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Eddie guerrero latino heat10/30/2022 ![]() “Now that I have this great platform I can’t wait to use it for positivity, to raise awareness, educate, and inspire the next generation,” she reflects. It was only this June at Toronto Pride that she felt ready to publicly come out as a trans woman. Some of her fellow performers whispered rumors and suspicions behind her back, but Shaw told herself she had to have a thick skin. Shaw, now 33, began her transition more than a decade ago, living for years in stealth while also pursuing her dream as a wrestler after years of work, she even became a Knockout herself when she signed a contract with Impact earlier this year. “But while I looked up to them and was inspired by them, I couldn’t relate to them 100%.” “Growing up, I really looked up to the Divas and the Knockouts,” she tells me, as we chat at her merch table about eyeing the WWE and Impact Wrestling women’s divisions from afar. That quasi-identification is a feeling Wrestle Queerdom grappler Gisele Shaw can relate to. I never want to leave this feeling of community behind.” Debuting in 1997 as a silent enforcer for the lewd, crude anti-authority figures D-Generation X - one of the era's most popular “stables,” a group of wrestlers who work together as a unit in their character gimmicks and storylines - she wore black leather and spiked collars, mowing through any boys on the roster who got in her way. Born in 1969 in Rochester, NY (not far from the small town where I grew up), Chyna looked like an absolute monster, packing 200 pounds of muscle onto her thick-jawed, five-foot-ten frame. #EDDIE GUERRERO LATINO HEAT PRO#Still, I was fascinated by what little I did know about the world of pro wrestling: I knew the stories weren’t real, of course, but other than that, I just knew that Chyna was the coolest.Ĭhyna, real name Joanie Laurer, was one of the clockiest cis women in history, and I mean that as a compliment. I knew better than to even ask if we could buy a pay-per-view show. ![]() ![]() My mother, who abhorred even the cartoonish violence of the original Power Rangers, would have lost her entire mind at the sight of Stone Cold’s face covered in blood at WrestleMania 13. #EDDIE GUERRERO LATINO HEAT TV#In the 1990s and early 2000s, the period now dubbed the “Attitude Era,” kids who did have TV could catch cultural icons like The Rock, Triple H, and Stone Cold Steve Austin every week on Monday Night RAW in their never-ending macho soap operas. I didn’t have television as a child, but even if I had, I would not have been allowed to watch pro wrestling. ![]() Once the dust has settled and the performers have gotten their due, I hope we can remember this night as an explosion of queer joy within a relentlessly gendered, often intolerant subculture, a breathtaking piece of performance art featuring a cast of characters that defy every boundary, and an epic night of trans resilience inside the squared circle. But the damage of its aftermath isn’t the most important thing about Wrestle Queerdom, or what it ought to be remembered for. ![]()
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