Queerty reader Chris wised us up to Ohio Valley Wrestling in Louisville, KY, which just concluded a storyline about a gay wrestler, Paredyse, and his beef with anti-gay bigot Brandon Espinosa. And, mirroring recent studies about homophobia, it looks like Espinosaâs character is gay himself.
Though somewhat on the swishy side, Paredyse wiped the floor with Espinosa in the ring last week, and after the bout the bigot admitted he he was gay. Paradyse consoled his former enemy and cemented their bond with a marriage proposal. When Paredyse got on one knee and asked Espinosa to be his âpartnerâ, audience members chanted âJust say yes!â
Milk this ainât, but just remember how outrageous and ridiculous pro wrestling is to begin withâand how homosexuality is usually regarded in the âsport.â Itâs actually an accomplishment that Paradyse is a good-guy character, and not another queer villain like Gorgeous George or Goldust.
âIâm a huge pro wrestling fan and I canât recall ever seeing any wrestling company even approaching the subject of homosexuality with so much sensitivity as much as OVW has,â says Chris.
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Photo: Wrestling Arsenal
Belize
This would’ve been a big deal if the OVW is still affiliated with the WWE. Sadly, that’s no longer the case. Although, it is affiliated with TNA which is somewha the second best thing in North America.
Will G
WWE did a whole gay marriage storyline previously with “Badass” Billy Gunn wanting to marry his partner Chuck Palumbo. They were a tag team (and I think they might have even been the tag team champions at one point) but WWE took the storyline to the limit, adding secondary characters of a flamboyant wedding planner and all kinds of craziness.
The story reached its pinnacle on a live edition of Monday Night Raw when Billy and Chuck were in the ring about to have the wedding ceremony when one of the two announced that he couldn’t go through with the wedding because neither of the two were gay and they were doing all of this for attention. Of course, a fight broke out and somebody ended up in the cake.
The difference was that the crowd were vocally against the pairing, not just because the two wrestlers in question were playing bad guy characters, but also because the notion of gay marriage was treated as something that should be made fun of and was unnatural. Hopefully, this does not turn out the same way.
Ruhlmann
My six year old nephew goes to youtube to watch all this stuff. If I happen to arrive when he is watching he asks me to join him because he wants to explain who the guys are, if they are “good guys” or “bad guys” and their standing, all of it. The rest of the family just don’t bother sitting with him so I do. He has all the plastic action figuress and a plastic ring with tables and chairs and all kinds of stuff that they throw around in the ring. I have to say that it is painful to sit there for half an hour sometimes and watch this stuff but he is such a neat kid I can’t say no. It’s worth it to hear my sister in law say “your such a good uncle, you’re his favorite you know”.
Prof. O.G. Whataschonzell
Thank you Queerty. Not too long ago a friend and I were talking about kids nowadays and how they stay glued to garbage such as MySpace, Facebook………we then laughed thinking back about gargabe that we were at the mercy of back in the 1970’s and 80’s on television.
There was a wrestler named Angelo Poffo who had a twink of a son named Lanny. Girl was just shy of a girlscout in male-wrestling-trunks (believe me). But whenever/wherever “she” appeared (along with sugar daddy Angelo)nearly the entire gay coommunity came out to see them “wrestle”. “She” had a butt that just wouldn’t quit. The most funny part about their skits (I will NEVER refer to the encounters as bouts because that does real wrestling an injustice)is how she would get knocked on her ass in such grand fashion (being knocked in the air and landing in a “doggy-style” position……you get the picture, I’m sure) that you left glad that you went to see it. Tickets were only $3 back then and that was generally how you spent a Saturday evening with well over HALF the crowd were closeted men who had come to see Lanny’s cute, twink squeezable of a butt. That is if you were under 18 like I was.
I looked for some of Lannys vintage stuff on Youtube but the only ones that have been posted are the ones where he had “changed” into a man.
Enjoy…..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ8dtYgsdwM
XTIAAN
da faq did I just watch?
Daez
Even if Ohio Valley Wrestling is not affiliated with WWE, the people that attend it are mainly from the Ohio Valley area. That area is notoriously homophobic, so to have a bunch of people support a gay storyline in that area is HUGE.
Nugoyxi
Ohio Valley Wrestling is the developmental territory of Total Nonstop Action, the second largest wrestling promotion in the United States. I actually follow OVW, and I don’t like Paredyse’s character- it’s the stereotypical flamboyant girly gay man that’s been in professional wrestling many times. Dylan Bostic, Ace Hawkins, Alex Silva, or Daniel Pruce would have been a much better choice for Paredyse’s partner- I can’t stand Brandon. Hey, at least they have a non negative story line (for now), I’ll give them that. I’d like to see more stuff like this, and maybe actually use two openly gay or bi wrestlers, not a most likely gay guy and most likely straight guy.
Nugoyxi
Brandon has kids so there’s less chance he’s gay đ