Pro wrestling star KJ Orso is one of a handful of athletes in the sport who have a Native American background and is set to showcase his heritage in Produce Wrestling’s Skoden event on Monday.
Orso will team up with Gringo Loco to take on Rich Swann and Tiny Giant. Skoden will celebrate Native American culture coinciding with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
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KJ Orso is ready to showcase his Native American heritage at Produce Wrestling’s Skoden. (Nancy Lozano)
“It’s huge. In wrestling, it’s been less represented in a lot of ways. I feel like in a lot of ways, it gets overlooked and you don’t get as much care as you probably should,” Orso said of celebrating Native American culture in the sport in an interview with OutKick Dropkick. “I knew when I unmasked, I wanted to rep my heritage harder and so to get to do this against Tiny Giant and Rich Swann is gonna be a huge deal and I’m very much excited to show out.
“I’m wearing right now my Choctaw shirt. That’s my tribal shirt. I grew up dancing in powwows and traveling around. And besides like Tatanka or even farther back in the day, Chief Jay Strongbow, who’s not even really native, it’s been very few and far between do you get real representation. So, I’m very proud of this.”
Orso said he’s not a big fan of stereotypes so he will include parts of his heritage into his gear and said he believes wrestlers of a similar background could put subtle nods to it without being a full-blown stereotype.
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KJ Orso will team up with Gringo Loco at Produce Wrestling’s Skoden. (Nancy Lozano)
“I hate the stereotypes. I absolutely love and respect the Tatanka and I love what he did for representing Native Americans. However, I think it’s been a played out trope in movies and in TV for so long,” Orso said. “I think we can have nods to our heritage and bring awareness to our people without being so stereotypical in a way that you see in other things.
“So, you’ll see a lot on my gear. I’ll have a dreamcatcher either on the knee pad or on the back of my trunk, something very small, just a little nod, especially because I do think it’s easy to look at our fight, our people as underdogs. And right now, I’m not trying to be an underdog, I’m trying to be a champion. So, let’s focus on that first and foremost, and when the time is right, I’ll show a little bit more representation. I’ll do a little bit more with my culture to tell the stories that I wanna tell.”
He and Gringo Loco call their tag team Dos Gringos Loco in a nod to Eddie Guerrero and Art Barr, who were known as Los Gringos Locos when they were performing in Mexico. He said they were eventually looking for some kind of tag team gold in the future.
For now, Orso revealed what he would like fans who come to the Roulette Intermedium in New York on Monday to learn about Native American culture.
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“I think that we’re very proud people. I think we are a resilient people. I think that we have this innate fight within us that we love to show and whatever we decide to set our minds to. You got so many great representatives of tribes and cultures coming together on this great day to really show out and I think you’ll see firsthand exactly how much fight native people have.”