10 Times Wrestling GENUINELY Tried To Be Progressive
2. Goldust
A cluster of contradictions after 23 years with the gimmick, much of the subtlety and sublime sexuality in the early iteration of Goldust was thanks to some uncharacteristically brave work from Vince McMahon, but Dustin Runnels deserved enormous credit for going 'all in' over two decades before his brother used the philosophy to market a show on Twitter.
McMahon asked uncomfortable questions of his crowd with the gimmick without ever spoon-feeding easy answers. Was Goldust gay? If he was gay, why did that matter? If he was gay, and it did matter, doesn't that make you the problem, not him? Why boo him? It was a fascinating and intriguing avenue in 1995, but was unfortunately so far beyond the world it existed in that even the architects of it fell back on old habits.
Ambiguous and enigmatic undertones that challenged perceptions made way for one-dimensional sight gags and predatory sexual practices, regrettably reinforcing unpleasant stereotypes of homosexuality at the time. The gimmick's saddest day was its last - a late-1996 edition of Raw saw Goldust turn babyface via the admission that he was in fact straight. It had become little more than an angle sadly of its time, rather than one years in front.