THE MANY TALENTS OF MR MARSHALL

An out gay pro-wrestler, a mental health advocate, an OnlyFans porn star and an online gaming leader. This self-proclaimed “teddy bear” is certainly up for a challenge.

Dave Marshall inhabits many worlds. He’s an out gay pro-wrestler, a mental health advocate, an OnlyFans porn star and an online gaming community leader. This down-to-earth, self-proclaimed “teddy bear” is up for a challenge, fearless, friendly and frank. Feature by Mike Hitch. Photographer by Richard Matias. >>

Icame out in January of 2015 and by about March or April I was prowrestling. A big part of it was that I stopped working in my finance job and went into personal training. In one year, I went from being an engaged, straight man to being a single, gay man, professional wrestler and personal trainer,” says Dave Marshall, describing his rapid metamorphosis. What prompted his decision to come out? “I didn’t want to get to an age where I didn’t think I could start my life again,” he says. “I didn’t want to get to 45-years-old, have two kids in their teens, and go, ‘Hey, sorry, dad’s gay’.

“But my friends and the group around me were so supportive; I knew things would be alright. I just didn’t want to hurt the people around me that I loved.”

Life has only become more interesting for Dave, now 31, since coming out and ditching his sales job in favour of pitching his wrestling opponents across the ring. Though, his interest in pro-wrestling is not new.

“I started watching it when I was 12. We’d just got Foxtel and it popped up on the TV one day and from the first second I saw it, I was completely hooked. Yeah, it’s been a huge part of my life for the last 20 years,” he admits.

The year I came out I decided, ‘I’m going to do everything I want to do,’ and one of those things was prowrestling.

Coming out did more than just free Dave to explore his sexuality.

“At some point, I didn’t believe in myself but, funnily enough, the year I came out, I just kind of took everything off and decided, ‘I’m going to do everything I want to do,’ and one of those things was pro-wrestling.

“The manager of the gym I was training at was a professional wrestler and he helped me out with a contract. That’s how the story began. I just jumped in the ring with him and he showed me how it works.”

Dave now wrestles for Perth-based wrestling company, Southern Hemisphere Wrestling Alliance (SHWA) which, for almost ten years, has held monthly shows in Western Australia’s capital city where Dave and his partner live.

He’s quick to point out that pro-wrestling is “much gayer” than many people might expect and that his experience as an out wrestler in the industry has only been positive.

“It’s very much a theatrical performance,” he says candidly. “To me it’s like a live performance where it’s a different show every single week. >>

>> Or it’s like an episodic television show, but live. It’s a performance where we put our bodies through hell, constantly ‘fighting’ for other people’s pleasure.”

Pleasure and pain wrapped up in performance. Pro-wrestling traditionally comes with flamboyant costumes and large-than-life stage personas but Dave maintains that his wrestling identity is simply an extension of his own personality.

Dad was not great at showing emotion… and one day he just was not here anymore. Mental health is such an invisible thing.

“I grew up in the old-school ways of wrestling. You’d have someone who was essentially a police officer or an Indian chief and they’d all be complete characters,” says Dave, inadvertently drawing a parallel between prowrestling and The Village People, “whereas these days everyone has a personal social media page. Everyone knows we’re real people.

“So, to me, I am my character. When I jump into the ring, it’s still me. I’ll come out and crack a joke because I’m not a serious person. I’ll come out and be a bit larger-than-life. Turn up the volume.

“My character is gay at the wrestling, but I’m still six-foot-GPVS [1 cm] and 115kg, so people take me as a big guy. I’m a big guy who happens to be gay – and I’m that guy who will beat the crap out of you as soon as the bell rings. But afterwards, I’ll go see the kids in the stands and then I’m a down-to-earth, normal guy.”

Wrestling is gaining increasing popularity in Australia with organisations such as the Australian Wrestling Federation (AWF), Wrestling GO, Future Wrestling Australia (FWA), and Battle Championship Wrestling (BCW) helping to develop a pro-wrestling scene. Other gay performers, such as Sydney’s Silvio Milano, are also building a following.

