Effy: "I'm Thinking About Suing Joey Ryan"

The Wrestling Inc. Daily will feature an exclusive interview with independent pro wrestling star Effy on this coming Wednesday's episode. Effy's interview will kick off a three-episode GCW The Collective series of interviews that will also include Josh Barnett next Thursday and AJ Gray next Friday. Please make sure to subscribe to The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast on your preferred podcast platform so you don't miss out on these interviews.

On his upcoming appearance, Effy and Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman catch up on how Effy has dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic that forced his Big Gay Brunch show to be postponed. During the conversation the #SpeakingOut movement was mentioned and Effy addressed how it exposed many top indie stars as alleged sexual abusers.

"I had to do a lot of introspection because, obviously, I'm around a lot of these people," Effy said. "You can go back through Cagematch or whoever has the matches listed up, and I've been in matches with these people. The original Big Gay Brunch had David Starr and Joey Ryan announced for the show.

"People say, 'didn't you know, didn't you know,' and people would make jokes like, 'oh Joey might try to flirt with you too much,' or 'he might come on too hard if he gets drunk,' but no one was ever coming out and saying, 'hey, this person sexually assaulted me.' That wasn't the conversation, and so now, I'm thinking, well, I was close to these people in a way because you'd spend three or four hours around them at a show.

"You'd have a match with them. You'd be around after the show, but you start thinking, you go, of course, they want to keep me out of the loop because I'm a good person to say, 'no, they're a good person. I've hung out with them a bunch.' It's easy to cover your s–t up with that, and we respect this secret in wrestling."

Effy continued speaking on the secrecy of pro wrestling that has been protected and has protected abusers for a very long time. Effy noted that while the COVID-19 pandemic has been largely a net negative for everyone it has benefitted the #SpeakingOut movement, in a way, since it has allowed survivors to tell their stories without fear of having to confront their abusers.

"Wrestling's built on the secret, the secret of wrestling and because of that, I kind of figured out that maybe that's the only secret we need and maybe we need to stop having all this sort of mysterious stuff going on backstage because when people don't know who's in charge, when people don't know who's running things [and] when people don't know who to go to, it becomes a problem for everyone," Effy explained. "And seeing COVID cut everything off and give these people the voice to speak because they didn't have to confront abusers anymore, they didn't have to count on their abusers for bookings or for money or for flights.

"There's so many things that are terrible about COVID, but without that pause in professional wrestling, we probably wouldn't have people actually speaking out and saying, 'hey this stuff happened to me' and us being able to actually make the changes going forward. Not only are we having to make changes to make sure people don't get COVID at our shows, we're having to make these changes to make sure people feel safe and comfortable and aren't put in these situations at our shows."

It was recently reported that Joey Ryan has filed two multi-million dollar lawsuits against the women that have accused him of sexual assault. Effy revealed on The Wrestling Inc. Daily that he is considering suing Ryan. Effy is known for saying and doing sexual things in the ring and has done so in a consensual manner. He claimed that since stories of Ryan's abuse have come to light, pictures of him and Ryan together have circulated costing him money. He also explained other reasons as to why he has a case against Ryan that would merit a lawsuit.

"I'm thinking about suing Joey Ryan," Effy revealed. "I think he's besmirched my image as a consensual pervert, which is what I fall into. I've never non-consensually touched a person. I will speak about sex publicly. I do not have taboo speaking about sexual things. I will not put you in an uncomfortable position. I think by being featured now, there's a picture of me and Joey Ryan grabbing each other's d–ks from a match. It was a funny end of the match thing.

"I had no idea, and now that comes up every time he's been [in a] scandal. I think Joey Ryan is costing me. I mean, it could be $20,000 a month. It could be less than that, but there's no telling how much money I would be making if I wasn't associated widely with him because I was tricked as a co-worker into believing he was someone he was not. We're talking to the lawyer's to see what we can really do with it, but if he's gonna go attack women for telling the truth, then he should get a text back. Let the dirt sheet eat it up. I don't care."

GCW presents Effy's Big Gay Brunch on Saturday October 10th at 11 am. The event will stream live on FITE.tv. You can follow Effy on Twitter @EFFYLives. Effy's full interview will air as part of this coming Wednesday's episode of our podcast, The Wrestling Inc. Daily. Subscribe to get the latest episodes as soon as it's released Monday – Friday afternoon by clicking here. You can listen to today's episode, featuring Forbes' Alfred Konuwa, via the embedded player below.