Jai Vidal is the first openly gay male to sign with Impact Wrestling. Late last month, Vidal signed a long-term deal with the promotion. He spoke recently about what that means to him, what it was like to work with Gisele Shaw, and what it means to represent the LGBTQ+ community in pro wrestling.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
What it meant to be Impact’s first openly gay male signing: “I didn’t find out until the morning that I was doing the interview with OutSports. I was talking to the Head of Media Relations, Ross at Impact, and he was like, ‘By the way, you’re the first openly gay male wrestler to sign with Impact.’ It really didn’t hit me. ‘Okay, that’s cool.’ It’s not just cool: it’s groundbreaking. The first openly gay male wrestler to sign with Impact. Now, I’m knocking down barriers so that other gay male wrestlers and lesbian wrestlers and so on and so forth will hopefully get into Impact without a second thought or second look.”
The diverse representation of Impact’s roster: “Especially because I do feel, as someone part of the LGBTQ community, that we all bring something different to the table. You can have more than one LGBTQ person on your television show and it be extremely diverse. That’s what Iove about Impact. They’ve had multiple LGBTQ people on the roster and each one brings something different to the table. Along with that, I get to be beside Gisele Shaw, that’s awesome. Now, you have me styling her, she already looked pretty, now she’s looking like a bombshell. We’re like peanut butter and jelly. We just mesh together so well and bounce so well off each other. All that chemistry you see on camera is the chemistry behind the scenes. I love and am honored to be making history alongside her.”
