Inside Pulse Wrestling | Chris Kanyon’s Letter to WWE’s Stephanie McMahon

Chris Kanyon’s Letter to WWE’s Stephanie McMahon

by Aaron Glazer on April 15, 2010

This is from the Wrestling Observer and was sent 4 years ago, on January 21, 2006. It certainly paints a clearer picture of Kanyon as a person and on what he was thinking:

Dear Stephanie, I will try to make this as short as possible. And I am sorry to bother you. Four plus years ago, when I was wrestling for your company, I came up with an idea. You see, I am gay, but at the time, I was heavily closeted. My idea was to be the first ever openly gay active pro athlete in the five major U.S. pro sports of pro baseball, basketball, wrestling, football or hockey. By lumping wrestling in with the other four, I thought there was great potential for mainstream publicity. First step was to come out to family and friends, but at the age of 31, that was harder than I thought. After telling just two people, I stopped. And I shelved the idea, always planning on going back to it.

Well, soon after, I suffered my two injuries. First my knee, then my shoulder. Then depression set in. Then I got fired. Depression got much worse. I finally sought help. Through therapy, I came to terms with my sexuality and began coming out to family and friends and really began preparing to meet with your father to give him my ideas and thoughts. I began saving newspaper articles and magazines articles. I began studying sexuality and how it relates to religion and psychology and sociology to prepare for any potential mainstream appearances from Howard Stern, Larry King, Good Morning America, The Oâ€™Reilly Factor, The Daily Show, Leno to Letterman. I believe and still do, especially with the recent stunning success of Brokeback Mountain, the â€œgay cowboy movie,â€ that there was and still is great mainstream potential.

And I wrote ideas for storylines. Ideas of how to introduce this aspect of the Chris Kanyon character. How to use this aspect of the character to build and advance feuds and storylines. Ideas for interviews and vignettes. Then I started taking independent bookings to make sure I would be in shape for when I tried to get the meeting with Vince. I set a time frame of March, #1 to coincide with the Academy Awards in case Brokeback Mountain does well and gets positive mainstream press and #2 to coincide with WrestleMania in case the company wanted to introduce new ideas right after the upsurge in interest that always follows WrestleManias.

Then yesterday, I read online that Orlando Jordan was going to start a bisexual gimmick. I confirmed this with some current WWE employees. I was completely devastated. My main, and at times, only motivation for getting out of bed, for training, and for pushing on, this idea to be first, to be a true role model, to help young struggling confused kids, this idea that I felt and believed to be my destiny, well, I saw it possibly slipping away. So I decided to send this e-mail. I donâ€™t want to steal someoneâ€™s idea or gimmick or glory. But please believe me, I had this idea 4+ years ago and spoke of it with some of your current contracted wrestlers months and months ago. Personally, I feel doing bisexual as opposed to gay is very much diluting the potential. I am also very confident that I am the perfect person to do this, that I can definitely pull off the in ring work as well as the publicity and mainstream aspects that I feel would help make this a main-event character. We only get one chance to be first at something. I would hate to see it diluted and not used to its maximum potential, especially if the only reason was that the company did not know there was someone like me, who is ready and comfortable and able to carry the load in the ring and, in mainstream appearances, do well and resent himself professionally and intelligently, already preparing for this opportunity.

I truly appreciate your time. And I hope you donâ€™t mind me reaching out to you. You were always very nice to me when I worked for you and I now feel afraid, lost, confused and desperate. Any advice or recommendations you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Sincerely

Chris â€œKanyonâ€ Klucsaritis

Tags: Chris Kanyon, Stephanie McMahon, wrestler deaths

Aaron Glazer

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Aaron Glazer is senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus. Follow him on twitter right here for all the updated news and columns.

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Baron Von Rainbow

Charlie is gonna crap on this any minute now…
SoDumb

Orlando Jordan presents him delf in a classy manor.

I mean whats more classy then being bare foot and licking lotion that is souposed to be seamen off your chest
SoDumb

himself
damufine

I truely wonder if the recent push of OJ played a role in further depressing CK’s situation. The WWE angle never actually saw the light of day. Man, this thing is so complicated
Jordan P.

wait so he studied this hoping for it to be a positive role model thing?
Damn he did his homework too… well f*ck.
Charlie Reneke

“Charlie is gonna crap on this any minute now…”

Not really. I think the man was mentally ill, but having an openly gay character who isn’t played for laughs or just a walking stereotype would be a positive thing.