LGBTQIA+ Aussies are among the new devotees, and why not? There are costumes, characters and men in skimpy Lycra onesies throwing their bodies against one another. Dave also thinks the appeal lies in the lack of actual physical violence.

“People understand the performance side of things a lot more now, and I think audiences are appreciating what we put our bodies through to entertain others. I personally don’t enjoy things like Mixed Martial Arts,” adds Dave.

Mixed Martial Arts (or MMA) is sometimes also referred to as cage fighting and allows combatants to use a variety of martial arts including boxing and kicking. It’s less theatrical, the violence is 100 per cent real, and the knockouts are 110 per cent more concerning.

“It’s quite a brutal sport and a lot more taxing on the body compared to what we do,” says Dave, “because it’s about actually trying to hurt somebody. I would rather go into a match trying to entertain the audience and protect the person I’m wrestling, than going into a sport where I’m trying to hurt my opponent. It’s something I’d never enjoy. The boxing side of things, the fact that the other person in the ring is there to hurt me, and vice versa, it’s just not in my DNA. I am the epitome of a teddy bear!”

As someone who’s taken the title of Heavyweight Champion for SHWA, and who hopes to return to bodybuilding once his wrestling career is finished, Dave is definitely buffer than your average teddy bear.

His physique doesn’t just work for him in the ring. He currently has over 500 followers on OnlyFans. Dave and his partner, who prefers to go unnamed and keep a low profile, upload explicit, hardcore videos of their sex life to the subscription site. If you’ve ever wanted to take a peek inside a pro-wrestler’s bedroom and watch him pound his boyfriend’s butt until he orgasms, now you can.

Dave started his OnlyFans page because, he says, “I saw an opening at that time, there was demand, people were asking for it. When it comes to wrestling, I’m not a shy person and I’m very sexually open as well.”

OnlyFans satisfies his ever-growing fanbase of horny gay men and also acts as something of a buffer between the fans and his monogamous relationship.

“If people are happy to pay for it, and that’s what they want, then go for it,” he says. “I’ve been in a relationship for most of the time since coming out, so I’m not going to directly send people a picture of that sexual nature. But, if you want it, there’s a place for it.”

While Dave initially used OnlyFans as a cheeky side hustle, the money it raises now goes to a greater cause – including the Black Dog Institute, the Los Angeles LGBT Centre and a number of other charities who need it.

The emphasis on mental health awareness comes from personal experience. Dave’s father took his own life in 2017. Since then, Dave has been working to breakdown the macho stereotypes that regard mental illness as a weakness that must never be discussed.

As young men, we are conditioned to “man the fuck up” when it comes to mental health but, currently, eight Australians die by suicide each day and 75 per cent of those are men. LGBTQIA+ Australians are 14 times more likely to attempt suicide than our heterosexual peers.

“It’s such an invisible thing, especially in 2020, above all years,” says Dave. “It’s something where you never know what the other person is going through, especially in my dad’s age group where you don’t talk about it ‘as a man’. Dad was not great at showing his emotions… and one day he just was not here anymore. It doesn’t matter if you’re that age or you’re five; mental health is a huge issue but it’s invisible.

“We all have our struggles, big or small, and yet very often people are not empathetic to what someone else is going through.

“With OnlyFans and other projects I’ve done, we’ve put together $45,000 towards things like suicide prevention and eating disorders. So, it was originally an income stream but now I use it to give back as well.”

However, Dave admits that some organisations have taken issue with the means by which the money is made. >>

>> “The first donation we made was to Beyond Blue – about $5,000. But they turned around and said, ‘No, we don’t want the money because it’s from OnlyFans’. So, we contacted the Black Dog Institute, I explained where the money came from, and they said it was totally fine. But Dad would also talk about the ‘Black Dog’ himself so in the end it made sense that the money should go to them.”

In the era of COVID-19, it’s even more apparent that mental health is as important as physical health, and if the toxic masculinity around mental health can be addressed, Dave believes there’s no reason not to. He’s all too familiar with his own challenges.

