(photo by Deena Lilygren) The siren-call of camp “There are no rules.” From left: The Void, Amon, Demon Marquis of Hell and Abyss during a recent match. “Being bad is so much fun,” he said, smiling at the memory. “I’m king demon, and they all follow me, so if I start to get beat up, my demons run out and start ruining stuff.” Amon even yanked off war veteran wrestler Michael Hayes’ prosthetic leg and beat him with it in one match. It’s all perfectly spelled out for the audience, and, despite this clear articulation of good and evil, the audience shows no hesitation about crossing into the gray area and championing the heels - sometimes for giving a good show, sometimes, in the case of wrestler Billy O, for being a hot guy writhing around in his underwear.Īmon, Perry’s demon character, lords over a team of minions called “The Void,” whose existence annihilates any sense of fair play. To clarify, it’s Perry himself making headlines for being the first openly-gay heavyweight champion, and not Amon, who as a demon, thrives not on relationships, but acting out his evil impulses.īeing evil also means there are no rules: The heels cheat, and the babyfaces play fair. Over the next few weeks you saw Reverend Stu tweak out a little more, and now he’s fully possessed.” The choices were to forget it, and pretend it didn’t happen, but I was like, ‘It happened in front of a pretty big crowd,’ so we all sat down, and decided I was a demon now. “I was out there with Paradise - he’s actually a gay character - and I read his signal wrong, so we had to come up with something. He explained that in wrestling, there are babyfaces (good guys) and heels (bad guys). So we know who’s going to win, but everything else is, kind of like, we’re talking to each other and reacting to what’s going on out there, and I knocked a good guy out with a belt by accident, so we had to come up with a reason a good guy would do something like that.”
“Everyone thinks that everything is staged, but the only thing that’s fake about pro wrestling is the finish. “It was actually an accident,” he explained. Then, after a mishap onstage, Perry discovered what so many villains have always known: It’s fun to be bad. Perry, 29, first made a name for himself as Reverend Stu, Pastor of Disaster.Īccording to his fans, Reverend Stu’s trademark was humor and an over-the-top laying on of hands. In a small locker room that could just as easily be called a dressing room, Perry talked to me about showmanship, faith and being gay in an unusual sport. It was a few hours before that evening’s performance when Perry gave me a tour of the facility. The place felt charged with the type of creative energy that springs up when people are busy making something special.
When I arrived, the staff was in hustle mode, exuding that universal, pre-show energy as they set up for the match. While I was happy to check off yet another item on the gay agenda, the last thing I wanted was to visit a place I imagined was not only hyper-masculine, but a magnet for MAGA hats. It’s gloriously outlandish, part of a group costume, and based on “GLOW,” the critically acclaimed Netflix show about lady wrestlers.Įven so, when Ohio Valley Wrestling, or OVW, announced its first openly-gay heavyweight champion, I spent a week in my feelings about actually attending a match. “It’s sweaty guys in underwear picking each other up … it’s pretty gay.” Becoming a HeelĪnd I’ve been working on my Halloween costume all summer. “I’ve always said you have to be a little gay to be a wrestler,” said Perry, who performs as Amon, Demon Marquis of Hell when he is not working as a supervisor at Uspiritus, a residential psychiatric facility for kids. Literature nerds love to dissect the elaborately-detailed, naked fireside wrestling scene in DH Lawrence’s “Women in Love” (Passed off by Lawrence as two good friends larking about), so when I asked Stu Perry, the new champion, about it, his self-awareness was refreshing: This milestone for gays probably shouldn’t be surprising - homoeroticism has always been the elephant in the wrestling ring. The characters have often relied on stereotypes and jingoism, but it’s 2018, and maybe pro wrestling is finally ready for a wider audience. That there are athletes who are gay isn’t unusual, but for a lot of us, this particular, er… sport - a hybrid of showmanship and athleticism - evokes gargantuan, mulleted white men who can barely be restrained, with spittle flying as they shout threats at their opponent. Ohio Valley Wrestling has its first openly-gay heavyweight champion, and fellow queers, we’ve been missing out.