It Could Be Said #10 Nothing But A Gay Ring

Disco Inferno vs Effy! A Review Too Hot For PWTORCH! Sonny Kiss vs Joey Janela

I see that Effy, the host of several “LGBT+” “wrestling” shows, has gotten himself into trouble due to being booked in a match with former WCW pro-wrestler, Disco Inferno¹.

An oddity of the online backlash towards GCW for booking the match is that as someone who tries to avoid reading what Disco Inferno has to say about anything, it’s actually quite difficult to find out why he’s accused of being a homophobe. His transphobia² comes up fairly easily in google searches, and his sexism is notorious³, but for homophobia I just get a few borderline problematic tweets. Maybe it’s buried in his podcasts.

But that’s beside the point, because the match is clearly built around him being seen as a bigot. That’s clear from Disco Inferno’s twitter feed, where he is retweeting almost every tweet he can find that accuses him of hating LGBT+ people. I guess that’s better than taken Konnan’s tossed salad in the 90s.

So what we’re basically faced with is the self-styled vanguard of LGBT+ inclusion in pro-wrestling, entering into a grubby match that monetizes homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and enbyphobia. That Effy would behave in this way is no surprise to me, having seen his first two Big Gay Brunch Shows. He’s always been someone who leans into homophobic tropes, and doing a “Gay vs Gay-baiter” match, is only the logical extension. I’ve repeatedly made the joke that if I didn’t know better, I’d assume Effy was a double-agent, but this just confirms what I actually think; that he’s a traitor to his own kind, who’ll prostitute his sexuality to make a quick buck⁴.

What follows below is a lightly edited version of a review I wrote for Pro Wrestling Torch about his show this Wrestlemania Weeked, that was rejected for reasons I think are obvious when you read it⁵. Afterwards is a bonus thought on the recent Joey Janela/Sonn Kiss break-up.

Effy’s Big Gay Brunch on April 10, 2021 at the Cuban Club, Review written same day

Honestly there is not much of worth to say about the matches involved. There was less cross-pollination with other GCW shows than back when they were in Indianapolis last October. This really added to the Twink Battle Royal, which thankfully hew closer to the gimmick than the incoherent mess that was the previous attempt. By my count, six out of the thirteen competitors could be considered twinks, and the match was built around genuine bears Odinson and Parrow destroying everyone. They were was even a funny moment where Shane Black did the classic twink move of protesting he wasn’t a twink, only to be destroyed by his older adversaries. There was even an explicitly sexually moment with The Runaway arguing over who got to seduce their opponents! Still not sure what men with facial hair, let alone women, are doing in a match inspired by twink porn.

Sadly there was also less investment in bringing in LGBT+ ringers to give the card some deserved star power. Ironically, if there is one match I would highlight as having some buzz its AJ Gray vs Billy Dixon, which was a reasonably good brawl. I find that the dog-collar stipulation is an underrated gimmick, given it both pushes the action by forcing wrestlers to stay close to each other, and gives them a visceral weapon to lash and choke each other. Sadly, regardless of the men involved’s sexuality, the match felt like a gift from the wider GCW universe. I mean Dixon literally billed the match as proof that Black men can draw money after he did the go-home angle on For The Culture, which was confusing, because surely that show exists to prove Black men of any sexuality can draw money, whereas this show was meant to prove that LGBT+ people of any ethnicity can draw money.

The rest of the matches were perfectly fine, if you enjoy watching low-level indie talent wrestling each other. It was however distasteful to see a cisgender wrestler beat up the trans emcee for heat, a callback to the mistakes of the previous show.

I Wanna Take You To A Gay Bar, Gay Bar

Due to the novel coronavirus both For The Culture, and Effy’s Big Gay Brunch debuted in Indiana last October. Both stuck out like a sore thumb, in a state that is not exactly inclusive for Black or LGBT+ people. But this time For The Culture actually managed to (just about) create the right vibe, whereas Effy’s Big Gay Brunch felt like the worst small-town Pride you’ve ever been too, right down to the emcee drag/camp affect. You wanted to go to the former, you remembered when you were stuck in the latter.

Not that the home viewing experience was much better as the commentary was likewise awful. When it comes to representing minority and marginalised communities, “by us, for us”, should be the only rule of thumb. But the commentary was anything but that, just mouthing platitudes about how we’re all the same and inclusion is the important thing, as if this was the setting for a LGBT+ focused remake of Get Out, and I may be next to have my brains ripped out. Worse at one point the commentary team, which at that point featured no gay or bi man, spent several minutes giggling about “butt stuff”. If these allies, who needs enemies.  

The awful commentary shined a light at another fault in the presentation. Like I’ve said before, I really wish that GCW would do inserts with LGBT+ wrestlers where they talk about their sexuality or gender identity so that the wrestlers can be role models like the Black wrestlers on For The Culture were.

But then again, unlike everyone involved with For The Culture, no one involved in this care about representation.

AJ Styles Has A Large Gay Fanbase

It somehow sounds both ridiculous and obvious that my wrestling fandom would be messily entwined with my sexuality. Of course, a young boy in 1999 destined by his genes to be attracted to men, would first realise that by watching Billy Kidman wrestling in his jean shorts. When I first read up on what gay sex involved (don’t laugh, I went to a Catholic School, they barely explained what straight sex was), wrestling was literally listed as one of the typical activities. Boy did I regret sharing that information with a friend who knew i was a pro-wrestling fan.