“I’m my own worst saboteur. I’m the first person to doubt myself before I can do anything. I’m just as human as everybody else, despite how other people see me, despite whatever judgements they may make about me.”

OnlyFans has allowed Dave to finance his mental health activism while expressing his sexuality in the most authentic way possible – a unique feat – but it has also made him vulnerable to exploitation. Some fans feel “entitled” to his body and the content he uploads. Others go as far as illegally downloading his images and videos and unlawfully re-posting them across platforms for which they were not intended. This poses challenges for an adult entertainer who is also a pro-wrestler.

“Things do get leaked, unfortunately, and that’s just because bad people exist. They feel they own the content that they pay for,” says Dave. “I have to be very careful about removing things from Twitter and from other pages that have taken videos from my OnlyFans, and that’s the unfortunate side of social media that people don’t see. They think, ‘Oh, I’m going to take this and put it on my Twitter, I’m going to get all these likes…’ or whatever. But they don’t consider that I’m a professional wrestler who deals with kids, and I don’t think that kids should be going onto OnlyFans.

“People are very demanding about what they want from you. Plus, there’s a very thin line in my life between promoting sexual health and being oversexualised.”

But, despite the digital demands from his growing fanbase, Dave says that fans are much more respectful when they meet him in the flesh.

“In person, I find people are super respectful, sometimes a lot more than I would expect them to be,” he says with a laugh. “I’ve had people come up and ask me, ‘Hey, you’re that guy!’ – and that’s really great – but I’ll say it’s never a good idea to be disrespectful.”

None of this, thankfully, is putting Dave’s wrestling career in jeopardy. “I’ve always been in very close communications with the producers of wrestling to let them know that it’s there, but everyone’s been good about it. They’re pretty down-to-earth with normalising sexual stuff.”

In fact, Dave is one of a growing number of OnlyFans figures who also lead a life in the general public, challenging the stigma surrounding sex work.

“Removing that stigma around sex is so important because it’s such a great pleasure in life. I mean, who doesn’t like sex? It’s something that should be embraced. Essentially, we all do it!”

With his fingers in multiple pies, you’d think Dave wouldn’t have much time on his hands, however, one of his latest projects has come courtesy of his coronavirus downtime. On hiatus from wrestling at the start of 2020, Dave began streaming himself playing video games on the popular platform, Twitch. Combining his love of wrestling and video games, and his desire to reach out to others, he’s created a close-knit gaming community without even having to leave his house – or put on a wrestling skin.

“I’ve built up a really cool community!” he says with pride. “I don’t get sexualised in that area. It’s very much about wrestling, video games, whatever you want – apart from my junk,” he says with a cheeky grin. “It’s really good for my mental health and for a lot of people in the community. In so many places around the world, people haven’t been able to get out and see their families or make new friends. We discuss issues… or just anything. It’s nice to have a lot of friends that don’t just see it as a sexualisation thing, and to have something that I’ve created that other people really enjoy.”

Realistically, Dave reckons he only has another four years of wrestling in him. However, in a world that’s still dealing with COVID-19, he isn’t exactly sure how that future will play out. Considering the tribulations of 2020, he reckons he’s “simply happy to be here” but is keen for the return of overseas travel.

“I’m really hoping to do some national and international shows next year if the world opens up. Just to be able to stay wrestling interstate, or wrestle in Europe or Japan. At the end of the day, if I could get a show in here and there I’m going to be happy. I mean, I never thought I’d be a wrestler so I’m never going to complain about wrestling. Right now, it’s the small goals that matter the most!”

As for this stunning photoshoot by Richard Matias for DNA?

“I completely loved it – I’ve never felt so comfortable with someone, so quickly. Yes, take my clothes off!” Dave laughs. “I’ve done shoots with ‘nude connotations’, but not as much as this. Knowing Richard’s work from when I first came out and with other models he’s shot, I knew it was going be a good experience!” •

Removing that stigma around sex is so important because it’s such a great pleasure in life.