WWE News: Finn Balor reveals how hard he had to push for LGBTQ shirt to become a reality
What's the story?
Back at WWE WrestleMania Finn Balor revealed the new side of his character when he came out without The Demon but with a group of young people who were seen to be "included" in his entrance.
This was the start of Balor's new character where he made a point of stating that Balor Club was for everyone, but it wasn't an easy thing to make a reality.
In case you didn't know...
WWE's support of the LGBTQ community isn't something that Balor could work with when pushing forward this idea since many characters over the years have used their sexuality as a means to a villain or have made homosexual references as part of the punchline in jokes.
In recent years this has changed somewhat and Sonya Deville has become the first ever lesbian WWE superstar, even though this isn't something she embraces on WWE TV, whilst Velveteen Dream down in NXT has been pushed with this kind of character in a much more respectable way.
The heart of the matter
Balor recently spoke to Sports Illustrated and revealed that he had worked hard for six months to make this idea work.
He had been living in Brooklyn and talking to some of his friends in that area when he got the feeling that they didn't feel included in wrestling as a whole.
This gave the former Universal Champion an idea and he went on to commission his friend to draw a design of the Balor Club in the rainbow format.
“I feel like—not that they were excluded, but sometimes they felt like they weren’t included. That’s something I felt a responsibility for, to use the platform that I have for good and to help maybe a small amount of people for the right reasons.”
Balor posted the design he created on Instagram with the caption "Balor Club is for everyone", and after a lot of positive feedback from fans, this caught the eye of chief brand officer Stephanie McMahon who complimented Balor on the message he was sending and wanted to get WWE's promotional machine behind the idea.
“It’s crazy because it was kind of a couple months of me talking, then as soon as the right people heard it, it was almost instantaneously, ‘We gotta have this shirt out next week and we gotta talk to GLAAD ASAP and we’re gonna roll with it.’”
What's next?
Finn Balor will be part of the Money in the Bank ladder match this weekend as he steps in the ring with seven other superstars in the hopes that he will walk out with the Money in the Bank contract and a shot at the Universal Championship.
Is Balor's new message better than his original Demon King? Have your say in the comments.