SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/842100
3 6 SXS W O R L D | M A R C H 2 0 1 7 M U S I C | SXSW.COM because we've taken [nerd culture] from something that used to be shunned to something that is cool. I feel lucky that I am able to get to know more and more people involved in this community." Like many video game channels, Woods' UpUpDownDown shows him playing both current and pre-released games and engaging in gaming challenges, both alone and with friends. Many of the guests are also WWE superstars, and Woods is trying to encourage a crossover fan base, with support from the WWE itself (the channel has a small production team). "I started out trying to bring wrestling fans back into gaming, and then to try to get gamers back into wrestling if they had gotten away from it," he said. "There are so many things that both realms of fandom have in common. The main one is the desire to escape. When you come to a WWE show you are suspending your disbelief to come to this new reality, and … I think with video games you do the exact same thing." Woods wrestles as part of a tag team called The New Day, which is known for espousing relentless positivity. That's the feeling that Woods brings to his gaming channel and what drives him in life. He paid his way through a special wrestling school and sacrificed his college social life (he has a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a master's in psychology) to wrestle on the amateur circuit, all with the goal of joining the WWE. Woods is also working on a Ph.D. in educational psychology, which is on hold right now as his games channel takes off, but he intends to finish. He eventually hopes to work with autistic children when his WWE career is done, which he knows could happen suddenly. "What we do is dangerous," Woods says. "Being a professional athlete is not something that's promised … it could go away at any moment." Woods also considers his higher education achievements as a way to be a role model for his younger fans (of which he has plenty; The New Day is a fan favorite, and Woods and his partner were named Wrestlers of the Year by Rolling Stone in 2015). "I grew up looking up to wrestlers and there are kids now who see me in that light," he says. "I want to show them: just because you want to be an athlete doesn't mean you can't be smart." Clearly, you can be a video game nerd, too. The 2017 SXSW Gaming Awards presented by IGN and Imaginary Friends, co-hosted by Xavier Woods and OMGitsfirefoxx, will take place in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Austin Downtown (500 E 4th St) on Saturday, March 18 from 8-10pm. X avier Woods®, who will co-host the SXSW Gaming Awards this year, is proof that nerd culture has won. It may not be strange today to learn that a muscular 205-pound profes- sional wrestler is as much a devotee of Japanese anime and the Final Fantasy series as he is of the dropkick and piledriver, but when Woods was growing up as a lonely nerd, it would have been. Back then in his world, there were athletes, and there were nerds. Woods was a nerd. "I was an awkward kid," he remembers. "I didn't really talk to the other kids, so video games were my haven." But along with his interest in fantasy and sci-fi genres in all their forms, there was also professional wrestling. That may seem like the odd one out among his interests, but to Woods, they are all related. "I liked the King Arthur stories and mythology, and wrestling fit perfectly into that because it was this fantasy world," Woods explains. "But it was made up of humans that I could see when they came to town. There's good and evil competing in the ring, and the same kind of battle happens in video games." With that confluence in mind, Woods has managed to merge his interests. He is a WWE superstar (the organization refers to all of its talent as "superstars") and the host of a video gaming channel on YouTube and Twitch called UpUpDownDown (which he hosts under his real name Austin Creed). He runs the channel despite his lifestyle of traveling 300 days out of the year to appear in WWE matches. To make that work, there are two parcels that Woods carries at all times: a briefcase full of recording equipment, and a special backpack that has a built-in screen and room for a PS4, games, cables, con- trollers and portable speakers. He plays during airport layovers, at hotels, at arenas before matches, and sometimes in a car being ferried between any of those. He likes to train for the ring while he is on the road, so that he can dedicate his time at home to gaming—or forgo home entirely to attend gaming conventions and other events. Woods says that the extra work is worth it: "Honestly, I just love being able to connect with people in the gaming community because video games have been my thing my whole life. " "Because I am a WWE superstar, sometimes when people look at me, I get classified in a certain way," he continues. "People don't think I know games because I'm a wrestler/athlete. I'm very inter- ested in breaking the barriers of that because you can't classify what a nerd looks like … We've slowly, quietly taken over the world Xavier Woods®, photo courtsey of WWE Wrestling and Gaming … Xavier Woods' Twin Passions By rOB PreliascO