Top 7 LGBTQ Moments in Wrestling

One of the most talked about parts of Monday Night Raw recently has been the Rusev/Lana/Bobby Lashley storyline. Mind you, I’m not saying it’s one of the best. I’m saying it’s one of the most talked about. For whatever reason, we always allow ourselves to get wrapped up in these Jerry Springer style love triangles or rectangles or whatever schlock WWE decides to throw at us.

Things took a bit of an unexpected turn at the Lashley/Lana wedding. Of course Rusev attacked from inside the large wedding cake, because why wouldn’t he, but we also got an interruption from Liv Morgan, who apparently had an ongoing relationship with one of the participants. And that participant happened to be Lana!

We shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, Paul Heyman is the Executive Director of Raw these days, and he’s always been a fan of featuring same-sex relationships or possible relationships on his shows. Especially when they involve women. Beulah McGillicutty & Kimona Wanalaya say hello, as do Torrie Wilson & Dawn Marie. (And Al Wilson too, we can’t forget Al even if we’d like to.) So this whole Liv/Lana thing is right up his alley.

Will it work? Too soon to say, but let’s be honest: the track record ain’t great. Wrestling has used the idea of same-sex relationships to get heat or to get laughs for generations. It’s typically not done anywhere near the right way.

Here are seven instances where I felt it was. Call it the Top 7 LGBTQ Moments in Wrestling.

7. Danshoku Dino

Years upon years ago, Ryan Byers was the only person writing for 411mania.com that watched Japanese wrestling. He watched that really obscure stuff too, like those Ice Ribbon shows with the 12 year old girls that all became huge stars later on. Heck, AEW employs their founder (Emi Sakura) & a couple of her students (Riho, Hikaru Shida) right now. Can’t say I saw any of that coming. Byers was/is a smart man.

Except for the part where he had me review a Danshoku Dino match for one of his columns. I can only assume he had me pigeonholed as a typical Kentuckian that recoiled at the thought of anything that wasn’t “normal”. Dino definitely isn’t “normal”.

Dino is very overt in & out of the ring, and it works in the DDT environment. We can debate whether or not LGBTQ status should be used as a joke, and I’m inclined to land on the side that it shouldn’t be, but Dino plays his role very well in the promotion he works for.

6. Exoticos

Mexican culture is known for its embrace of machismo. Masculinity is very important to Mexicans & most Latin Americans, and to be honest, most nationalities. We’re talking about Mexico here, which is where the concept of exoticos caught on in lucha libre. Men dressing in drag and not acting like men was a guaranteed heat-getter for generations, but the worm turned sometime along the road. Nowadays it is possible for exoticos to get over as babyfaces.

They are sideshows, but you need sideshows as part of a good pro wrestling event. I’ve seen many AAA events with eight-person tags with men, women, midgets & exoticos on teams, and they’re always a good time. I dunno if it’s always tasteful, but maybe that’s part of the joy of not speaking Spanish.

5. “Exotic” Adrian Street

Imagine watching Southern rasslin in the 1980s and seeing this on your screen:

Adrian Street was a few decades ahead of his time. He was a mean motorscooter that had a different way of living life. Most people didn’t know how to take him, which was a good thing for his bank account. Had he ever made it to the WWF, that bank account would have been bigger and they wouldn’t have had to repackage Adrian Adonis.

4. Goldust

Dustin Rhodes had no idea what an androgynous character was when the WWF pitched the idea of Goldust to him. He figured it out pretty quickly, and he became one of the most interesting characters in the history of the company.

This guy in front of WWF audiences in the mid-90s led to some incredible heel heat. Things got kind of awkward later on when Jerry Lawler was dropping slurs on television, and then the Attitude Era with people getting real pretty much killed the Goldust character, but for the most part I’d have to say that the first Goldust run was a major success. We will never forget the name.

3. Taeler Hendrix & Heidi Lovelace

Back in 2013, Taeler began receiving presents from a secret admirer. It could have been pretty much anybody in the Ohio Valler Wrestling lockerroom, but it ended up being Heidi Lovelace, another young competitor in the women’s division who had previously battled her for the Women’s Championship. Turned out she had caught some feelings somewhere along the way, and Taeler decided to use those feelings to her advantage instead of simply re-buffing Heidi’s advances. Heidi wound up fighting Taeler’s battles for a couple of months while Taeler could sit back, relax and count that TNA money she was collecting at the time while waiting to be OVW Women’s Champion again.

Unfortunately, Hendrix fell victim to the dreaded “cracked door while you’re explaining your evil plan to your ally” trick.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens? If only Heidi hadn’t overheard Taeler’s conversation, she may have ended up including our favorite Boston Bombshell as part of her Riott Squad when she made it to WWE Raw. This was a nice sympathetic story to get the fans behind Heidi & mad at Taeler for her skulldruggery, and it worked pretty well.

2. Mickie James stalks Trish Stratus

Mickie showed up on Raw in late 2005 as a huge fan of Trish Stratus. I can’t blame her for that, Trish is a role model for any young aspiring pro wrestler. As the months went by, Mickie became more and more obsessed with Trish, to the point where Trish really was quite tired of Mickie’s stuff. Mickie kept pressing the issue though, and of course things went haywire.

Mickie’s passion for Trish drove her over the edge & she continued with crazier antics each week, even kidnapping Ashley Massaro, one of Trish’s closest friends at the time, on an episode of Raw. Mickie wound up taking the Women’s Championship from Trish at WrestleMania 22, with a turning point in the match that would be edited off of everything after it happened. Let’s just say Mickie emulated a billionaire that appeared in Bobby Lashley’s corner at WrestleMania 23.

Some really did not approve of this storyline, as it portrayed non-straight people as being psychopaths. I can understand that argument, but I can also understand that it got Mickie James really over with WWE fans, whether they were “smart” or casual. She played the role well & people took notice. WWE had done a number of “obsessed stalker” storylines in the past, but none of them got over like Trish/Mickie did. Mickie had her ups & downs with the office afterward, but I feel like this storyline has always kept her at a certain level with the audience. We’re always happy to see Mickie when she appears, and when Trish makes a random comeback at a Royal Rumble or wherever we want Mickie to be in the ring with her.

1. The Golden Lovers

As I didn’t see most of it, I can not do the storyline between Kenny Omega & Kota Ibushi justice. I can tell you that they formed a tag team called the Golden Lovers in the DDT promotion. Beyond that, I will invite you to read this Twitter thread:

I don't really have wrestling-related followers but all I want to talk about is how the best thing in professional wrestling right now is a complex, epic, and (currently) happy gay love story, 9 years in the making and featuring two of the best in the world. It's remarkable. pic.twitter.com/B6sPxSyLYw

— VENID A VER LA SANGRE POR LAS CALLES (@EffingBoring) February 23, 2018

The main complaint from some: they’re just not enough out in the open with it. The same people with these complaints also complain about people being too out in the open with it, so I’m not sure there’s any pleasing these people. All I know is that Omega & Ibushi are two of the most popular wrestlers in the world, and the majority of us are ok with them as people. That feels like progress to me. We’ve gone from people using LGBTQ status for heel heat to people that actually have that status getting celebrated for it. There’s still plenty of people fighting against that idea, but they aren’t going to win the war.