Of course, in 90% of media, WWE or otherwise, gay characters there for laughs and are seldom treated seriously. Now, if Kanyon was okay with being a walking punch-line, then more power to him. That’s basically the best he could have hoped for.
Robert

Did they happen to mention HOW they got an email from Stephanie McMahon? I have a hard time believing this, especially from the observer.
King Haku

@Robert- it could have been pulled from his outbox, or printed and left in his personal papers, or blind cc’ed to a friend, or it could be bullshit. I want to believe it’s real. I don’t see anything suggesting that Stephanie replied or even read this, though. So…who knows?
Jordan P.

@Charlie Reneke

Yeah as much as I would like to believe it would have worked out being played for laughs would have probably been his fate. Real shame These were great intentions.
Tom Harris

I have a hard time believing that this is legitimate and i would really be interested in discovering the source. Although not interested enough to actually look for the source. However if it is legitimate then its a pretty sad thing.

Especially considering how Jordon’s gimmick is going right now. Where it seems any potential in the gimmick has been wasted in favour of daft antics that degrade the performer and the viewer, regardless of their sexuality.
Robert

@King Haku Good point, Chris was a pack rat so it’s possible. I just have a hard time with it.
Chuck Deuce

Ultimately, he couldn’t deal with being gay himself and could only cope with it if he could turn it into a gimmick. What a shame. The world at large doesn’t consider what WWE does as “Sports” like Football and Baseball, so his letter is really…well…pathetic. Physical Actor…Gay…so what, Kanyon. So are lots of performers and the ones that make a big deal about their alternative lifestyle (choice/by birth…who cares), are just pushy a*holes. What a shame. None nicer than Kanyon, but such a misguided soul.
ShamanOfHedon

@Chuck Duece Trust a lesbian, A LOT of people care about the Born/choice argument, ESPECIALLY the worst of the bigots who use the “They chose this “lifestyle” argument to justify horrifically cruel and psychologically scarring “treatments” to “cure” homosexuality, or to justify leaving me in the hospital for 6 weeks in 97 with my jaw wired shut because I had the balls to kiss my then girlfriend on the bus. Given I’m not a supermodel, I clearly did not meet the standards of the frat boy lesbo fantasy and was pummelled for my openness.

Now tell me, who do you think would CHOOSE a “lifestyle” that includes the risk of being beaten up, crippled, murdered or tortured?
Charlie Reneke

I can’t believe the whole ‘choice’ thing is up for debates. As Chris Rock said “Everyone has at least one gay cousin that they knew was gay before he or she did.”
Your Mom

It’s sad because Chris wanted to be a role model. Now as someone who seemingly “took the easy way out” via suicide he’s shown himself to be anything but a positive influence. Tragic but true.
Robert

@Chuck Deuce Just to be clear, you have no clue what you’re talking about. Chris felt free about coming out. Basically instead of responding to each thing you said, I’ll just say that if you don’t know what you’re talking about (you’re not even close) you should just stfu and not pretend that you do.
Chuck Deuce

@Shaman…How sad is it to watch a gay man in denial who says he’s been “cured” by the church, as if its part of some sort of 12-step program?

@Robert: Of course I don’t know what I’m talking about, all I can do is comment based on a note that he allegedly wrote. Same as we had to do when dissecting Shakespeare-find the meaning behind the words. So, my interpretation of his writing is that he only wanted to do this if it could be packaged up as a sellable gimmick. When he was DENIED that opportunity due to injury and the OJ thing, it shut him down.
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ShamanOfHedon

@Chuck Duece Painful. Just bloody painful.
Robert

@Chuck Deuce You have a point, but you’re still drawing the wrong conclusions.. and some skewed ones at that. I think what you’re saying is based on an existing bias. Go look at his blogs, talk to his friends, listen to his interviews and see if there is any basis for this whatsoever, there isn’t. It’s a ridiculous thing to assume. Hell, Chris retired several years ago, if he could only survive by using that as a gimmick he would have never been able to retire.