In about three hours, 2K Sports will reveal the roster for the “30 Years of Wrestlemania” mode in WWE 2K14. The main roster hasn’t been revealed yet, but 2K has said it will include Darren Young, the openly gay wrestler who this week had one of the most understated coming-outs, especially for a sports figure.
Yesterday morning, 2K Sports tweeted its congratulations to Darren Young “on his brave personal announcement,” and welcomed him to the roster. It will be Young’s video game debut; he’s wrestled in the WWE since 2010, but spent most of that time in developmental circuits. He joined the SmackDown brand last spring with teammate Titus O’Neil as the tag team The Prime Time Players, so presumably O’Neil will be in the game, too.
On Thursday, Young was met by a TMZ camera and interviewer in an airport and was asked if he thought a gay man could be a successful pro wrestler. Realising where the interview was headed, Young just up and said yes, because he was a successful gay wrestler.
“I’m a WWE Superstar and to be honest with you, I’ll tell you right now I’m gay and I’m happy. Very happy,” Young said. His sexuality evidently was no secret among his fellow performers, and the WWE itself later released a statement of support.
As for 30 Years of Wrestlemania, the site wwegaming.com reports that list went up prematurely on a mobile IGN site. They managed to pull the entire roster before it was quickly taken down. If you’d prefer to be surprised, the livestream begins in the ring at SummerSlam Axxess with Jim Ross and Jerry “the King” Lawler handling the ceremonies. You can see it on 2K’s Twitch.tv channel.
To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.
Comments
26 responses to “Gay Wrestler To Make His Video Game Debut In WWE 2K14”
Its so heartwarming he can come out and be openly gay and true to himself in this industry! More power to him!
*Edit* Wow… so many… downvotes???
ummm… no…. Pat Patterson is probably the oldest wrestler who was openly gay in his later years, Orlando Jackson was also openly gay, although from his gimmick, you would think he was openly insane… what a horrible stereotype he was <_<
Got a lot of homophobes on kotaku, ‘straya!
Maybe Kotaku AU has more Russian readers than we thought 😛
Haha possibly, but it was just a fun troll on my part lol. It was all in good fun, sorry to those I offended with my comments about oiled up men groping each other.
Or maybe you changed the entire content of your post to make these guys look bad. Lost a lot of respect for you, man.
It really was a magnificently performed troll 😀
It really wasn’t.
You see this sort of thing all the time on sites like Reddit (basically anything with upvotes and editing) and it always looks like the person doing it got caught saying something they realised was dumb and tried to save face.
And to make it even more facepalm, tried to ‘lol! I was just kidding!’ after getting sprung. Pretty childish. The right thing to do would have been apologise for saying something jerky and leaving it as is. Instead, now you look like an even bigger fool.
master trole 2012
Nope. Was always a joke and never intended as anything more, was discussing it on fb with @barno666 last night. Don’t frequent reddit myself. Lighten up guys, it was all a bit of fun. A tad hyper sensitive.
Good work on the edit.
Note to all that the original comment prior to editing was some childish remark about oil and men groping. Hence the downvotes.
Hehe yep indeed it was. I was having fun. No harm done to anyone though asides egos and pride.
No.
Correct title: Darren Young To Make His Video Game Debut In WWE 2K14.
Orlando Jordan was openly gay and in video games, wasn’t he…?
Wrestling is NOT a sport…
1 – The roster isn’t complete yet, but it should be sometime before Summerslam begins.
2 – Darren is the first to be openly gay while under WWE employment. There are gay wrestlers out there but rarely do they get into the top companies. Eg. Kanyon from WCW/WWF
I imagine it’d be pretty confronting to come out in this industry.
Pat Patterson, Brooklyn Brawler and a few others. Wrestling promotions seem supportive of gay wrestlers behind the scenes. Which is weird given the way wrestling portrays gay people in their product.
I don’t get why anyone “coming out” is a big news worthy thing.
The thing about equality is, you really have to stop making a big deal about things.
Why sexuality even comes up in gaming is still beyond me.
Maybe one day when there is no need to give confidence to young (and maybe not so young) gay men & women who aspire to be in whatever industry of their choosing, then stories like these would be pointless or even detrimental. But for the time being, putting men like Darren Young on a pedestal can really make a lot of LGBT people feel comfortable in their own skin.
I was under the impression that continuously drawing attention to the topic would be detrimental. As if people being homosexual in whatever profession is something to be amazed at. “He’s a wrestler AND a homosexual… Wooooow”.
Perhaps I let my apathy towards sexuality and culture blind me to the issues. I’ve just never cared if someone is homosexual anymore than if they were heterosexual. Having someone say to me “I’m homosexual” generally gets the same response as “I had [x] for dinner” and that’s usually “would you like a medal? O.o”
I suppose if finding out other homosexuals are successful at something can empower others. But honestly, sexuality should never be a factor in anything other than… Well… Sex.
But until you actually have equality, then it remains a big deal.
Absolutely true.
Outside of stupid things like marriage and government benefits, I thought by this day and age things are par for the course.
Unless you count people saying things like “that’s gay” or “you’re a fag” as literal homophobia. Then, well, there’s no hope.