Inside the ring Joe Lee, better known to pro wrestling fans as The Freakshow CHO, is an artist. From his rainbow beard and blackened eyes to the doll mask and wig he wears for his entrances, Lee strikes fear in the crowds everywhere he goes.
Outside of the ring, he’s a soft-spoken, thoughtful, humble guy who found a way to express himself and battle his own social anxiety.
“I love telling stories,” Lee says of his approach to professional wrestling. “I think I’m in the minority, but I tend to lean toward the artistry side of wrestling more than the athleticism. Obviously you need to be athletic to do this, but if you understand the art of it, I feel like that’s even more important.”
Now four-and-a-half years into his career, Lee has the ability to captivate crowds of any size, including the crowd this weekend at the Oakdale Library, where he and the rest of the F1RST Wrestling gang will present a free afternoon show. But that wasn’t always the case.
“I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up,” he explains of life before wrestling. “So after high school I was just sort of stuck. Then, about two years out of school, I realized that wrestling was really the only constant in my life and decided to give it a try.”
In 2016, Lee enrolled at The Academy School of Professional Wrestling, where he trained under the tutelage of wrestling legend Ken Anderson. It lasted about six months.
“I got hurt, but really I used that as an excuse,” he says of his start-stop. “The real reason I quit was because of my social anxiety. I had a fear of going out in public, going to a show, meeting new people. The wrestling part didn’t really scare me, but the social aspect of talking to the wrestlers—that was the scary part for me. That’s why I stopped.”
It would be four years before he was ready to give it another try, but Covid put a pause on those aspirations for another six months. Finally, in 2022, Lee stepped back into the ring and made it stick.
“I trained for like, two or three months and got booked for my first match,” he says. “I wasn’t sure that I was ready for it because I hadn’t had that much training, but I figured if my coach and the booker of the show were confident, I’d give it a shot.”
That night, he survived the match and the first seeds of The Freakshow were planted.
Since that time, Lee has focused his energy on his in-ring training, as well as transforming himself into a human horror character.
“Early on I had the vision of coming out wearing this mask and this wig,” Lee says. “During those four years I had taken off, I grew a beard and started trying to do some fun shit with it. I’d dye it different colors and shape it differently. So by the time I came back in 2022, it was already dyed rainbow.”
While he always intended the character to have a creepy edge, the eye-popping avatar Lee created for himself was also a way for him to express his own feelings of not fitting in.
Lee, who is Hmong, has something called ectodermal dysplasia, a genetic condition that affects the development of hair, teeth, and nails. It led to him feeling out of place for much of his early life.
“I never felt comfortable or like I was part of the [Hmong] community,” he says. “It’s probably just a ‘me being insecure’ thing, but I never felt a belonging there or anywhere, really. Plus my whole life I felt sort of othered because of the disorder. So when I became The Freakshow, it was a way for me to embrace all that in a character-y kind of way.”
Another factor that makes Lee stand out in a crowded cast of wrestling characters is his use of pieces like lace or ruffles in his ring outfits.
“The more I learn about myself, the more I add to the character,” he explains. “The lace and the ruffles are more feminine and make it more than just the horror. The more I embraced my comfort with being nonbinary, the more comfortable I felt adding that layer of androgyny into the character.”
Interestingly enough, the folks at the Oakdale Library will be leaning into wrestling fashion this weekend, displaying photos from the Minnesota Historical Society of wrestlers and their costumes from the past, as well as the opportunity for fans to create their own paper wrestler-on-a-stick, inspired by the fashions featured during the matches.
For Lee, the artistry, the storytelling and the athleticism are all pieces of the puzzle he uses to paint a masterpiece each time he steps into the ring. But the real measure of success, he says, comes from his ability to make the audience believe.
“I know that no one believes [wrestling is real] anymore, but for a moment I want to make them believe again,” he says. “Whether it’s a shot I took or an expression I gave or forced out of someone, I want that audience to fully believe in me, the character, and what they’re seeing during that match.”
F1RST Wrestling Live
Where: Oakdale Library, 1010 Heron Ave. N., Oakdale
When: 1–3 p.m. Saturday, August 15
Tickets: All ages; free. Find more info and RSVP here.
