Sports
Meet the gay, masc, ass-kicking pro wrestler
Mike Parrow is on a mission to compete in WrestleMania
Mike Parrow is a professional wrestler who says ‘your sexuality has nothing to do with your athletic ability.’ (Photo courtesy Parrow)
Professional wrestler Mike Parrow has a message for any young LGBT athlete that is sitting alone in a locker room wondering if they will ever be accepted.
“Your sexuality has nothing to do with your athletic ability,” says Parrow. “I thought my teammates wouldn’t accept me and I was wrong. Your team will support you.”
Leaving the team culture behind as a closeted college football player at Carolina Coastal University, Parrow put aside thoughts of law school to pursue a new path.
At 6’4” and 345 pounds, he drove to Kissimmee, Fla., to attend the Team 3D Academy of Professional Wrestling. With no prior wrestling experience, Parrow entered a field that is a cutthroat mix of sports and entertainment.
“I came from the sports world of a football locker room where I was an alpha male,” Parrow says. “The wrestlers at the academy were not of the same sports background. I wasn’t prepared for all the different personalities.”
At the same time, Parrow was dealing with accepting his own sexuality. Along with stepping into the wrestling ring, he was about to enter another arena – the world of gay dating.
“I knew I was gay, but I didn’t want to be,” says Parrow. “I was in a new town and I didn’t want people to know. I was scared.”
Scared to the point that he borrowed money to pay for his own conversion therapy. He couldn’t suppress who he was anymore and decided to try dating.
“I was this weird unicorn because I wasn’t part of the culture. The people I met on dating apps were rude, mean and cruel. I was called closet case, fat, ugly and was shamed for my masculinity. I was terrified, and it pushed me farther into the closet,” Parrow says. “A lot of misconceptions can be talked out, but I wasn’t meeting people who wanted to talk. We make villains when we don’t need to make villains.”
A lot has changed for Parrow since he got past those first steps of accepting himself as a gay man. Based in Orlando, last month he celebrated his five-year anniversary with partner Morgan Cole. They will be married later this year.
“Morgan believes in me and that has led to the success I am experiencing in my wrestling career,” says Parrow. “He has passed all the tests and he talks to my parents more than I do.”
Mike Parrow has found his niche in the villain faction of professional wrestling. He is considered an independent wrestler and is promoted by Evolve Wrestling and Major League Wrestling.
Originally from Troy, N.Y., he grew up playing baseball, basketball and football. Both his brother and sister were involved in sports as well as his father who is still active in the Pop Warner sports programs.
His mother is a Sunday school teacher and her reply to Parrow’s coming out was, “God doesn’t make mistakes.” His police officer father commented, “I wouldn’t be a very good detective if I didn’t already know.”
“My parents are proud of me and I have been lucky to have had a great experience with them,” Parrow says. “I will never understand a parent not accepting their child. Your child is yours, everything else is borrowed.”
His former football teammates and the professional wrestling community have also accepted Parrow with open arms. He says his promoters are proud to have a gay, masculine, ass-kicking badass in their stable.
“Pro wrestling is for every community and I love seeing people’s faces when I come out as a gay, masculine character,” says Parrow. “I have worn a Pride flag over my shoulder walking into the ring, and the standing ovation and resulting tweets were very positive. That’s why I am doing me now.”
Making himself visible as an LGBT role model has had tangible rewards for Parrow. In April, he was part of a Progress Wrestling match before WrestleMania in New Orleans. People stopped him on the streets of the city, some for a hug, some for a cry.
“I met a gay kid from England who had come over to see me. He was literally shaking and told me ‘we don’t feel forgotten in wrestling anymore,’” Parrow says. “It makes me feel like I am doing the right thing.”
Parrow has set goals for himself as he progresses through his pro wrestling career. One is a new fitness regimen that helped him drop to 280 pounds. He calls it a nice mix of a ketogenic diet, CrossFit, weightlifting and elliptical work. Three days a week he works on moves with another wrestler and watches tapes.
Mike Parrow (Photo courtesy of Parrow)
He travels most every weekend for matches, sometimes with his tag team partner, Odinson. He eventually hopes to wrestle in Europe and Japan, which could be a stepping stone to that one end goal.
“The WrestleMania moment. My moment. The music hits and I am behind the curtain listening to the fans. I start crying. This whole quest, the ups and downs, the hard work was all worth it. That is my sports moment, my big goal,” says Parrow. “I like to be challenged and I want to prove you wrong. I used to be ashamed but now I am proud of who I am.”
Mike Parrow and Morgan Cole (Photo courtesy of Parrow)
Sports
US wins Olympic gold medal in women’s hockey
Team captain Hilary Knight proposed to girlfriend on Wednesday
The U.S. women’s hockey team on Thursday won a gold medal at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
Team USA defeated Canada 2-1 in overtime. The game took place a day after Team USA captain Hilary Knight proposed to her girlfriend, Brittany Bowe, an Olympic speed skater.
Cayla Barnes and Alex Carpenter — Knight’s teammates — are also LGBTQ. They are among the more than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes who are competing in the games.
The Olympics will end on Sunday.
Sports
Attitude! French ice dancers nail ‘Vogue’ routine
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry strike a pose in memorable Olympics performance
Madonna’s presence is being felt at the Olympic Games in Italy.
Guillaume Cizeron and his rhythm ice dancing partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry of France performed a flawless skate to Madonna’s “Vogue” and “Rescue Me” on Monday.
The duo scored an impressive 90.18 for their effort, the best score of the night.
“We’ve been working hard the whole season to get over 90, so it was nice to see the score on the screen,” Fournier Beaudry told Olympics.com. “But first of all, just coming out off the ice, we were very happy about what we delivered and the pleasure we had out there. With the energy of the crowd, it was really amazing.”
Watch the routine on YouTube here.
Italy
Olympics Pride House ‘really important for the community’
Italy lags behind other European countries in terms of LGBTQ rights
The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ rights in their country.
Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Washington Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.
Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)
Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”
ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.
ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”
• Marriage equality for same-sex couples
• Depathologization of trans identities
• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples
“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”
“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.
Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”
Seven LGBTQ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.
Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.
The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.
“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.
Bisexual US skier wins gold
Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing in the games.
Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.
Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”
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