FEBRUARY 3, 2006
JUStjOUt 43
Ring Leader
Openly gay pro wrestler takes pains to promote tolerance
verybtxly knows professional sports are way
behind the curve in welcoming openly gay
athletes. WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes and
a handful of tennis and golf players are the
only queers who have been brave enough
to come out before retiring.
Aaron Nelson, a 22-year-old from Vancouver,
Wash., is another athlete who’s challenging the
system—and in a particularly scary arena: the
violent, testosterone-driven world of pro wrestling.
Hey, if an ex-wrestler can get elected as governor of
Minnesota, anything is possible.
BY JIM RADOSTA
Nelson, who came out in his sophomore year at
Mountain View High School, got into wrestling
when he was 18, attending a rigorous weeklong
pretty banged up. Some of the guys...were pretty
training camp in Florida with former world champ
rough with me in the ring, which caused a lot of
Dory Funk.
problems with my back and my knee.”
“It was a lot of paying your dues,” he says. “The
While his body heals, Nelson is working on the
way it works in traditional wrestling is you come to
sidelines at a school run by longtime local wrestlers
the training class and you just have the hell beat out
Buddy Rose and Ed Wiskoski. He helps new stu­
of you to see if you can take it, and then you actual- ' dents learn the basics as well as “match psycholo­
ly get to start learning how to put a match together.”
gy,” a fancy term for putting together a perform­
Even though most people consider pro wrestling
ance, making it believable and convincing the fans
to be the Milli Vanilli of sports, Nelson insists it’s
to love you or hate you.
much harder than one might think.
Nelson says his character, Cameron Star, is lik­
“There’s a lot more that goes into it than just
able. “I’ve never played the heel or the bad guy, as
showmanship,” he says. “There’s so much athleticism
a casual fan might say. There’s just something invig­
required that people don’t see. A large majority of orating about having that many people get behind
the population would call it fake, but when you have
you and root for you.”
somebody who’s 6-foot-5 pick you up over their head
Nelson describes his alter ego as “a Hawaiian
and slam you, there’s nothing fake about that.”
guy with hints toward homosexuality.” He’ll occa­
Although the matches aren’t scripted, the I sionally surprise his opponent with a playful grope
wrestlers know in advance who’s going to win. The
to get a rise out of the crowd.
rest of the performance is left up to their improvi­
“I received a great reaction every time I per­
sational imagination.
formed,” he says. “It’s just addicting, and any other
“The whole point is to make the show look as
wrestler will tell you that. You can try to walk away
real as possible without hurting anybody,” Nelson
from it—I’ve tried before—but once it gets in your
says. “You’re giving your opponent your body; you
blood, it’s hard to walk away. You have 500 people
have to trust them with it. A lot of people took lib­ screaming your name. It’s an indescribable rush. It’s
erties on me and took that for granted, and they
better than alcohol or drugs or sex or a combination
of the three!”
didn’t protect me.”
In fact, Nelson adds, past bouts have left him
Most wrestlers are paid based on the number of
coughing up blood with swollen eyes. “1 was getting
tickets sold. Nelson, who has a day job at a univer­
sity housing department, says he can pull in up to
100 bucks a night. But in order to make a living as
a pro wrestler, he plans on taking his act to Hawaii,
California or the East Coast.
“I’m hoping this year that maybe I can expand
myself to go outside of the Oregon and Washington
area,” he says. “Portland isn’t the hotbed of
wrestling that it was in the ’80s.”
Although he’s never encountered any direct
homophobia in the wrestling scene, Nelson sus­
pects he’s hit a “glass ceiling" locally because the
word has spread that he’s gay. Still, he has no plans
to hide his sexuality to further his career.
“I don’t want to be the only out athlete when I
know that there are so many more that are afraid to
come out,” he says. “I’m hoping to be kind of a pio­
neer for other athletes, not necessarily just in the
wrestling arena but.. .in other professional sports who
are afraid that that’s going to hinder them.... Maybe
eventually that won’t be as much of a problem, or
maybe it will expand some people’s tolerance. At the
end of the day, if I could've helped somebody with
that, then it would’ve been worth it regardless.’ ©I
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■ i I 1
R. P STRICKLAND
Aaron Nelson (inset) gets all choked up while
performing as Cameron Star.
Arts and Culture Editor JlM RADOSTA needs your
feedback. Write to jim@justout.com.
Works
Brother to Brother is a support and
advocacy organization for black gay
and bi males living in the Portland metro
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