Drag Race royalty Cheryl Hole and WWE stars compare the parallels between drag and pro-wrestling
Cheryl Hole teamed up with the Pretty Deadly WWE stars (Instagram/@lewishowleypd and @cherylholequeen)
What do drag queens and professional wrestlers have in common? Quite a lot, according to a recent interview with Drag Race UK superstar Cheryl Hole and WWE’s Pretty Deadly.
Cheryl Hole, who placed fourth on season one of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, sat down with WWE NXT UK tag team Pretty Deadly about inspirations growing up, life on big stages and even the similarities between professional wrestlers and drag artists.
Cheryl spoke about how her fiance is a big fan of the WWE, saying she’s “sort of losing her mind” that she was doing the interview. She explained that “character and performance” are key elements of both professions. Cheryl said: “Yes, the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race is a stage, but the ring in WWE is one of the biggest stages.”
She said wrestlers who go into the WWE area and donning their personas is like “putting on drag”. Cheryl explained: “They’re stepping into a character, they’re stepping into a persona.
“So that is how the two worlds collide together because we’re all putting on a bit of a show and a bit of camp.”
The show’s host then asked Pretty Deadly, the British professional wrestling tag team of Lewis Howley and Sam Stoker, what they thought the similarities between drag and WWE were. Stoker agreed with Cheryl, saying WWE is special because of “these large characters that come to life”.
“Whatever field you’re in – whether it’s wrestling or drag, I think there’s something to connect with there,” Stoker explained. “There’s characters, larger than life personas that you can kind of grab your favourite.”
He said the beauty of both professions is that fans can connect with and choose their favourite characters. Stoker said the duo has their favourite drag queens and wrestlers.
“You’re not going to love them all, but there’s some you’re going to connect that are going to connect with you, and that’s lovely,” he said.
Howley said both drag and WWE provided escapism for both fans and professionals alike. He explained: “It’s that release as well, isn’t it, for people where it’s an hour or two hours of just taking yourself out of your ordinary day.
“That might not have been a good day, and you can just relax and just watch something, and you just get pure enjoyment from it.”
So if WWE stars Pretty Deadly were drag artists, what would their personas be?
So apparently both wrestlers have given a lot of thought as to what their drag personas would be. Howley said they would “be lying if we said that this is the first time we’ve thought about this”. Stoker said he would prevail as “Miss Chana De La Blong” while Howley would be “Princess Consuela Banana Hammock”.
To which, Cheryl said the pair seemed “fully-fledged and ready for the stage”. She invited both to “come on over, I’ve got plenty of wigs”.
Both wrestlers said Cheryl would be welcomed in the WWE as the profession is “crying out” for a ‘death drop’, the iconic drag move of lowering oneself to the ground, one leg extended which is seen throughout Drag Race.
“I can make it happen,” Cheryl promised.
Both men promised a future WWE show would include them being “dragged up” by Cheryl, and Pretty Deadly would, in turn, show her the ring.
