These days, I’m getting worked over pretty hard. I’m working my ass off, just managing to stay on my feet. And, wouldn’t you know it, just when I find myself backed into the ropes, some nasty heel villain uses those very same ropes to work me over that much harder.
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| KV v Ken Mason (assisted by KL) – Tag Team Torture 1 |
Metaphorically, this makes my day-to-day life these days suck. On the other hand, literally, when someone uses the ring ropes to take advantage of an already battered hunk, that does not suck (at least not for the heel or for me, watching). Turning the set into an integral prop to tell the story is, in fact, a major turn on for me, further explaining my particular preference for ring action.
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| Brigham Bell v Patrick Donovan – Hunkbash 5 |
Sliced to hell and mean as a king cobra, Brigham Bell pretty much always used the ropes, and most of the time he took full advantage by not only capturing his hunks in the ropes, but then head scissoring them at the same time. Illustrated so delightfully in his ring action with Patrick Donovan, ultra-lean, muscled bodies put on artistic display is the icing on the cake. The cake itself, of course, is the completely gratuitous humiliation of an already suffering hunk. To capture 6’1″ pec-tacular Patrick so defenselessly, so vulnerably, and then to squeeze Patrick’s handsome face humiliatingly between Brigham’s tightly corded thighs… talk about the climax of a story!
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| Brad Rochelle v Patrick Donovan – Wrestlefest 2 |
Patrick, Patrick, Patrick… early in his BG East career, Patrick frequently occupied the restraints of the ring ropes. He just suffered so sweetly! It’s no wonder that opponent after opponent reveled in beating him down and then tying him up to not only soak up more punishment, to also have his ego crushed as decisively as his hot, long, gorgeous body. On his way to being awarded Rookie of the Year in Wrestlefest 2 (I vote for more Wrestlefests!), Brad Rochelle slapped Patrick into what I think, objectively speaking, is the hottest bit of ring rope torture ever captured on camera. Hunk-on-hunk, stunning body on stunning body, handsome face squaring off against handsome face, and Brad taking a foreshadowing turn to the dark side to lock Patrick’s throat between the bottom to ropes and then boston crag his legs, sitting his fine (fine, fine, fine, fine) ass down across Patrick’s shoulders to choke him that much more.
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| Brad Rochelle v Dom the Dominator – Demolition 3 |
Brad, Brad, Brad… of course, any regular reader of this blog is already fully immersed in the drama of Brad Rochelle’s BGE career, as his fratboy face and go-go boy muscles went through years of jobbing, suffering like perhaps none other, not infrequently himself trapped in the very same ropes with which he’d humiliated Patrick and won rookie of the year. Dom’s boot in his ass and his back cranked backward over the top rope, Brad’s rope-suffering illustrates what is the tastiest pay off of all with rope work: the stunning body of a hunk displayed so fully and vulnerably.
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| Rio Garza v Donnie Drake v “Trevor” Mathews – Pro Bashed Triple Threat |
I noticed in recent pics from Can-Am’s new (upcoming?) release, Pro Bashed Triple Threat, that Rio Garza is on the receiving end of some tasty hunk rope punishment at the hands of Donnie Drake. This is, perhaps, the best representation of my own subjective experience at the moment. Clearly outmuscled and at the mercy of a nasty, big, brick house bastard, like Rio under the control of Donnie Drake, I’m getting pried backward and pounded on with nothing to do but take it and look pretty (I can pull that off, too).
As I whine, just a bit, about my own woes (I can sell suffering when it’s my turn), I find some comfort in the sight of some beautiful hunks getting tied up and beat down with the assistance of the ropes. Well, okay, so perhaps “comfort” isn’t the word. But it does, somehow, make the nasty heels in my own life a little more tolerable when I spend a little time admiring the aesthetics and erotics of homoerotic wrestling heels taking the picture frame itself and choking the daylights out of the stunning portrait of a musclehunk in the middle.
neverland 
Brad vs. Patrick Donovan is one of my most and least favorite BGE matches. It's a rare glimpse of BGE as a fully formed wrestling federation, what with the literal audience of other BGE wrestlers watching as the match unfolds along with the post-match award ceremony. It's also enticing because it was (at the time, anyway) a rare glimpse of Brad in an unusual role: the prototypical "hunk" jobber triumphant for a change. That's also why it's one of my "least" favorite matches. I always thought it would have been even more entertaining if Brad and the boys hadn't flipped the script, so to speak. Imagine this…The pivotal moment is the same: Donovan has Brad rolled up in a spadle variation, scores a fall by adding a blatant "unsporting" ball grab to the hold. But instead of taking the fall and breaking as he did, Donovan DOESN'T. "I'm sick of taking beatings," Donovan rants, out of character. "And this prettyboy's gonna pay the price!" The heels cheer louder, the faces boo and hiss. But… no one interferes. Final round squash, as it was in the match, but the roles reverse. Sleeperhold KO, Brad's out, and Donovan's the cheating winner.Kid Leopard enters. Brad's still out, so the boys gradually rouse him, help him out of the ring. But before they exit, KL's all, "Hold on…" He begins his speech, talking about how one rookie in the last year has roused the audience in a way BGE's never seen (which was true, btw) and, as Donovan's assuming it's him, instead, KL gives the award to Brad. Donovan's all, "WTF!" Brad's even the same, groggy and shocked. Donovan jumps Brad, second KO, and the tape fades out with the Rookie of the Year on his back.And this is my real comment: I think one of the biggest changes in gay wrestling, whether BGE or any of the other companies, in the last five years is the transformation of what constitutes being a "star." In the days of Brad Rochelle, through Troy Baker and Alexi Adamov to Rio Garza, there was an awareness that even though all those guys "lost" quite often, they were still massive draws. The fantasy, the marketing and promotion, reflected that. It wasn't a radical reformation of pro wrestling; it was a savvy improvement on it. If paying customers wanted to spend their money on guys who lost, then it was only logical to highlight that, the glorious details: the allure of that guy's body displayed, the salacious tease of him entering the ring and disrobing, and, of course, the gleefully vicious dickishness of the heels who eagerly worked him over, always taking it too far. A guy could lose constantly without being a loser.Now, it's the opposite. I contrast Brad with Rio Garza. With Brad, the matches and marketing were all how hot he is and how hot he looks in different positions and isn't Dante/Dom Zaccarro/Psycho a mean dirty dick for what he does to him. When Brad won, it was a nice twist. But when he lost, it was a visual delight. Rio by contrast was put out there from match one along the lines of, "Yes, he looks good, but can he wrestle?" His looks were an aside, a degraded one at that, and if he can't "prove" his value as a wrestler, he's not, well, valuable. Can-Am, even though they put more emphasis on Rio getting squashed was still the same thing: the presentation was, "wrestling" first, appearance second. The thing is, there's no divide: action IS appearance. The way a guy looks, his size, fitness, age, gear, dictates what holds and moves people expect to see him use or in. And when a guy looks like a athlete or a male model and his presentation doesn't match that, there's this whole disruption thing that throws everything off. Anyway, that's why I think fewer people seem to be as captivated with the gay wrestling scene as they were a few years ago.