What’s the story?
Darren Young is the first openly gay professional wrestler to be signed to a current promotion while being open about his sexuality and has been out of the closet publicly since August of 2013. Young came out during an interview with TMZ at the LAX airport in Los Angelas prior to SummerSlam that year.
While he got mixed reactions from the WWE Universe (as expected), he was very much supported by his fellow WWE Superstars.
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Young even told the story of how one fellow star, in particular, called him ‘gay’ before he had come out, and then later apologised after Young made his sexuality public during a recent appearance on AfterBuzz TV's X-Pac 12360.
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Young has been out-of-action since January after suffering an arm injury during a Tag Team match in which he teamed up with Sin Cara against The Shining Stars.
The heart of the matter:
During his appearance on X-Pac 12360, Young revealed that fellow WWE Superstar Mark Henry once called him ‘ gay’ for his hair style at the time, but then later apologized prior to SummerSlam after news of his coming out was made public:
"When I first came up on the roster I had I had hair like Enzo (Amore) kind of it was spiky and stuff like that. So, Mark Henry, you know how he is. He's just sitting there in the locker and he's like, and this is a couple months on the road and he's like,"Boy" and he's long winded. "Boy why you got your hair like that?"
Again I can say this story because he's going to be putting this in his book so I told him, "Hey when I have an opportunity to tell this story I'm going to tell it because I don't want to at first offend him but he's okay with it so again he's sitting there, "Boy why you got your hair like that?" I said, "Mark (biting my nails) Mark I'm just trying to be different.
I'm just trying to stand out." "Well you know it makes you look gay." And this was before I came out so I'm just stuttering like I am now. Mark, I'm just trying to be different man you know.
"Fast-forward to when I like came out. The morning I came out he called me, this was in LA at the hotel, he called me and said, "Come down to the green room." This was during SummerSlam… I went down to the green room and he gave me the biggest hug and he was like, "Man how come you didn't tell me?" I was like, "Mark I didn't tell nobody.
You know how hard it is for me." And Mark said you know in his book when he writes a book… one of the chapters is going to be about me and the caption is going to be, Insert foot in mouth."
You can check out the interview in which Young comes out to TMZ here below:
Also read: Darren Young says he always knew he was gay
What’s next?
Young has yet to return from injury and could be out for a significant amount of time given the nature of it. We’ll keep you updated as soon as we learn anything on Darren’s status moving forward.
Author’s take
I can’t fault Henry too much for what he said as he is from Texas (as am I) and to say something is ‘gay’ is a pretty common term, however odd that may seem.
There shouldn’t be any heat for Young sharing this story as he mentioned that Mark already plans on telling the story himself in his upcoming book. Young is a great person and competitor inside the ring, and that shouldn’t have any effect or anything to do with his professional career. Let’s keep sports and personal lives separate folks.
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