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Is the WWE ready for a gay wrestling character?

Is the WWE ready for a gay wrestling character?
WWE wrestler Darren Young
WWE wrestler Darren Young

“Darren Young was the first WWE superstar to really come out as being homosexual, but his character in the show is not. At least, we haven’t done anything with it either way — just yet… It could very well pop up in WWE because we are all about what’s relevant, and what’s pop culture, and what people want to see. So if there is an opportunity, we might just take it. I think the big worry that WWE has is that they think their audience is really stupid. So they worry that they’re going to have a character who comes out as gay, and it’s going to be like the Mexican soccer fans in Charlotte chanting [antigay slur] ‘culero’. I think they think that their fans would chant something homophobic at him, and that’s going to get press and make WWE look not progressive…You know, in WWE our storylines are a year long. They don’t go episodic, week to week — they really are the arc from WrestleMania to WrestleMania. So sometimes it takes a little longer than people would like for the seeds to grow. But we’re constantly planting them.”

Stephanie McMahon, WWE’s Chief Brand Officer and sometimes-onscreen villainess, telling The Daily Beast why the character played by Darren Young, who is out in real life, might or might not come out in the world of wrestling.

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