My ring name is Billy Dixon.

It's named after my grandfather that I started watching wrestling with back in the South Bronx.

We used to watch it all the time 'cause I lived with my grandparents.

It was a really cool bonding opportunity for us.

Professional wrestling is like the best form of entertainment and it's the last form of theater in a round experience, 360 degrees.

And you get to control people's emotions.

You get one take to get it done, to make people feel happy or sad or angry.

And the rush that you get from performing is electric.

And there's really nothing like it.

Wrestling's an art form because it is fake.

It's not real.

The winners are predetermined.

We do have a story to tell.

A show does tell you a cohesive story from start to finish.

A lot of what we do, how you throw a punch, how you do a body slam.

When you do the body slam, that's all art and that's all choices that you make as characters coming up with your own character and persona and the outfit and the music.

Those are all artistic choices.

The fact that what we do is theater and the fact that what we tell is a morality play, which is about the plight of good versus evil is art in and of itself.

'cause most promoters that you'll work for are definitely gonna be on the more conservative side and definitely not gonna have a worldly view where they understand things like people are not a monolith.

And that expression comes in different shapes and sizes and forms and all kinds of things.

My job in wrestling is to change the way we see queer representation in this sport.

Paris is Bumping is the brainchild of something I came up with during the pandemic when I was a teenager, I would go to the ballroom balls and extravaganzas in New York City.

So enamored by this world and how competitive it was, but more importantly how physical it was, the athleticism, the the charisma that these performers had.

And it reminded me so much of wrestling and that seed was planted there.

We created a show that took place in a literal bar in the middle of nowhere and we had wrestling matches and instead of championships, they fought for trophies like you would in ballroom.

Really to prove the point that people who are cis head or people who are trans or gay or whatever, we're all just people and we're all the same.

And these two things that appear to be complete and total opposites are more similar than you think.

One of the things that is similar with ballroom and wrestling is that there are teams and in ballroom it's called a house.

And a house has a hierarchy like a family would.

And in wrestling we have stables where there is a hierarchy there and both teams are trying to win prizes in wrestling championship titles in ballroom trophies and grand prizes.

'cause you can win cash at balls In Paris is Bumping What we did was we tried to incorporate that similarity with pairing wrestlers and people who are drag queens or volgers and everything you compete for in the show, you can get a trophy for.

So that same kind of competitive drive to win the championships, win the goal, win the big tournaments, still go into the concept.

And this is the part where everybody makes this trend.

Number one, yes, it's gonna be a fat black queen who's gonna come out here looking like he's never looked before.

That is gonna spit in the face of everything.

Everything you try to emulate and you failed that.

I was terrified of what the public reception was gonna be because there hasn't been anything like what we did in 2020 where we have performers doing strict teases that are not cishet women.

When you see that it was one of the most highest watch shows on our platform, IWTV, that's a huge feather in the cap.

And the fact that I know for certain there were viewings of it at the WWE Performance Center that year with Hall of Famers watching it and just being like, check this out.

It's cool.

You know when people tell me that these shows are the reason why they got into wrestling or when trans women tell me the reason why they felt comfortable getting into wrestling was because there were spaces like Paris is Bumping.

That really means more than like the WWE championship ever could.

'cause that's more impossible than winning the WWE championship.

I feel like when it's time for me to have my last wrestling match hang up the overalls for good, I left wrestling a little bit cleaner than I found it.

I'm a art school dropout.

All I wanted to do was make art that kind of rages against the machine.

And I do feel like for one night we got to turn the wrestling world upside down and that all eyes were on us.