Likewise, when it turned out that those people saying my continued attraction to women was something that would pass were wrong, of course it was Lex Luger bulging out of his very skin let alone his tank top during Wrestlemania 8 that made me realise I was a bisexual man. Something that back then people were literally writing books to argue didn’t exist! Not for nothing, was my first high-profile wrestling article, a 2004 listing of the Top Ten Sexiest Male Wrestlers!⁶

So I should be in the perfect target demographic for a LGBT+ themed wrestling show. But the problem is that Effy’s Big Gay Brunch is put together by typically clueless straight people or LGBT+ people who have no respect for themselves, no consideration for our people, or understanding of our culture. And the rot starts from the top.

Eff Off Effy

This is the second Effy’s Big Gay Brunch, a show billed as a celebration of LGBT+ inclusion and wrestling. Before the pandemic I got into a Twitter argument with Effy about him allowing straight people onto the show, which I thought was a betrayal of the original concept, especially when in the case of Nick Cage, it was explicitly billed as teasing gay panic. He thought such analysis of subtext was ridiculous, which is convenient, because the subtext of the actual shows he managed to deliver make that argument seem quaint.

Famously, when wrapping up Deep Space Nine, Avery Brooks insisted that he reunite with his storyline son because he didn’t want to see yet another African-American father abandon his son, even in storyline. All of time and space couldn’t stop him thinking about what his work meant to his community. Black wrestlers in similar positions think the same way. Both Roy Johnson with Everything Patterned, and AJ Gray with For The Culture, have made sure that as the figureheads of the movement they REPRESENTED by putting in strong showings in clean matches.

What does Effy do? Books himself in a match when he tries to rob a younger man of his individuality, playing into a nasty homophobic trope about young men having their innocence/individuality stolen.  A trope that due to joys of ageing, we all get to experience twice. Worse, he literally begins his match against Ace Perry by trying to force a kiss on him.  If you told me homophobes were booking, I’d say it seemed a bit on the nose, but Effy repeatedly did it and when on commentary for a later match he brought out a straight wrestler in g-string as his unwilling “bitch”. If I didn’t know better, I would start to suspect he was a double agent.  

I will never judge performers from minority groups that adopt stereotypical gimmicks to get ahead in WWE or other major promotions. It’s hard enough to make money when you’re marginalised, and you do what you’ve got to do. But nobody pretends that the Kamala gimmick was a progressive force for Black people, indeed I think anyone who tried to do that would get a well-deserved bollocking. Despite living in a more enlightened time, and working at a less lucrative level, someone with just as cartoonish and self-hating a gimmick claims to champion LGBT+ people in wrestling. And no one laughs, let alone get angry!

I am not exaggerating when I say I find this show offensive. If you’re lesbian, gay, bi or trans and actually found this rancid garbage empowering, then I am genuinely sorry for you, because I cannot imagine how bad your current circumstances are that your inspired by this. This isn’t empowerment, it’s just a low-rent and half-assed rainbow minstrel show.

EXTRA THOUGHT

Despite myself I have found myself deeply bothered by the Joey Janela and Sonny Kiss storyline in AEW⁷. This may be me just crushing on Kiss, and so having the required reaction when his tag team partner turns on him. But what the hell, I thought I’d lay out my concerns.

It is very easy when you’re part of the majority group, to not understand why someone who belongs to a minority reacts so badly to somebody they knew behaving problematically. It’s so easy to tell the victim that they should recognise that the person was no good, but there’s plenty of good people still around. But when you’re a minority, these negative interactions are burned into your psyche. After all, if somebody you really trusted was a hidden bigot, then how can you trust other people who belong to the same majority? So at the very least the final denouement, where Janela betrays Kiss could be triggering to LGBT+ people. As I supposed it was to me.

That also brings us to the issue of gender. Sonny Kiss identifies with both genders, as was underlined when people mistakenly attacked Jim Ross for not referring to Kiss as “they”. I would however argue that throughout the dissolution of his partnership with Janela that Kiss has been coded as not just female, but a battered woman. Kiss was repeatedly the brunt of attacks or insults from Janela, only to accept the Bad Boy’s excuses for the mistreatment and welcome him back. Indeed, I would argue that there was always a flirtous energy to the partnership which just adds to the sense that this is intergender violene by the backdoor.

And that brings us to the biggest issue with heteronormative people developing stories for LGBT+ people. They deny us agency. Would it have been so difficult to understand what a unique figure Sonny Kiss is on the AEW roster, and give him some dignity? If you’re building to a Janela vs Kiss feud, surely that works better if Janela just breaks the partnership to embrace his newfound heelish ways, only for Kiss to ultimately interfere to save somebody from his former partner.

But of course that would set up Sonny Kiss as hero, rather than a victim. And that wouldn’t do at all, would it?

1. It says a lot about how inherently camp pro-wrestling is, that somebody with a disco-themed gimmick can present themselves as a rugged representative of heteronormative masculinity.

2. He was one of several people who said that AEW should use Nyle Rose’s trans status as a route for heel heat. Which is complete brain worms given that nobody wants (pro or negative) lectures on gender identity in their wrestling, and she easily fits within the parameters of what wrestling fans expect from powerhouse women wrestlers.

3. He has a weird hatred of Sasha Banks, and keeps arguing that the Attitude Era treatment of women would be better for business. The problem with that is when you actually look at what the likes of Sable typically wore, Banks actually wore less until recently. What he can’t stand is that women are positioned to get credit for being pro-wrestlers rather than solely positioned as sex objects.

4. And not many of them

5. In fairness to The Torch, it’s not really the format they like their reviews. But I can just never get on board with the match by match format, even for shows I don’t hate.

6. Strangely, “straight” fans responded to argue my picks, rather than engaging in gay-bashing like my then editor-in-chief feared.

7. This is doubly ironic because I was always pissed they abandoned the Dustin Rhodes/Sonny Kiss team, which seemed a great way to pass the torch from the former Goldust.