This story was produced through Our Stories, Our Power, a community journalism program from Windy City Times and E3 Radio that gives emerging storytellers a platform to report stories for and about their communities.
Freelance Wrestling in Chicago has built a reputation as one of the city’s most visibly queer-allied wrestling spaces, where former Freelance Wrestling World Champion Devon “Twin City Twister” Monroe has emerged as a key figure.
During his more than 300-day title reign, Monroe helped put an openly gay wrestler at the center of the promotion’s top storyline—drawing crowds that embraced its inclusive approach.
“Let’s be honest, wrestling’s gay as it is,” said Nick Almendarez, founder of Freelance Wrestling. “And just to lean into that makes it so much more entertaining.”
Freelance Wrestling is part of a growing network of independent promotions—both in Chicago and nationally—finding success by creating space for LGBTQ+ performers in an industry with a long and complicated relationship to queerness.
“A big part of our mission statement was to give opportunities to talent that wasn’t getting them elsewhere,” Almendarez said. “[And] it just so happens that a lot of those talents started becoming more and more popular with our crowd.”
Progress in pro wrestling’s queer visibility
The success of queer-inclusive wrestling promotions like Freelance stands in contrast to decades of exclusion and stereotyping in the ring.
LGBTQ+ identities were often reduced to stereotypes or played for laughs, with performers cast as caricatures rather than fully realized athletes and characters. Storylines frequently leaned on mockery or coded portrayals, reinforcing narrow ideas about gender and sexuality.
One such example is the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) character Goldust, who was portrayed by Dustin Rhodes in the 1990s. His exaggerated mannerisms and ambiguous sexuality were often used to unsettle opponents and provoke audience discomfort. His storylines frequently relied on innuendo and shock value, underpinning the idea that queerness was something strange or threatening rather than normal or relatable.
And then in September 2002, a segment titled “Hot Lesbian Action” during the Monday Night RAW objectified two women referred to solely as “The Lesbians,” who stripped down and kissed for the audience. The women were then attacked by the tag team 3 Minute Warning.
Author Luther P. Lucas explores how gender stereotypes and LGBTQ+ visibility in WWE often reinforced marginalization in his book “An Exploration of the Race and Gender Representations in Professional Wrestling in the United States.”
“When depicting LGBTQ+ wrestlers, harmful stereotypes such as the flamboyant or effeminate homosexual man … or the deviant or predatory lesbian were frequently perpetuated,” Lucas wrote. “In addition to reinforcing marginalization, these depictions also contributed to the stigmatization of LGBTQ+ individuals in both the wrestling industry and wider society.”
At the same time, queer wrestling fans have long found ways to enjoy the entertainment. In the years since Rhodes retired Goldust, the character has become a beloved queer icon for many professional wrestling fans.
Several wrestlers mentioned the “Divas”, WWE’s women’s division from 1990 to 2016, as an entry point to feeling represented and inspired by professional wrestling.
Lucas found that WWE wrestler Darren Young’s coming out in 2013, “The Women’s Revolution,” which turned the focus to women’s athleticism and in-ring talents, and Sonya Deville’s signing in 2015 all signaled notable progress for queer talent.
In March, WWE named its first out gay singles champion when Aaron “Evil Gay” Rourke won the WWE Evolve Championship.
Outside of WWE, wrestling has become a cultural melting pot with more women, people of color and LGBTQ+ wrestlers entering and excelling in promotions across the country, including in promotions like WrestleDrag in Arizona, Naptown All Pro in Indianapolis, Queer Punk Outlaws in New York City and SlamTown in California.
One of the biggest and most notable queer-led promotions is Game Changer Wrestling Collective’s Effy’s Big Gay Brunch, an annual event held during WrestleMania weekend. The event’s headliner Effy is a gay pro wrestler from Florida who has garnered a reputation for being an outspoken voice for labor rights and increased visibility for LGBTQ+ performers in pro wrestling.
For Joey “Dadbod Demigod” Mayberry, a retired wrestler and host of “The Golden Era” podcast, eight years was enough time to see a significant attitude change toward LGBTQ+ professional wrestlers.
“When I got into wrestling, I wasn’t out at all. It was 2012, and it was career suicide to think about doing that.” He added, “To be like this far along in 12 years is absolutely insane.”
When he returned to the ring in a tag-team match the crowd started chanting an anti-gay slur at him.
“I just remember being in the ring because nothing really leaves you that vulnerable as having a crowd chant a slur at you while you’re just standing in the middle of them, ready to perform,” Mayberry said. “That really, really got me mentally.”
