Nyla Rose is the first transgender wrestler working for a major promotion. Even if many wrestling fans focus on her accomplishments in the ring while working at All Elite Wrestling, there are those that take issue with her for some reason or another.
During New York Comic-Con, AEW wrestlers Nyla Rose and Jungle Boy spoke about transgender wrestling during a roundtable interview, and Rose had an interesting and hilarious way to look at this so-called controversy. “On TV, [there are] all these television shows about ghosts and ghost hunters, and everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, ghosts!’ Okay,” she jokingly stated. “First of all, nevermind the fact that you’re in like an 18th century German castle. Why is the ghost speaking English? Nevermind that. But everybody’s like, ‘Yeah ghosts! That’s plausible.’ They get shows [where people] hunt for Bigfoot. ‘Oh, let’s go hunt bigfoot. He’s definitely out there.’
“But the second you’re like, ‘Hey, I’m trans, and I just don’t feel right inside.’ [People say] ‘Oh that’s preposterous! There’s no way that’s possible!’ That is the wildest s*** to me,” Rose continued. “There’s a lot of misinformation, and a lot of it is just people being stubborn because it’s different because it’s weird and wild and zany. They don’t want to learn about it, and they’ll just kind of take all the crap that they’ve been told and just run with that. Not look at new science, not look at new studies. It’s willful ignorance is what it is.”
While the scenario Rose presented drew a lot of laughs from the roundtable, it’s a perfect point. Wrestling is nothing more than entertainment and no different than some of the more preposterous supposed reality TV programming.
And on the same note, Jungle Boy–an AEW wrestler who is smaller in stature compared to his co-workers–made note about the size difference between competitors. “I’ve wrestled guys like three times my size, and no one makes a fuss about that,” he explained.
Rose additionally noted that she wants to be known as more than a transgender wrestler, that it should be normalized: Where trans people can live in a world where it’s not an issue, and they can live normal lives. She also noted she wants to world to know that she likes photography and loves Pokemon, with her favorite being Eevee.
Nyla Rose recently had an intense battle with Riho for the AEW Women’s Championship on the premiere episode of Dynamite, the promotion’s new weekly wrestling program on TNT. While she didn’t win the title, it was one of the more entertaining matches of the evening. You can see Rose, Jungle Boy, and all of All Elite Wrestling’s stars on Wednesday Night Dynamite which airs Wednesdays at 8 PM on TNT.
