The Muck: Mike Matusow Chastised After Threatening Player Who Busted Him

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Jul 06, 2020 5 min read

The World Series of Poker online summer bracelet schedule is rolling along, and a number of players like Daniel Negreanu and Matt Stout have taken the opportunity to bring livestreaming content to their fans.

Mike Matusow has joined the streaming party, and his show has been well-received by fans, with several thousand viewers tuning in to his YouTube channel.

However, things took a dark turn on Sunday evening.

Matusow Rages After Busting Immediately

Matusow entered Event #5: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em Freezeout but his stay proved as short as possible.

He was dealt ace-queen in the big blind and three-bet "wolverine17," who had opened in the small blind. Matusow's opponent proceeded to call and then checked a ten-high flop. Matusow opted to shove for an overbet with his overcards, but his opponent had laid a trap with pocket aces. No runner-runner cards saved Matusow, and he busted in the very next hand.

Afterward, Matusow's frustration boiled over. His irritation sprang from two sources: he'd not realized the tournament was a freezeout, so he couldn't reenter, and his opponent had tanked about 15 seconds before making the routine call on the flop.

"This motherf*****," he said. "I'm gonna f*** him right in his f****** ass, man. Mark that name down, wolverine17. What the f*** is wrong with these f****** people?"

He continued several minutes later:

"I am going to find out who this motherf***** is, and I swear to you, I am going to throw him up against the f****** wall, and tell him if you ever slowroll me again, I'm going to beat your f****** ass."

When the ranting and cursing subsided for a moment, he decided to throw out a bounty to his viewers.

"If anybody in here can find out the name of this guy, you guys will get an extra $50 bonus if you sign up for my home game," he said. "Normally, anybody on this stream that signs up at my home game gets $250 for $200 on their initial sign-up. If somebody can get me the name of wolverine17, and it's verified, they will get $300 for $200.

"I hate f****** scumbags in poker. People like him make people not want to play poker."

Player's Identity Outed

Turned out wolverine17 wasn't a him at all. Someone in the chat posted the player's identity, which is confirmed on the WSOP.com payouts: Megan Milburn was the foe who had busted Matusow and whom he'd threatened with physical harm.

Milburn is an East Coast player who has about $65K in live cashes.

"I won't hit no woman, I'll just call her a c*** that she is when I see her," Matusow declared.

Matusow tracked down the woman's Twitter and followed through on that, which was screencapped by DK Lappin before Matusow deleted it.

Players React With Horror, Matusow Apologizes

Several players took to Twitter to condemn Matusow's actions. Jason Wheeler was among those taking him to task, and several others joined the chorus.

Matusow did apologize, both publicly and privately, according to his feed.

Milburn, for her part, said it wasn't intentional, and she was undoubtedly happy just to have collected Matusow's stack en route to a 38th-place cash for $3,164. It may not be a king's ransom, but it's certainly preferable to one-and-done followed by damage control.

WSOP Chimes In

When reached by PocketFives' Lance Bradley, the WSOP's Ty Stewart issued the following statement regarding the incident:

"We take prevention of abusive behavior at WSOP tournaments or on the WSOP.COM platform extremely seriously. We have a number of preventive measures online including recently disabling our chat entirely. But the regulation of content on our customer's personal streams and social media accounts is a slippery slope, particularly as each of these third-party platforms have their own escalation procedures. We reserve the right to suspend the account of any individual going forward, but in this case, it appears the player had the perfect response to resolve the situation herself."

He also told PokerNews: "The wsop’s primary recourse to address the issue is to work in partnership with the streaming platform(s) to prevent unauthorized usage or disparaging characterization of our brands. That dialogue is underway.”

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