Darren Young: Why WWE Shouldn’t Have Deleted His Tweet

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Darren Young, one of professional wrestling’s first openly gay competitors, recently had a Tweet deleted regarding the company’s tour of Abu Dhabi. In it, Young could not hide his distaste for the company performing in a country that devalues women and outlaws homosexuality. The slight was that WWE was willing to compromise and seemingly condone such views in order to earn a significant amount of money from the tour.

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  • After his Tweet was deleted, Young followed up his outrage at this action by stating that his freedom of speech had been taken from him. As a pioneer for gay athletes in openly discussing his sexuality, still often considered a taboo in professional sport, Young was upset that the WWE didn’t seem to have his back in this regard. It led to an outpouring of support over social media for the superstar from fans and former superstars, including Lance Storm and Sean Waltman, as more unwelcome ire was directed towards the company.

    WWE recently released a statement on Fred Rosser, Young’s real name, confronting any controversy over this issue:

    "WWE does not discriminate against individuals regardless of age, race, religion or sexual orientation, and we continue to proudly support Fred Rosser (aka WWE Superstar Darren Young) for being open about his sexuality. Unfortunately, WWE cannot change cultures and laws around the world, and thus we did not send Fred Rosser to the United Arab Emirates for our upcoming events for his own protection. WWE also fully supports Fred Rosser’s right to express his views on personal social media accounts rather than WWE’s corporate platforms."

    WWE.com

    Whilst this clearly indicates that Young should face no punishment over his criticisms of the WWE tour and restrictions to his freedom of speech, I feel that WWE were wrong to delete such a Tweet. In the end, it is the opinion of one superstar with a extremely personal connection to the laws governing the United Arab Emirates. It did not come from the WWE main account so could be overlooked as a statement, and it’s not as though every crowd on the tour would be carrying homophobic signs and be aggressive toward the performers if the tweet remained. Even if it is law doesn’t mean it is everybody’s primary preoccupation.

    I mean, if John Cena was to tweet recently about enjoying a particular alcoholic beverage, would the WWE ask him to delete it because that is also outlawed in Abu Dhabi? Of course, the situation is somewhat different, as Young explicitly directed his distaste towards the tour, rather than veiling it in a more subtle manner. But, the only thing this seems to have succeeded in doing is direct more bad publicity to WWE, the argument being they care more about the tour than supporting the freedom of one of their superstars to voice their opinions.

    This was an extremely positive message promoted by Young. Like WWE said, they cannot impose laws on a nation and will have to respect such practices whilst in the UAE. But, the stance taken in that country is wrong, and I would openly say that on any forum imaginable. It is outdated and against a person’s human rights, and Young was merely voicing his stance as a proudly gay man. Whilst the WWE shouldn’t march out on Thursday with rainbow flags to the tune of YMCA, it still doesn’t hurt them to leave the original Tweet by Young in place.

    WWE.com

    In truth, WWE have actually managed to make more of an issue of this by deleting the Tweet than by just leaving it in place. By doing so not only has the Tweet become one of the biggest wrestling stories in the news currently, it has placed the company at the center of a storm over both the rights of its superstars and their stance on equality. If the statement remains untouched, Young’s followers give him support and rally a little bit, it is mentioned on a couple of news sites, and then it disappears. Now, it is a bigger deal than it ever needed to be.

    I, like hopefully everybody reading this, support Young’s right to speak his mind, and in a way I’m pretty happy WWE decided to ask him to delete his Tweet, as it has helped raise more awareness of this issue. It has only drawn more problems for WWE than it would have caused standing alone in Abu Dhabi, as they will now endure a few days or weeks of LGBT activists turning on the stance of the company.

    Perhaps in future they will consider only choosing to delete inflammatory remarks rather than crackdown on somebody’s right to speak their mind on behalf of a worthy cause.