In a recent interview with BT Sports, Finn Bálor discussed his Wrestlemania 34 entrance in 2018, which included members of the LGBTQ+ community.
The Bray, County Wicklow native, real name Fergal Devitt, was making his debut at the ‘Show of Shows’, and there were certain expectations in regards to his entrance. Finn had previously wrestled for WWE’s development brand NXT (from 2014 to 2016) and during that time developed his ‘Demon’ persona and debuted his signature body paint.
This led to some cool entrances at NXT’s big events (called ‘Takeovers’ at the time). This meant that people were anticipating a Demon entrance at Wrestlemania and it was being talked about backstage. “A lot of people were kind of like, you’ve got to do the Demon, it’s Wrestlemania, it’s your first Wrestlemania,” Finn Bálor recalled.
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However, coming up to the event, Finn came up with an entrance idea he felt was “cooler” and “more important” as he wanted to use the Wrestlemania platform “as a voice for change”.
Weeks before the event, he took the idea to Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque and Stephanie McMahon who jumped on it. They helped him get in touch with the LGBTQ+ community in New Orleans (where the event took place).
Speaking of the people who joined him on stage he noted “they were actually members of the community from there. They weren’t like extras or anything like that. It was legit, like having them up on stage.”
the balor club is for everyone pic.twitter.com/EvOnQyH9Lg
— Pav (@WrestlinGifs) April 8, 2018
Finn Bálor also debuted his ‘For Everyone’ t-shirts, that feature his triangular Bálor Club logo in the rainbow flag colours. 20% of the sales of each shirt went on to benefit GLAAD (an American non-governmental media monitoring organisation) for a short period.
Describing the entrance, Finn said, “For me, that was like a more important moment than any Demon entrance could have ever been.”
To read more of David Ferguson’s content, click here.
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