Jake Atlas Explains Why Triple H Telling Him His Sexuality Didn’t Matter in WWE Bothered Him

In an interview with Developmentally Speaking (via Fightful), Jake Atlas recalled being told his sexuality didn’t matter in WWE and explained why that threw him for a loop at the time. He said that he was open about who he was and saw it as a strength, but felt that he didn’t know who he was without playing to that strength. He noted that when Triple H told him that, he didn’t say it in a negative way. Here are highlights:

Jake Atlas being praised when he first joined WWE: “The very first match that I had was with no crowd. I wrestled Dexter Lumis, and I remember coming from the curtain, and the writer at the time, it wasn’t who the writer is now, it was another head writer at the time, and Hunter was there, I think Shawn [Michaels] was there, and I walked through the curtain, and the head writer was like, ‘Well, we found our next big babyface.’ I remember that really sticking with me and feeling like, oh my god, what did I do for him to say that? It lit a fire in me, it inspired me to be like why? What’s gonna come of this? Does that mean anything big? Or does that mean he’s gonna put me up against all his good heels and make me lose because I’m just a good babyface? I don’t know.”

On a conversation he had with Triple H and why it bothered him: “Then, I got placed into the cruiserweight tournament, and they were tasked to do background promos to show who we are to the audience. I remember I was asked like, what do you want to do? Who do you want to be? What are you thinking? I was like, I would like to do something at Pulse, in Orlando, where the nightclub shooting happened years ago, and I thought it’d be special to kind of honor that and put that on TV. I wanted to carry a lot of weight for being the only openly gay wrestler on TV at NXT at the time. I wanted that, so that’s why I suggested that. So this is coming off the heels of being told, hey, we found our next babyface. Then I remember having a conversation as I’m gonna have my first match in the tournament, so this is after I filmed the vignettes and everything, and Triple H talking to me and saying, basically saying like, ‘Your sexuality doesn’t matter here.’ He didn’t say it in a negative way, but I think for someone who has struggled with identity and sexuality their whole lives, I think no matter how you say it, no matter what you say, it’s going to affect me. I think that that really shot me down, and I didn’t know…well, if that has been my message and my strength up to this point, I don’t who to be or who you want me to be if it’s not this. So, I think that was just a huge struggle from that point on. I think I was trying to be whatever they told me to be, even if it was inauthentic to me, or it just wasn’t anything that I could relate to or that I could pull off. So I don’t know. There wasn’t a lot of direction or conversation after that as to what they wanted Jake Atlas to be, so it was really hard to kind of navigate that, coming off of being told, ‘Hey, we found out next big babyface,’ and then me just shutting down after telling me, ‘Hey, what your strength is is actually not your strength.’ I’m like, oh, okay. Well, I don’t know what else is.”