I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to speak to Mike Parrow during Pride Month in June before he makes the trip over to Japan with his tag partner Odinson. The pair will compete for the All Japan Pro Wrestling Tag Team Championships against the Violent Giants. Parrow is one of the openly gay wrestlers on the pro wrestling circuit and we have a very in-depth conversation on several aspects of his growth both as a wrestler and as a person.
Parrow only recently came out publicly about three and a half years ago and in this first part of the interview, the big man talks about growing up in a small town, how he always knew that he was gay and having to deal with that through his adolescent years. He also touches upon how his fiancé of six years, Morgan, has been an amazing partner throughout Parrow’s early process of dating. Quotes are from the first part of the interview with plenty more to come from this extremely insightful conversation:
Parrow on that moment he and Matt Riddle realized they grew up so close together (Parrow is from Troy, NY & Riddle is from Saratoga):
“We all kind of grew up around the same area but we never knew each other, until we started wrestling. It was funny my first ever wrestling match with him, he got announced from where he’s from and then I got announced from Troy and he literally was like, ‘Whaaat?’ If you understand Matt, you’ll understand that that’s how he kind of is!”
On his high school years:
“That’s where you learn everything. That’s where I actually learned all my misconceptions about being gay, from a small town. You come from a locker room dynamic where you know, you aren’t taught what gay is. You have to remember, the first time you hear ‘gay’ it’s used under derogatory terms towards you, remember that. In high school. Even before you know what gay is, people are like, ‘That’s gay,’ or ‘You’re gay.’ So the first term you ever hear of gay is derogatory. I always say that, that does damage that people don’t understand, but in high school it definitely does damage.”
On words not necessarily hurting him but how they can be harmful to others:
“It’s true, but I actually had this conversation with actually Eddie Kingston the other day. He asked why how certain words bother people more than others. And I said it’s just like the straight world and using the n-word and stuff like that. Certain people aren’t bothered. I grew up in a locker room dynamic so words and being a pro wrestling, words don’t really hurt me as much because, I mean I played football so you’re yelled at constantly. Like your coaches say some mean stuff to you so you get used to it and the words stop like and I was told by my grandfather and my father that, ‘Words can’t hurt you. They only hurt you if you let them hurt you.’ And that was just being young, that hadn’t had anything to do with being gay, I was always told that words can’t hurt you unless you let them hurt you. That’s the way I was so I tell it when I was talking to Eddie about it, I was like, ‘It might not hurt me and I can say the words and it doesn’t have the same meaning as it would, but you have to understand those words do hurt people. Not everybody understands the meaning behind it and it depends on your upbringing and you have to consider everyone in the matter.”
On when he knew he was gay:
“I always knew I was gay. I never not thought I was gay. I always was attracted to men. My first ever attraction was to a man. It just scared me because it’s hard. Especially when you play sports and you have friends and you’re growing up, you’re told from a very young age ‘You’re gonna to get married and have kids.’ Your whole life is planned out for you, from when you’re two years old. Think about how many parents be like, ‘He’s gonna be a ladykiller!’ or ‘She’s a knockout!’ She’s two! She’s dribbling Popsicles right now, but you predestine your children and you tell them, ‘That this is the way it is, the other way is wrong no matter what you think or how you feel’ so you can’t have a conversation with your friends and be like, you know when they’re telling you how hot Sarah is and you’re not understanding that yeah she’s pretty, but yeah…she’s just there. You can’t really look over and be like, ‘Yo, but Jim over there. Yeah…he can get it.’ Like you can’t really say that because you don’t understand. There’s a lot of things because homosexuality isn’t taught in schools, especially in Catholic schools…so just sexual education is just straight, hetero sex that is taught. That’s all you’re taught so you’re not taught that homosexuality even exists of having sex. So how as young teenager, especially when you’re going through that time, you literally feel the most alone you ever feel in your life because you can have all the friends in the world, you can be as popular as anybody, but you have nobody to talk to because the fear is, you tell somebody and then everything is taken away from you because you’re basically told ‘there’s only one way.’ So I always knew. I just tried so hard not to be gay because I was always told it was wrong. So I did everything in my power to not be gay. So when you say it’s a choice, I was like, ‘I was trying to make the choice of being straight.’ I always hate that where it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s a choice.’ No, I was choosing to be straight and it was the worst experiences of my life because I knew I was never going to have a real relationship. So going into any relationship from that point, I knew I didn’t want to be with that person and I couldn’t see myself with them. That was the start off point with every one of my relationships. And that’s what a lot of closeted LGBTQ community go through, is they force themselves to be unhappy to make others comfortable.”
On the wild parameters he initially set for his fiancé Morgan when they first started dating:
“I literally told him, ‘You can only come over at night, I’m never coming out, you’re never meeting my friends, you’re never meeting my family. Like I was the cruelest meanest person like a lot of people would have just been like, ‘Okay, walk away, bye,’ but he told me, I asked him, I go, ‘Why did you stay with me?’ And he goes, ‘Because all I ever wanted was you.’ He goes, ‘I didn’t need everything else.’ He goes, ‘All I wanted was you.’ Morgan has a unique knack of seeing what people could be, not what people are. He gave me a chance. Yesterday was our anniversary, six years now we’ve been together. If you told me six years ago that I would be an ‘out’ wrestler I would have laughed in your face. I’d been like, ‘That’s never happening.’”
