PCW Episode 6: Simon Sermon

Simon Sermon, the first openly gay... working pro wrestler, uses a wrestling gimmick to help forward a social cause.

Stephen Platinum: He is wrestling's first out wrestler.

Mark "Simon Sermon" Henry: I call it playing myself out in a wrestling ring.

Platinum: If Simon Sermon was a cable station, it would be Bravo. That guy is gay.

James "Jay Fury" Card: You know he's gay, but he ain't know secret drag queen, you know? (laughs)

Card: It's him but he brings it out 30, 40 times more than what it really is.

Sermon: In the beginning of my career I thought, you know, if I do this exotic type gay character with makeup and flowers, that I'd really be selling myself out. And then I started getting phone numbers from the little teenage girls and it donned on me. I've done such a great job integrating, I'm no longer a gay guy. I'm some straight guy that's pretending to be gay. That was the sell out. I didn't realize that was the sell out. I wasn't doing what I had intended to do and that was to be out there and show people, 'Hey, a guy can come out and do this and not be hanged in a tree or burned on a cross.

Platinum: He's used as a heel in every other promotion he's ever wrestled for but I decided that he was a face. I decided this was Atlanta, Georgia and they would probably love the guy coming to the ring in drag. And, sure enough, they do.

Sermon: Wrestling's always gotten behind real people and I'm about as real as it gets.

Sermon: I have a very cordial relationship with my family but I learned to live without them a long time ago because I felt like in my teens was when I really needed my family around was when life was tough. Now, I'm almost 40 years old. Life is not tough anymore. So I don't need that type of support. They had their chance and they blew it.

Sermon: My office is my car and so it smells really bad in here right now.

Sermon: Wrestling for me is not the same thing that it is for other people. I have a career outside of the wrestling business.

Sermon: Your standard surveillance is usually about a minimum of 8 hours.

Sermon: In real life, as I like to call it, I'm a private detective. I specialize in workmen's comp insurance fraud. My day is to document what people I watch do. If you want a good idea of how that works, just go out in your car, park on the street, roll up the windows, sit there for 8 hours, and tell me what your neighbor does. That's my job.

Sermon: You don't go anywhere in midtown without a backup plan.

Commentator: Fabulous taser! A fabulous taser!

Sermon: Going into this, I knew I wasn't going to WWE but I knew that someone had to break down that door so that someone else behind me could go to TNA or someone else behind me could go to WWE.

Sermon: I want someone to see the next guy and go, 'That's the guy who I want to be like.' Just a role model. Just somebody positive. I just want gay people to be treated like their normal because that's what we are. We're normal.

Sermon: Another day in the life of a guy spy superhero.