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A few weeks ago I had to shamefacedly admit to my colleagues that I was taking a day off work so that I could stay up and watch ’sweaty men hugging each other’. The life of your average Noughties wrestling fan is either spent ‘in the closet’ or fighting off repeated assertions that your chosen interest is ‘a bit gay’.

My main interest in wrestling comes more from the backstage political machinations and scheming that keeps one wrestler at the top of the industry and the next, regardless of skill, size or application, at the bottom. The stories of the real human beings behind the artificially inflated muscle men are often more tragic, funny, shocking or sad than any of the on-screen storylines that they act out. And that rarest of commodities, the real-life homosexual wrestler, is no greater testament to this.

I’m the first to admit that the homo-erotic subtext of wrestling is impossible to deny. After all, fundamentally, what is being presented is two (or more) sweaty men in spandex getting physical with each other. The other side of the coin is the female wrestlers (or in WWE parlance ‘divas’), the heterosexual appeal of whom is impossible to deny:

But this high-octane male soap opera of fake bumps and faker boobs does have an uncomfortable relationship with homosexuality. Its female stars are often portrayed as being sexually voracious and that this is a good personality trait - in fact, on one occasion, a real-life abstinent female wrestler (Molly Holly) was portrayed as an uptight, stuffy bad guy for exactly that reason. Lesbian storylines are relatively common, at least until the recent switch to a more PG-friendly philosophy, with the emphasis placed on titillation rather than any serious exploration of contemporary LGBT issues. Shockingly.

The tradition of the gay ‘bad guy’ wrestler started with ‘Exotic’ Adrian Street and has carried on in some permutation or other through ‘Adorable’ Adrian Adonis, Goldust (pictured below), Rico Constantino et al. There was also a gay wedding once, although that was stopped when the participants declared that, actually, they were straight, tellingly becoming good guys in the process. GLAAD, who had donated their support (and a wedding present to the ‘happy couple’) were less than pleased.

The thing is, of course, that to provoke a pre-dominantly working class audience of young, straight men to boo you, all you have to do is play to their base fears. Communism, the upper classes, foreigners in general and homosexuality have always been valuable tools in provoking the jeers. This has been the wrestling formula for years, and that’s not likely to change: straight wrestlers playing flamboyantly gay characters have been a staple of the pseudo-sport for years.

That’s not to say that there hasn’t been a fair amount of sweaty men hugging each other behind closed doors at WWE HQ. Pat Patterson, the first intercontinental champion and still a hugely important person behind the scenes, has been openly gay since his 1958 debut, a fact often alluded to on commentary when he makes on-screen appearances. Pat Patterson has also been accused of nepotism towards his pet projects - fans were long-mystified at the extended and successful tenure of Sylvan Grenier, a wrestler of negligible talent or charisma. This question was seemingly answered when Pat Patterson fell ill and WWE.com reported how ‘close personal friend’ Sylvan rushed to his side. Another long-term employee ‘The Brooklyn Brawler’ Steve Lombardi, is also well known to have been the recipient of Patterson’s good graces.

A little remembered detail of the early-1990’s steroid trial that almost bankrupted the then WWF was the allegations of sexual harrasment behind the scenes. Kevin Wacholz, a journeyman wrestler who had a brief run as ‘Nailz’ before being let go following a contract dispute, alleged that WWF chairman Vince McMahon had sexually harassed him on a number of occasions.

The Nailz incident also occured around the same time as one of the darker stories to have come to light during my research. Backstage agent Terry Garvin’s homosexuality was well known, to the extent that the commentary teams of the day often made inside jokes about the “Terry Garvin School of Self Defense” live on air. The hilarity only stopped in March 1992 when Ring announcer Mel Phillips was fired, and Pat Patterson and Terry Garvin both resigned from their office positions in the WWF following allegations of gross misconduct. Two former ring attendants and a former office worker were alleging sexual harassment and abuse, as well as preliminary wrestler Barry O.

Tom Cole, one of the 15 year old ring attendants in question, had made fairly detailed allegations. Patterson would “look right at your crotch and he’d lick his lips. He’d put his hand on your ass and squeeze your ass and stuff like that.” Mel Phillips, it was alleged, had a foot fetish and “would wrestle you for five seconds, then he’d pull your shoes off and start playing with your toes.”

The allegations against Garvin were strongest - “He secured Cole a steady job at the WWF parts warehouse and promised him a tryout as a ring announcer. Garvin subsequently maneuvered Cole to his house, near the WWF’s Stamford, CT, base, on an evening when Garvin’s wife and two kids were away. Garvin popped a porn tape into the VCR and offered to fellate Cole, who declined and spent the night in a van parked outside. Shortly thereafter, Cole was fired.”

The unfair dismissal suit only ended with the resignations of Phillips and Patterson (who was later reinstated) and the sacking of Garvin. Cole was re-hired with £150,000 of back pay, although the damage suffered by the wrestling industry was far weightier. Combined with the steroids scandal, professional wrestling entered a heavy five year downturn in which the WWE almost went out of business.

Of course, the sleaze isn’t limited to the WWE: A long-standing rumour is that journeyman wrestler Tommy Rich’s unexpected mid-1980’s NWA title reign came after he submitted himself to various favours with Jim Barnett, the then booker who was a known homosexual. These rumours, despite having little proven factual basis, have refused to go away in the years since, and the protestations of Jim Wilson, another wrestler, that Jim Barnett offered him a winning streak on a quid pro quo basis has only added fuel to the fire.

In more recent years there have been a couple of gay wrestlers of note. Orlando Jordan was quietly the United States champion for a period in 2005 and was openly bisexual, although this was not public knowledge until his unrelated release from the company. Jordan was last seen wrestling in Spain and famously lost to the Ultimate “Queering don’t make the world work” Warrior in 2008, Warrior’s first match in a decade.

More spectacularly, Chris Kanyon, the WCW alumni, lodged a lawsuit against the WWE claiming that he was sacked due to his homosexuality. He also said he was made fun of behind the scenes, and cited a famous example where he was forced to dress up as Boy George live on television and humiliated.

Kanyon, although he seemed to have a case, didn’t make life easy for himself. First he ‘came out’ at an independent wrestling show, before later retracting the statement and declaring it was just ‘the character Chris Kanyon who is gay’. Later on, the retraction was retracted and Chris Kanyon the person also came out. He then screwed the pooch further by admitting he was drawing the announcement out to attract media attention, and started hanging out at WWE shows with placards saying “Triple H, ask Vince why he fired me?” (aimed at the owner’s son-in-law) and ”Shawn, pray for my gay soul” (aimed at born-again Christian and mainstay wrestler Shawn Michaels). Some years later it’s till being debated whether Chris Kanyon is actually gay or if it is all just a ploy from a washed up former wrestler, desperate to hang onto the industry that has passed him by.

So far I’ve only focused on American wrestling, which is fair enough: so does the rest of the world. I could point out that the first openly gay wrestler was British: Simon Sermon is a mild-mannered Insurance Fraud Investigator by day, spandex warrior by night and has insisted that no opponent has ever refused to fight him due to his sexuality. I could also go into the grand tradition of Exoticos (gay transvestite wrestlers) from Mexican Lucha Libre. When I went to a Lucha show last year, by far the best performer was the Exotico Cassandro - who has recently signed a contract with United States organisation TNA.

I could even go into the wacky, hard-hitting world of Japanese Puoresu, which is populated by such colourful characters as The Hard Gay Razor Ramon. But… all this writing is making me sleepy.

I will simply leave you with this final evidence that wrestling is totally not gay:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 2:54 pm and is filed under What Killed the Cat, Wrestling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.