Lesbian Wrestling League (Series Book 1)

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If last year’s list of 100 proved that closing your eyes to what is happening isn’t acceptable anymore, 2021 represented a towering force that forced eyes open, focusing their gaze on a cultural revolution within an industry long overdue for it. As a Mexican American kid growing up in Los Angeles, Jake Atlas was raised on lucha libre. He’s recounted in interviews that when he came out to his family as a teenager it didn’t go well. Nevertheless, Jake knew who he was, and he also knew he wanted to be a pro wrestler. In time his family came to accept and support him, and his dream of pro wrestling has also come true. He came out publicly after winning the 2017 Southern California Rookie of the Year Award, and he’s been on an upswing ever since. It felt like nearly every day brought new additions to the family, more events celebrating LGBTQ identities and sections of the LGBTQ community raising their voices to speak directly to the faces of pro wrestling power structures.

But she also impacts people on a grounded, personal level as well, even in the form of a goofy, lovely slice of the internet. Great is our new, extremely original listicle series where we take a break from snark and negativity to focus on the positive and list eight of our favorite examples of something great from pro wrestling. Matches, performers, shows — whatever is helping us enjoy wrestling in a particular week, that’s what this feature is all about. Kinney’s is the kind of passion needed not just to succeed in wrestling but also to inspire those watching, craving a figure in which they can see themselves. That desire was always there, but her journey in pro wrestling might have found its catalyst later, if not for a childhood VHS switcheroo.I’d like to think that if Darren Young had debuted in WWE a few years later, things would have gone better for him. On the other hand, considering everything that still goes on there, it’s hard to be confident even in that. Young debuted in 2010 as part of Nexus, and publicly came out as gay in 2013. That made him the first WWE Superstar to come out while still actively wrestling. At the time, he was in the Prime Time Players tag team alongside Titus O’Neil. They briefly held the Tag Team Championship during a 2015 feud with the New Day, which was the only Title Darren held during his years in WWE. Now, decades later, the defiant spirits embodying that openness and desire for visibility among wrestling’s lesbian community refuse to keep their identities in the shadows. People like Ashley Vox and Rebel Kinney wear their identities openly in the ring without apology. Charlie Morgan’s promo in which she came out publicly in the ring at a Pro Wrestling EVE event is forever immortalized for its raw reality and ability to usher new LGBTQ fans into a welcoming wrestling space.

Whether she’s stepping into the ring to dish out punishment or using her power as a well-suited official to do the same, Sonya Deville’s presence within WWE speaks to more than your average pro wrestling fan. Deville is a history maker, becoming the first out lesbian competitor in WWE history and one of the most forward-facing figures for the LGBTQ community to millions of WWE fans.I don’t need to tell you who Sonya Deville is. She’s the first openly lesbian WWE Superstar, and also the first Superstar to be out at the time they signed with the company. In fact, Sonya came out on television in the first episode of the 2015 season of WWE’s Tough Enough reality show. Although she didn’t end up going far in that competition, she got signed to NXT all the same, and made her Main Roster debut in late 2017 as part of Paige’s short-lived faction Absolution. Since then she’s kept working with her best friend Mandy Rose, and when WWE remembers that they have a women’s tag division, the two wrestle as Fire And Desire. And when those ears didn’t understand or ignored what they were being told, LGBTQ people yet again proved that they don’t need them to build their own spaces within the field. Last year’s introduction to the Queer Wrestling Index 100 ended with the point that LGBTQ pro wrestling had grown as a movement and community to the point where “ignoring their presence isn’t an option anymore.” It’s something that’s super important because I went through that same journey that a lot of people are going through in the LGBTQ community, which is struggling with my sexuality and being open about it,” Deville said on Outsports’ LGBT In The Ring podcast. “That’s the position I was in seven-plus years ago.” In a revealing and heartfelt Facebook post titled “ Here Goes Nothing,” Cage detailed how he kept the information from going public for so long because he feared rejection.