I'm a Rossi fan myself and have been ever since I noticed him in the 250cc scene when I was a teenager. The guy is no angel and not without his faults and I realise many members of this forum dislike him. With the mentality and behaviour of many of his one eyed fans I honestly can't blame them, its embarrassing for me to be associated with them. But the guy has devoted most of his life to the sport and his obsession has helped grow the series and widen the audience. Many of the great champions of today we all love to watch idolised him as kids and drew inspiration from him ... that in itself is probably his biggest contribution to the sport.
That entire Phillip Island conspiracy was by far one of the lowest points in his career (along with Sepang 2015). Ruthless competitiveness is one thing but the claims he made at that PI press conference literally made him out to look like a complete paranoid nutcase.
Its great that Rossi has remained close with his childhood friends after all of his success, but that doesn't automatically qualify them to be good people. Uccio is nothing more than a moocher and a .... stirrer. Its disappointing that Rossi cannot see this when its so blatantly obvious to everybody else looking in. You may not be able to choose your family but you do get to choose your friends ... and Rossi has failed in this area.
Everyone was to some degree a Rossi fan once, and i am still prepared to recognise his greatness, not least for still being competitive against the likes of MM and JL in his late 30s.
I mostly previously reserved my anger for the over the top element among his fandom, who vilified the recent rider of whom I was most a fan, Casey Stoner, to the extent that it significantly contributed to his premature retirement; even if he won he still lost. I saw the same thing happening to Lorenzo whom I follow, and MM whom I didn't so much, and considered it manifestly unfair, and also considered that the events of late season 2015 demonstrated Rossi to be fully complicit in the persecution of his rivals.
As I think I have said before, I have tempered my view about Rossi himself somewhat, with the knowledge that it was actually Rossi's entourage and Uccio in particular who came up with the PI conspiracy theory, and ongoing evidence that Rossi clearly genuinely believes it, as well as it seeming to be the case that Jorge was not really forced out at Yamaha by any machinations on Rossi's part, but perhaps at least to some extent genuinely wanted to try something new.
MM fairly clearly also genuinely believes he didn't do anything underhanded at PI 2015 however, and has commented many times about same, mostly to the effect of what I have been saying, that he won the race FFS. He has never bothered to make any substantive comment about how he raced at Sepang 2015 to my knowledge on the other hand.
One thing that is perhaps forgotten in all this is that Rossi's crazy fans, particularly in Italy I am led to believe, in the first days after the PI race wanted to lynch Iannone rather than MM for taking points away from Rossi, and it was not till Rossi personally exonerated Iannone and named MM the villain of the piece that the narrative changed, demonstrating both who was in charge of that narrative and the willingness of fans of that ilk to blindly take up such narratives when presented to them. Even the most extreme fans in the wider world, or Rossi himself, didn't come up with the MM tanked the race while winning it thing though, that apparently took the most extreme fan of all, one Uccio.
