Comedian Eugene Torres talks being in beauty pageants, Villages rap concert ahead of Jax show

JACKSONVILLE, Fla — Comedian Eugene Torres will be making his way to the Bold City. He’ll be performing at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville on July 3 as part of the Bonkerz Comedy Series. I got the chance to chat with Torres ahead of his upcoming show to talk about being in beauty pageants as a child, his time on Fox’s game show The Floor, and performing a rap concert at a McDonald’s in The Villages.

“Man, I was running all over the Bible Belt with sashes and crowns,” said Torres, reflecting on his time doing beauty pageants. “What’s crazy is that I have a Puerto Rican father, and he’s from New York, so he had a lot of that machismo growing up, and he was always like, ‘You got to be a man, mijo. You got to be a man,’ and then my mother would take me and put me in beauty pageants.” Torres provided some insight as to what it’s like to be in a pageant. “First off, they would ask us questions, and I’ve always been good at talking in public; I was a great public speaker even as a child. But they would dress us up in outfits. So this one time they dressed me up as a cowboy, and I came out with two six-shooters; they were toys, and I won this pageant. I actually pulled them out and took headshots at each of the judges. Now I know you can’t do that nowadays. Nowadays, I’m getting tackled and taken out, even if I am a child, but the confidence of a 5-year-old to go ‘I got this in the bag.’ and I just started popping off shots at each judge, and they’re like ‘Well, he has charisma.’”

You can hear about Eugene’s time on the game show The Floor, and about the time he helped perform a rap concert at a McDonald’s drive-thru in The Villages in the full interview.