Bold & Beautiful: Princess Deathwish

While professional wrestling might bring to mind images of hulking, oily masculinity like that of “Macho Man” Randy Savage or “The Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels, Adan Paredes (aka Princess Deathwish) is here to give a gender-bending suplex from the top rope. One that’ll challenge society’s ideas of, not only the sport itself, but that of gender as well. Adorned in lipstick and a tutu, Princess Deathwish is the he/him femme-presenting villain of your wildest wrestling dreams, antagonizing not only his opponent, but also the crowd as soon as he takes his first step out towards the ring. 

Paredes’ journey, both in and out of the ring, didn’t start with the Deathwish moniker. It started accidentally in 2002, with 12-year-old Paredes’ first viewing of a WWE match between The Rock and Eddie Guerrero. Turned off by the toxic masculinity presented on his screen, Paredes reflects, “You had the bad guy saying he was going to beat his children and I was like, ‘That’s not okay.’” Paredes wouldn’t return to watching wrestling until two years later when he needed a distraction during his mother’s bout with cancer. “I had a more ‘attitude rebellious stage,’ I was more into the action stuff,” Paredes shares. Watching wrestling religiously on Thursday nights led to backyard wrestling, which, in turn, led to Paredes attending his first UCWO event in 2005 at the age of 15. 

After hearing of UCWO’s wrestling classes from other wrestlers throughout the years, Paredes decided to bite the bullet and try his hand at the sport—his first official match as a wrestler was in 2008. The concept of being a villain, though, didn’t come about until 2014 with the formation of Paredes’ villain group “No More Heroes,” where Paredes informs me that the group was “tired of these people pretending to be heroes.” This group is where his villain identity, Adan Reyes, cemented itself. “I started to find my niche as a villain, as someone who knew how to get a rise out of people in the best way possible. My number one goal was to make [the crowd] as angry as possible.” 

With Paredes’ flamboyant performance and “diva” attitude, other wrestlers and the crowd itself labelled him as a “princess.” His decision to play into the “princess” allegations coincided with his feud against the women’s division of the UCWO, where Paredes felt that his daughter had no local female role models to look up to. From there, Adan Paredes became Princess Paredes. After a mishap during a powerbomb maneuver, where Paredes almost bled out, his friend took him to a clinic where she remarked, “You should just be Princess Deathwish.” 

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down and slowed Paredes’ momentum, he simmered on Princess Deathwish and reinvented himself. He took the time to reflect on the personal life he had missed out on while pursuing wrestling: “I had two kids. I missed funerals, weddings, their first words and steps. I had forgotten to have a life because I had given so much to wrestling,” he explains. “I’m still growing and I discovered a lot of myself and felt that if I was still coming back, it needed to be something completely new.” He adds, “I think it’s important to be able to … dig into your femme side and be feminine and still identify as a male.” It was also during this time that Paredes reflected on his own sexuality, identifying as pansexual, and started coming out to his close friends. As far as his own gender identity goes, he shares, “I’m still discovering that side of me and the journey never ends.” 

You can find Paredes and his side ventures, including music and skits, on Instagram and TikTok at @princess.deathwish and through his work with The Lucha Project, also on Instagram as @the.lucha.project. Deathwish also has website, www.princessdeathwish.com, where you can find merch. You can also catch Princess Deathwish at The Lucha Project’s Battle of SL,UT on Friday, January 24. 

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