Matt Taven’s vast collection of championships more than speak to his skill as a professional wrestler. As the 2nd-ever ROH Grand Slam Champion and the 2nd individual to carry titles in NJPW, ROH and CMLL, there’s little reason to doubt his ability inside the ring.
However, especially throughout his run as Ring of Honor’s top heel, it was rare to see Taven in a truly comedic role in the pro wrestling sphere. While certainly entertaining on-screen and inarguably a great guy outside of the confines of television, his comedic side wasn’t showcased all that often while leading the Kingdom.
Fortunately for wrestling fans and saxophone enthusiasts alike, Taven’s skills as a sheer entertainer have presented themselves on more than one occasion in the form of Sexual Taven, who I am unable to describe any better than Taven does himself below.
As we began to wind down our recent chat, I had to ask about his rarely-used but always-hilarious character.
“They’re not as much stories as some that may draw a groan or a laugh, hopefully,” I laughed as we got to the quick-fire portion of our upcoming interview for Love Wrestling.
“Please tell me about Sexual Taven!”
The former World Champion audibly laughed.
“Sexual Taven came from a mix of a couple of things,” he began. “When my hair was longer and I let it really free flow, I would have a Kenny G-ish look, which I heard a lot. Which, you know, kind of went up my ass sideways sometimes. But then, you know, I started to get in the groove of it and I would start doing a like little saxophone kind of pantomime to just make people laugh because they would say I look like Kenny G. But the Sexual Taven story comes from – I don’t even know if I’ve ever told this story. This is a hilarious story. I was at Eddie Edwards’ wedding. I know his family, yadda yadda, and his brother was just kind of like asking me like ‘oh, who are you talking to,’ or what I was doing or something, and I was like, ‘oh, no one. Someone just asked me like a question.’ He’s like, ‘I don’t know. Just everything you do just comes off so…sexual.’ I was like ‘what?!’ For the rest of the weekend, the joke was Sexual Taven.”
We both laughed before he continued.
“So, I don’t know what made me do it for the first time – I think it was at Beyond Wrestling. I started doing the saxophone thing, and it just felt like the name of that should be Sexual Taven. And, also, I’m pretty sure Eddie’s brother was there at that time probably screaming it, so that probably helped the rest of the crowd pick up on what I was doing. But man, when I got hurt and had knee surgery, thank goodness I could just go out and be Sexual Taven while I couldn’t wrestle! I’m pretty sure there’s a segment for Beyond Wrestling called In the Sack with Sexual Taven and that has over a million views on YouTube. So you know, it’s probably one of the funnier things I’ve ever done. Probably not my – you know, I won’t go back and have that as my film reel of my ‘here’s my depth as a character.’ I think that’s a very good shallow baseline one, but always a good laugh for everyone in the crowd!”
“That one’s not playing at the Hall of Fame speech?” I asked half-jokingly.
“Yeah, you know, and the funny thing will be is that someone will scream out for it,” Taven retorted. “It’ll be like, come on, not now! Not now!”
Please credit Spencer Love/Love Wrestling with any of the above quotations used.
