He was engaged to a woman. Then this pro wrestler fell in love with his best friend.
‘It really is just a story of two silly boys who took it to the road and fell in love.’
Mark
To call the last calendar year a whirlwind for out pro wrestler Scotty Rawk would be an understatement.
The 10-year veteran of the British independent scene is no stranger to such things. In previous years, he performed all over Europe, held major titles in top U.K. independent promotions and helped put pro wrestling in his native Grimsby on the map with British Wrestling Revolution, the promotion he and his partner, Adam Moverley, run together.
The last 12 months delivered similar accolades.
Rawk will ring in BWR’s ninth anniversary on July 18 with a Grimsby Rules Street Fight. He won TNT Extreme’s Rainbow Rumble at “EFFY’s Big gay Brunch UK 3.”
The U.S. got its first taste of “The Dogz Bollox” at TNA Wrestling’s TV tapings in Albany, NY earlier this month when Rawk earned a tryout match with the major North American promotion.
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But the biggest accomplishment for Rawk sparked off when he got the microphone after winning the Rainbow Rumble last September.
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“A year ago, I was engaged to a woman. I had a house. And now I find myself climbing back from rock bottom with my best friend, who is a bloke and is my partner.”
It was the first time Scotty Rawk acknowledged his queer identity publicly, and it was met with applause and cheers. The moment was 12 years in the making, dating back to the moment when he and Moverley, then known as pro wrestler Tyler Devlin, met for the first time.
The moment also stood as the latest in a long line of moments of personal growth for Rawk, who credits pro wrestling and Moverley for pulling him out of self-destructive habits, substance issues and struggles with mental health.
“It’s very romantic. It’s very cinematic. It’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’ if the two cowboys didn’t go their separate ways and never see each other again,” Rawk said of his and Adam’s relationship during an appearance on the LGBT In The Ring podcast last month.
“The organic evolution went from two trainees to almost me being taken under Adam’s wing because he was a little bit older than me.”
The couple’s connection started through pro wrestling, bouncing gear, merchandise and storyline ideas off one another as they carved their path through the British indie wrestling scene. The depth of their connection soon spread beyond just that singular shared passion, though.
“It went from that wrestling all-encompassing friendship to us spending all night talking about philosophy, our views on the universe, our different psychology principles and what really made us who were at our cores,” Rawk said. “Then it goes a little further. I’m spending entire Christmas periods with my best friend because his housemate’s away and I’d rather be spending Christmas with Adam.
“I have a plus one to this family event. I’ll invite Adam. Everyone in my family loves Adam and loves seeing me with Adam.
“I went through the whole get a job, get a mortgage, find a girl, settle down. I was in a relationship with my previous partner for almost five years. We had a house together. We had cats together. I asked her to marry me. And that kind of came to a natural end.
“We both wanted different things in life and we were both pursuing different happinesses. When I was getting booked to wrestle ‘Speedball’ Mike Bailey in Poland in front of 2,500 people, I’d ask her if she wanted to come and she’d say, ‘No, I’d rather be doing this. Don’t you want to go with Adam?’”
Scotty Rawk lands with his best friend
The frequency of those conversations and the nights shared with Moverley that resulted from them continued developing the deep connection between the two. Rawk even credits his former fiancée with recognizing what truly existed between Rawk and Moverley before he did.
“Me and Adam had always been orbiting each other, and it was only when we came to that natural, amicable end that me and Adam were kind of forced into a caravan together to live with one another,” Rawk recalled. “That’s when we sat with each other and said, ‘Right, what’s all these feelings then,’ because it’s not normal for me to be in a house with a life I have settled and still feel that I’d rather be with him.”
Blowing up his life, as Scotty Rawk described it, and having those conversations, both internally with himself and externally with Moverley, helped Rawk put a finger on the queer identity he knew was part of him from an early age but never fully grasped or explored due to the casual homophobia that he grew up around and internalized to a degree.
“I don’t know if this is the same for other adult bisexual or pansexual people who come out later in adulthood, but because being straight or heteronormative is the almost default setting that you’re brought up to believe, as a bisexual man, I don’t think I looked in the drawer,” Rawk said. “I don’t think I ever referred to myself as a ‘straight man,’ but I never looked in the closet because why would I cause myself the hassle?
“I didn’t face down what I knew was there because I was already an outcast kid that didn’t fit in, got bullied and got mocked. I didn’t want another reason to not feel normal, so I hunkered down and played it safe,” he added. “It’s not until it’s staring you in the face, because eventually it will, that you’re left questioning a lot of your upbringing and the mindset you thought was the way to do things that might not be.”
Much like how Rawk climbed out of his previous valleys, pro wrestling and Moverley helped Rawk finally look in the closet and embrace that aspect of his identity, and Rawk’s star in the pro wrestling world is flying higher than ever before since.
“That’s when you start asking yourself those questions of why. I’m not going to judge my own thoughts, but you have to attack them with a little bit of curiosity,” Rawk said. “If you’re aware of your actions but you aren’t questioning why you’re doing them, then you have no understanding as to the reasons behind them.”
Through training together, mentorship, hitting wrestling highs as both on-screen friends and rivals, building BWR, battling one another in Moverley’s retirement match and being by each other’s side as their dedication reaps professional rewards, what pro wrestling helped unlock for Rawk ultimately is a life as authentic as his punk rock ethos dictates.
“When you start peeling away at the surface, it really is just a story of two silly boys who took it to the road and fell in love.
“We did.”
Check out the full interview with Scotty Rawk and other LGBTQ figures in pro wrestling on the LGBT In The Ring podcast. New episodes drop weekly on all podcast platforms.
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