Rainbow Rumble: A Day Out at Effy’s Big Gay Brunch Pro Wrestling Show
What I learned from working backstage at an all-gay wrestling show
--
Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve loved wrestling. My friends grew out of it, but I’m still a huge fan to this day. I’ll watch pro wrestling on TV, but I prefer the experience of a live show.
Pro wrestling is theater to me. A play told with violence. The wrestlers tell a story using physicality in the ring during their match. I consider pro wrestling an art form and form of art.
In 1986 my father took me to a WWE house show at the LA Sports Arena. Hulk Hogan defeated Big John Studd. What I remember most wasn’t the wrestling, but the stabbing three rows in front of us.
There was a guy in front of us who wouldn’t sit down, so the guy behind him stabbed him in the back with a knife. At 8 years old I watched a man stab another man at a public event.
It seemed surreal. The nonchalance of everyone involved. The cops looked bored as they handcuffed the stabber. The stabbie walked himself to first aid. That was the last wrestling match I went to with my dad because somebody got stabbed.
Thirty-five years later I’m at every live show working for GCW. I hand out wristbands and make sure nobody gets stabbed.
GCW is different from the wrestling promotions on basic cable. This is pro wrestling performed for the fans in attendance, not television. There’s no interview segments. No backstage reporters. The story is told in the ring.
The wrestlers are not the chemically enhanced giants you see on basic cable. GCW doesn’t worry about the WWE poaching their top talent. Effy is too bizarre for prime-time television.
Effy might be the funniest person I’ve met. I apricate his dark sense of humor.
