Sonny Kiss May Have Found The Perfect Mentor In AEW

In wrestling as in every art form, previous generations have so much wisdom, guidance, and encouragement to offer those coming up now, and it’s always great to see older wrestlers offering supporting and talking up younger talent, instead of putting them down in an effort to preserve some outdated idea of “the business.” 25-year-old Sonny Kiss is one of the most exciting up-and-comers on the All Elite Wrestling roster. As one of the most prominent out gay wrestlers working today, he has a lot to prove, and so far he’s proving it. He had his debut solo match on the Fight For The Fallen pre-show last weekend, and it will be interesting to see where he goes from here, particularly when AEW comes to TNT this fall. He’s newer to wrestling than a lot of members of the roster, but he’s full of promise for the future. One older member of the AEW roster feels a kinship with Sonny, and has a lot to offer him as a mentor.

Outsports brings to our attention an interview with Dustin Rhodes in the wake of Fight for the Fallen, in which the 31-year veteran talks about how much potential he sees in Sonny Kiss, and the advice he offered him before that night’s show.

You know, I like Sonny, and I think I can show him a lot of stuff because of the stuff that I used to do. And I went up to him, and he came in our room and he was just nervous, you know? I put my arm around him and said, “Sonny, just relax. You’re nervous, and when you’re nervous that means you care. When you stop being nervous, you will not care anymore. You’re nervous, so you’re going to go out there and you’re going to do fine.”

When Dustin refers to “the stuff that I used to do,” he’s obviously referring to Goldust, the character he first started portraying in 1995, who’s probably the most successful queer-coded wrestling character in history. Sonny Kiss has previously said that while he thinks Goldust was great, he’s the more “authentic version,” because he actually is a feminine gay man, instead of just playing one as a gimmick. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean Rhodes has no advice to offer about how to get things over in the wrestling ring, and Sonny Kiss responded very positively to Dustin’s words: