Wrestler Will Only Perform In Drag!
Cassandro is an openly gay wrestler who is always in drag when in the ring! If that wasn’t the greatest sentence I’ve ever written, I don’t know what is!?
According to our friends at Vice, Cassandro, in his late forties, claims to have taken “many beatings in life just to prove [himself]. People have a hard time seeing beyond labels.”
Originally gaining viral fame in 2016, the wrestler, named after an infamous brothel-keeper named Cassandra, has been in the business for over 25 years. When he spoke with The Guardian, he tells that his teeth have been knocked out three times! WHAT!
“They just can’t get to the word exotico,” he says, referring to the class of luchador to which he belongs, a type of character that first emerged in Mexican wrestling in the 1940s. Luchadors are divided into tecnicos (good guys) and rudos (bad guys); from the beginning, the exoticos – who were defiantly effeminate and fought in drag – were bad guys. “They were rudos because they were like the clowns in the circus. They were there to make people laugh. They weren’t really gay, unless they were in the closet. We’re not transvestites, because I don’t do [drag] out of the ring. I don’t live as a woman. I’m gay, that’s it.”
Unfortunately, in a video from Vice, Cassandro feels that 2017 may be his last year in the ring.
“I can’t do it anymore. My body won’t allow me to fight every weekend. I’ve been in the hospital eight times for brain convulsions.”
Cassandro dons a championship belt as he sashays in a caftan to his next fight. The roaring crowd cheering him on is exceptionally beautiful. Especially with his backstory, born in Texas and raised in Mexico, he was never in a place where it felt fine to be, gay. Although it appears that drag wrestlers have been in the Mexican Wrestling scene since the beginning of time, it is comforting to see them getting the international attention they deserve!
You’ve got to check out the video below! You’ll watch as Cassandro beats that pretty little face of his, throws chairs, and gushes around his adoring fans!
