevant or legitimate for several years. Back in 2018 (the last time I attended, when I took that photo above of a plastic chair in the club in which the show was held), they were credibly accused of blacklisting a performer after being paid off by known model abuser Michael Lucas (who’s been banned from all other awards shows, including the GayVN Awards and the Str8UpGayPorn Awards). Even more grotesque, the Grabbys later issued a delusional public apology to Lucas after performer Damon Heart took to the stage and called out Lucas’s mistreatment of models:
Despite the 2018 incident, many gay porn performers still take the annual Grabbys (held over Zoom for the last two years, which has actually been a step up from previous in-person ceremonies) seriously and encourage their fans to vote for them. Sponsors like Swiss Navy Lube presumably pay a little bit of money to the Grabbys. GayVN helps produce and stream the Grabbys online (a bizarre partnership, given that GayVN is a competitor of the Grabbys). Studios will send press releases this week to XBIZ touting their wins. So, as objectively illegitimate as they might be, the Grabbys still “matter” to some in the industry who like trophies, and a handful of people still genuinely care about who wins Grabby awards.
Speaking of a handful, last night’s Grabbys broadcast had around 150 people watching on average (at least 100 of those people were nominees and members of the industry), based on the counter shown on the Grabbys’ own video stream. Pierce Paris can get 22,000 likes on Twitter for sticking his balls up his own asshole, but only 147 people could handle listening to Grabbys host Chi Chi LaRue scream at them for 90 minutes. Needless to say, public awareness and interest in the Grabbys isn’t exactly robust.
This year, the Grabbys claimed that all of their winners were determined by fan voting online throughout April (it’s not known who chose winners in previous years, but sources have consistently told Str8Up that host and beleaguered director LaRue plays a major role in selecting some winners—an obscene conflict of interest that would render the show even more of a complete sham, if true), and the Grabbys promoted the online voting in all categories relentlessly on social media, while LaRue mentioned it repeatedly during the Zoom show. “All the winners were chosen by you, the fans!” was a constant refrain heard last night.
Given that we now know conclusively that online fan votes were not counted in the Performer Of The Year category, it’s reasonable to assume that winners in other categories are also false. That’s obviously unfair—not to mention downright cruel—to all of the nominees, the winners, the fake winners, the real winners, and anyone who wasted their time voting online. Because the Grabbys have refused to respond to both Str8Up and Troye Jacobs (who acknowledged this morning that he couldn’t have won Performer Of The Year, as seen below), everyone is only left to speculate.
My theory is that Troye Jacobs—who has over 150,000 followers on social media, to whom he promoted his nominations daily—probably won in at least one of the categories he was actually nominated in (Best Newcomer, Best Twink, Hottest Cock, Best Versatile, Hottest Bottom, Best Group), but perhaps Chi Chi LaRue decided she wanted to pick one of her personal favorites as a winner in whatever category (categories?) Jacobs won, so the win was stolen from him. Then, perhaps Grabbys owner Stacy Bridges felt some guilt for having a rightful win being taken from Jacobs, so he intervened and decided that Jacobs had to be given something. The award they decided on was Performer Of The Year, but, of course, they failed to realize that Troye Jacobs was not nominated in this category. It seems the Grabbys are so inept, so careless, and so brazenly stupid, they couldn’t even be bothered to properly rig their own awards show.
There were no doubt several legitimate winners announced last night, but even those real wins are tainted by the fraud and disrespect perpetrated on Troye Jacobs, Sharok, and whichever nominee actually won Performer Of The Year. Who else had wins stolen from them last night? Who else is, unbeknownst to them, not really a winner? Chi Chi LaRue and Stacy Bridges know, and they’re not talking.
In the past, the Grabbys have been laughably called “the Golden Globes of the gay porn awards.” Last month, it was announced that the actual Golden Globes were effectively canceled, following years of misconduct and shady dealings by the organization’s members. Following years of their own misconduct and shady dealings (not to mention inviting accused serial rapist Dominic Ford onto their show last night as both a presenter and a sponsor), it’s time for the Grabbys to follow suit and finally shut down for good.
