Does the LGBTQ+ community have a place in professional wrestling? Jensen Ryan on breaking down barriers and achieving his goal of becoming a pro!
For most of my life I have been a huge fan of professional wrestling and aspired to take on the world of wrestling for myself, but for a long time I held myself back.
I always thought that professional wrestling wouldn’t accommodate someone from the LGBTQ+ community given the nature of the sport. But that was just one of the issues holding me back.
In addition to the pressure of coming out, I was also bullied. I was a quiet person throughout my childhood and the bullying knocked my confidence. It also had me asking, why me? Even a school teacher once said I would never be good enough. So what would it take to finally get over this and do what I want in life?
Wrestling is a business where you need to be a confident to enable you to perform in front of an audience. I sat back and reflected and said to myself that if I want to achieve what I want then I need to move away from the shy me and get that confidence and so I took up acting, which did the world of good.
Now that my confidence was growing, how would I approach the one goal to become a wrestler? In the back of mind I was still thinking, how would people react? Is there a place for a gay wrestler in this industry? If there is, will it prevent me from getting matches?
With so many concerns in place I decided there was only one thing to do, try it! After all, if I don’t, will I always be thinking ‘what if?’ and never know the answer.
So, I booked my first training session and as I approached the building I was still full of self-doubt. Would it all go well? What would people think when they found out I was gay? So for the first few sessions I decided to keep on the down low so that I could suss it out for myself. I avoided questions that might give it away because I wanted everyone to see me for who I am and not judge on sexuality.
However, if was a simple social media status that would change it all and prove that I was wrong to ever question if LGBTQ+ has a place in wrestling. The training school (and several others) put up a status in support of equality on National Coming Out Day, which said to me that a gay person can do it and that it’s about what you do in the ring not your sexuality.
Since then, I have talked openly about being gay and my husband has been along to training sessions to watch and not once has anyone ever questioned it. In fact, they have embraced it. The world of pro-wrestling does have a place for the LGBTQ+ community and I am proud to be a part of it!
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