“Speedball” Mike Bailey (Photo courtesy of AEW Collision)
All Elite Wrestling’s first non-binary champion talks about early wrestling inspirations, the importance of connecting with fans, and the history (or lack thereof) of queer representation in the squared circle.
Canadian professional wrestler “Speedball” Mike Bailey may be a regular fixture on national TV as a key member of All Elite Wrestling’s expansive roster, but their path to wrestling stardom is anything but conventional. Nicknamed “Speedball” for his high-velocity, gravity-defying work in the ring, Bailey (who identifies as nonbinary) has spent more than 20 years traveling the globe as a star of the international independent wrestling scene, holding titles in TNA, DDT, and the IWS.
Thanks in large part to a 5-year travel ban incurred in 2016 that prevented him from working in the United States, Bailey’s international career flourished, and after years of globetrotting as a freelancer (and a stint in TNA), Speedball officially signed with AEW in January of 2025. On the road to AEW’s largest annual pay-per-view, AEW: All In, The Blade had the opportunity to talk to Speedball about connecting with fans, representation in wrestling, and how/why the industry can become more inclusive.
Between your YouTube vlogs and your Twitch streams, you’ve cultivated a very deliberate digital presence. What inspired you to start vlogging/streaming, and why is it important for you to maintain those channels now that you’re signed to AEW?
There are a lot of facets to the answer to that question, but the main one is that I believe that in 2026, wrestling is and should be an immersive experience – that’s how it’s going to grow. I think the days of people playing characters that were only able to exist on television in 15-minute weekly increments, because they’re some kind of undead creature that can’t really have a conversation, are not what the wrestling world needs anymore. As is Kayfabe, the whole secrecy behind wrestling. I think these days, if you look at social media, you will see that being open and honest and cultivating an audience that knows you well is the way to go. For professional wrestling, to have the best matches, what I want is an audience who can connect with me and who understands what I’m going through on an emotional level; so that’s one aspect of it.
But there’s a lot more – the reason I started the vlog is pretty much the same reason I started Twitch streaming, which was that during the pandemic, when the world was shut down, I was unable to travel, unable to engage with my audience, unable to see a lot of the friends I’d made around the world of professional wrestling. To try to re-form that connection, I decided I would try to leverage the internet to make up for the fact that I couldn’t be there in person, which is kind of what I’ve had to do my entire career.
If you’re familiar with my story, I was unable to enter the US for five years. During those five years, my focus was on growing my skill set as a professional wrestler, but also my brand, and trying to get as much global recognition as I could. Those five years really highlighted to me the importance of putting yourself out there as much as possible.
Historically, depictions of LGBTQ+ people in professional wrestling have been either negative or non-existent. Could you talk about the importance of AEW not just as an alternative promotion to the mainstream, but as a platform for queer talent?
If you’re familiar with pro wrestling, you’re familiar with its history in this century: where you basically had one promotion that had the monopoly on professional wrestling, and that promotion really was only one person’s vision being put on screen. Over the years, in the early 2010s, social media came about, and it became possible for independent promotions to actually advertise their shows, to build an audience, and to distribute their shows online.
Independent wrestling is intrinsically connected to the audience, right? It’s smaller shows for smaller audiences: if your crowd doesn’t like something, you will find out very, very quickly. So independent wrestling grew to the point that there was a giant hole in the wrestling market between what was presented on TV and what was happening at an independent level, which is so much closer to the audience. Tony Khan saw that gap in the market, and that’s what led him to create AEW. But I think the key here is that in order to be successful and continue to grow, pro wrestling needed to listen to its audience.
It became very, very clear that the homogeneous, uniform professional wrestler that was presented on TV was not representative of the audience who wanted to see professional wrestling anymore. The world is diverse. If people want to see that same diversity reflected in their professional wrestling, there is no reason for it to be reserved for only one kind of person. That is absurd. People want to see queer people. People want to see all kinds of stuff that doesn’t fit the historical mold of what a professional wrestler should be.
Were there any early LGBTQ+ wrestling trailblazers who inspired you?
It’s funny – no, not really, because there kind of weren’t any. But I remember finding a box of Manami Toyota tapes – I think someone had gifted them to my sister when she wanted to be a professional wrestler as well. But I remember watching those tapes of women’s wrestling in Japan, and seeing these women perform in front of a sold-out Tokyo Dome in the early 90s, and getting the sense that “Hmm, I think the way that women are treated on American televised wrestling is ridiculous. Clearly, they’ve drawn a crowd, and they’re able to put on a great show.” Seeing someone like Aja Kong, who is an absolute icon and the exact opposite of what was presented on televised pro wrestling for women at the time, really blew my mind.
Aja Kong is one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, and she doesn’t get nearly enough credit, just by getting a ton of credit. But we’re talking about the early 90s here, and this is a mixed-race queer woman who was selling out the Tokyo Dome. Seeing that really opened up possibilities for me. The fact that Aja Kong and Meiko Satomura are routinely ignored in the ‘greatest wrestler of all time’ conversations just shows you how heteronormative pro wrestling historians are, the fact that their careers are largely ignored.
Meiko Satomura, to me, is one of the top five greatest professional wrestlers of all time. Not just because of how good she is in the ring, but because of how her career has transcended decades, what she’s done through her own promotions, and the other wrestlers she’s trained. I think that’s completely incredible, and the fact that they get so little credit is very indicative of how things need to change regarding the way professional wrestling is viewed historically.
As someone who has been wrestling for 20 years, how and when did you know it was the right time to come out publicly?
So I never really ‘came out ’; I never declared anything. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I just rejected the theory of gender, if that makes sense – specifically, by design, there was no declaration. There was just a changing of my vocabulary, the words I used and how I described myself, especially within pro-wrestling, where that kind of thing is very relevant. Baked into the scripts, in the words of pro-wrestlers, there is so much talk of ‘manliness,’ and none of that ever resonated with me. I’m very lucky to have a platform such as pro-wrestling, which is stereotypically hyper-masculine, through which I can show people you don’t have to abide by those standards.
You mentioned the lack of LGBTQ+ wrestling influences you had early in your career – how does it feel to know that the next generation of wrestlers are going to have the likes of Nyla Rose, VENY, and Speedball Mike Bailey to look up to?
I haven’t thought about it too much. I’m glad that I resonate with people, but I feel like there are so many other ways people can resonate with me. Whether it’s non-binary, or trans, or through any other way, what I want people to take away is that you can still succeed if you don’t fit the mold. That is a huge hurdle I think professional wrestling, as an art form and a community, needs to overcome.
I always make extra time for anyone who is part of a queer or any marginalized community, or who otherwise doesn’t fit the mold, to give them advice and help however I can. There needs to be more of a conversation to be had about people who enter the pro wrestling space who have disabilities, and how there is space for those people, and that they belong just as much as anyone else.
The National LGBT Media Association represents 13 legacy publications in major markets across the country with a collective readership of more than 400K in print and more than 1 million + online. Learn more here: NationalLGBTMediaAssociation.com.
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