He didn’t return to the ring for two and a half years until he moved from Florida to Chicago and started training at Chicago Style Wrestling. While finding his spark again, he found success in branding himself the “Dadbod Demigod.”
“The best wrestling gimmicks are just yourself turned up to one hundred and me turned up to one hundred. I was looking for every single thing that I could find that just looked fabulous, that was fun, that was insane,” Mayberry said.
Wrestlers embracing their queerness often makes the sport more entertaining, Almendarez said.
“Especially when it’s characters like Effy and people who use their orientation as a step to intensify their character and make it more entertaining, there’s shock value that really gets people going,” Almendarez said.
Pushback against queer inclusion
But even as queer visibility grows, some wrestlers say a concurrent rightward shift in parts of the industry has made opportunities more uneven.
Professional wrestling as a place of solace for LGBTQ+ people has shifted under the Trump administration with top figures like WWE’s Chief Creative Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque joining initiatives like Make America Fit Again, and Linda McMahon, Levesque’s mother-in-law being appointed as secretary of the U.S. Department of Education.
In 2025, WWE laid off several of the company’s out LGBTQ+ wrestlers, mostly women, including Deville. Independent promotions like Freelance Wrestling fill in the gaps.
Killian Kayne, a professional wrestler based in Cahokia, Illinois, said WWE’s rightward shift makes it “a lot harder” for workers who don’t fit the mold.
“Some of us definitely do have to work five to 10 times harder just to reach where we want to be in our career,” Kayne said.
Brian Bell, host of Outsports professional wrestling podcast, LGBT in the Ring, said in their seven years of hosting the podcast the wrestling landscape has changed quite a bit. Compared to a few years ago LGBTQ+ representation in the biggest promotions has changed, “we’re just not seeing the same level of promotion there.”
Kayne said that in some independent promotions, although promoters and the locker room will still be kind and accepting, “Sometimes they don’t always know what to do with you.” Promoters see his potential as an “athletic Black queer kid” but struggle to book him in storylines, leading him to rely on pitching his own stories and his talent speaking for itself.
Kayne also said promoters often try to fit him into a stereotypical box that doesn’t fit him. He referenced a time when a promoter wanted him to portray a flamboyant character similar to Mansoor, one half of the over-the-top tag-team Maximum Male Models.
“I didn’t see that as me, because I’m very different aesthetic-wise,” Kayne said.
Where inclusivity is driving success in independent wrestling
While barriers remain in parts of the industry, independent promotions like Freelance are creating spaces where queer wrestlers can define their own stories—and find audiences ready to embrace them.
That support is reflected in the crowds Freelance draws in Logan Square, Almendarez said.
“A Logan Square crowd is very diverse and mixed, but a lot of our crowd is accepting and supportive of the community, whether or not they’re a part of it or not,” Almendarez said.
That kind of environment, Bell said, can be especially meaningful for queer wrestlers—offering not just visibility but a renewed sense of strength.
Bell said wrestling can challenge stereotypes about queer people as fragile or passive.
“Sometimes being able to get into a situation where you’re probably going to get hit in the face, you’re going to get slammed down on a mat, you’re going to experience pain and understand that pain is not going to debilitate you,” Bell said.
They added that pushing through those moments can build a deeper sense of resilience and self-confidence.
“You are going to be able to understand that like, oh, ‘I can take this and I can still give it back.’ There’s an innate strength that comes with being able to have that realization about yourself.”
Kayne said that one of the strongest things that wrestlers—especially male wrestlers—can do is be vulnerable. He added, “I’ve definitely seen a lot where you have to be hyper-masculine.”
That sense of empowerment, Bell said, is reflected in the growing number of out wrestlers across the industry.
Bell, who curates Outsports’ annual Queer Wrestling Illustrated 200 list of top queer professional wrestlers, said the number of contenders has steadily increased. Last year, he reviewed more than 800 queer wrestlers, and he expects that number to continue rising.
“I think 2026 might be a year of renewing that ‘Fuck you—we’re taking up space’ energy that’s been building over the past decade,” Bell said. “And I think those numbers are only going to keep growing.”
Mayberry retired from in-ring action in 2025 but recently returned to Florida as co-general manager and commentator for Pro Wrestling Action. He wondered if the crowd would recognize him.
“My music hit, and you can just hear the pop from the crowd,” Mayberry said. “Some of the loudest reactions of the night came from us just having a conversation in the ring and oing a talking segment and [I thought], ‘This is where I need to be right now.’”
About Our Stories, Our Power: Our Stories, Our Power is a six-week community journalism program led by Windy City Times and E3 Radio that trains emerging storytellers in reporting stories for and about their communities. The program is made possible by a grant from Press Forward Chicago, with support from Columbia College Chicago.
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