Darren Young was the special guest on AfterBuzz TV's X-Pac 12360 this week with Sean Waltman, and spoke about when he first knew he was gay, his time being closeted in the WWE locker room, and which close family member is also gay. You can watch the interview in the video above, and they submitted these highlights:
He says he knew he was gay his whole life:
"I always knew I just suppressed my feelings. Just fear of judgment you know fear of losing friends so… For thirty years I'm thirty-three now for thirty years I just lived my life not being myself so just imagine you know. Think of your most down moment you're in life and times it by ten that's how I felt. Just imagine not being able to be like other normal couples. That's what I wanted to be ultimately as I grew up. I wanted to be like normal couples. I want to be able to hold hands in public and be affectionate when the time is right in a classy way. But that was my main goal that was my main goal and I accomplished it by coming out to TMZ ."
He reveals for the first time that his mom is gay, too:
"No no never… brought up to thinking that gay was bad. A lot of people don't know but my Mom is actually gay. This is the first time I'm saying this to you our any podcast. This is something I was going to save for my YouTube, but yeah, my Mom's actually gay. And she's been gay for a long time my parents live together you know financially they're best friends and financially just good for them to stay together you know they're friends… But I knew my Mom was gay and I was always that type of guy that kind of looked down upon it like an idiot. I'd look down upon it or I'd be around my friends and they'd say, 'oh that's gay.' I'd be like, 'oh yeah yeah.' I'd jump on board like an idiot man. Now never again."
He was called 'Gay' by a fellow superstar before he ever came out:
"When I first came up on the roster I had I had hair like Enzo (Amore) kind of it was spiky and stuff like that. So, Mark Henry, you know how he is. He's just sitting there in the locker and he's like, and this is a couple months on the road and he's like,"Boy" and he's long winded. "Boy why you got your hair like that?" Again I can say this story because he's going to be putting this in his book so I told him, "Hey when I have an opportunity to tell this story I'm going to tell it because I don't want to at first offend him but he's okay with it so again he's sitting there, "Boy why you got your hair like that?" I said, "Mark (biting my nails) Mark I'm just trying to be different. I'm just trying to stand out." "Well you know it makes you look gay." And this was before I came out so I'm just stuttering like I am now. Mark, I'm just trying to be different man you know.
"Fast-forward to when I like came out. The morning I came out he called me, this was in LA at the hotel, he called me and said, "Come down to the green room." This was during SummerSlam… I went down to the green room and he gave me the biggest hug and he was like, "Man how come you didn't tell me?" I was like, "Mark I didn't tell nobody. You know how hard it is for me." And Mark said you know in his book when he writes a book… one of the chapters is going to be about me and the caption is going to be, Insert foot in mouth."
He was contacted by Cher when he came out
"Before I came out you know fans are fans they love you or hate you but when I made my announcement (Coming out on TMZ) I didn't realize how much of an impact I had made on people's lives. Of all people when I came out Cher contacted me via Twitter and she said you know because of my story that made it comfortable for one of her friends who's a wrestling fan to come out to his family, so I said wow that's amazing. I couldn't believe it. I still hadn't met her yet so hopefully some day in the near future we could link up."
The Bob Backlund "Make Darren Young Great Again" storyline was his idea:
"Well the reason why I came up with this idea was you know tag-teams don't last forever so once I was done teaming with Titus (O'Neil) I was kind of down and out and I kind of needed a life coach to kind of pick me up so I kind of took the idea from Mike Tyson and his former trainer Cus (D'Amato), so like they had an unusual relationship and Mike Tyson was you know locked in on Cus so I said why not bring Bob Backlund because we've done a lot of speaking engagements together before hand. I said I want to bring Bob back as my life coach and I went to Vince McMahon with visuals and I had it written out and he (Vince McMahon) bought into it he enjoyed it. This was my idea."
You can download the podcast on iTunes at this link.
