So clearly, Joe at Ringside at Skull Island is determined to keep poking me with a stick. I can be magnanimous and say, “We may have differing opinions.” I can be conciliatory and say “Maybe one day, we’ll see eye to eye.” I rise above the fray and simply encourage readers to judge for themselves. But then today, Joe comes back at it like a dog with a bone, insisting that the was right all along, and that BG East’s Ringwars 19 is the superior new release, over and above what Sunshine Shooters 4 offers.

It’s not that I think anything that Joe says, precisely, is wrong. I just quibble with the calculus that adds up, at the end of the day, with Ringwars on top and Sunshine Shooters an honorable mention. As Joe mentions, like he, I was given the generous opportunity to see for myself what Ringwars 19 has to slap down on the table. It’s awfully meaty and good. Awfully good, damn it. And I’m on the record many times over for having a special kink-reflex in favor of ring action.

The match that Joe commends most for Ringwars 19 is Trent Blayze’s face off with Jayden Mayne. Like Joe, I’m slightly distracted by the extraneous “y’s” flying across this marquee, but aside from that, there’s a ton to commend this match. First of all, I had to watch this match twice, once to soak in the overall action, and once again just to delight in tracking Trent’s sweat stain as it slowly grows across his pink trunks. It starts early, stretching out from his ass crack, and progressively and entertainingly soaks him front and back. Trent’s ink is also astonishingly gorgeous, and he has a highly erotic way of talking out of the side of his mouth (literally) that’s a major turn on. He also manages a very enjoyable reversal partway through this match, after suffering meaningfully between Jayden’s whipcord thighs in an agonizing body scissor. Still trapped between Jayden’s knees, Trent crawls to his knees with Jayden still attached to his mid-section, then his feet, and with impressive strength and balance slaps on a bearhug that leaves the long-n-lean one limp in his arms and screaming.

It may just be because I’m feeling contrary. And I’m the first to admit that I’ve been accused of possessing an oppositional-defiant personality disorder, at least periodically. But I have to say that the boy in the ring here that turns me on the most is actually Jayden. He’s not as beefy as Trent, by any means. The two of them give me the feel of boys just out of college, Trent having been a frat boy and football player, and Jayden having been a frat boy (different frat) and soccer player (explaining the lack of love lost between them). I know that some snarky bastard is going to point out that Jayden is the more classically “pretty” face of the two, as if I should somehow be ashamed of that. But Jayden’s doing it for me in this match more so than the pink-trunked bully. I think Jayden should intern and eventually tag-team with Jonny Firestorm, because he has the potential to be another spitfire, wiry, dangerous, pit bull of a ring wrestler. He tells a hot story, too, going for Trent’s relatively soft core with satisfying boot strikes and an internal-organ-rearranging leg scissor. I’m not typically a blood fetish guy at all, but I have to say that Jayden earns himself a cut elbow that drips blood down his thigh in this bout, and I’m simply, instinctively aroused by it.

Match two for Ringwars 19 has Caleb Brand beating the crap out of Shannon Embry. Caleb has an impressively packed pouch, displayed awfully sweetly as he bridges high in the center of the ring more than once in this tussle. But it just has to be said that it’s Caleb’s ass that steals the show. He sports what looks like a painful wedgie from start to finish, which defies even his occasional attempt to pick it out. Hot, tanned, smooth, spankable glutes are surely value-added to any wrestling match, and Caleb is sporting just that. The action showcases sweet pro skills, telling a compelling story of advantage and reversal teetering on a knife’s edge for the first half of the bout between these two high class professionals. There’s fun pacing, a mix of holds, blows, and joint torture. But the best part, other than Caleb’s already mentioned ass, is Caleb’s use of the ring to heap on insult to injury. He tortures Shannon’s knee, arm and back in the ropes. He leaves his pale opponent hanging vulnerably over the edge of the ring to deliver a nasty looking assault on Shannon’s back, and he further sticks to the back abuse mercilessly working Shannon over in the corner (now that’s what a wrestling ring is for, damn it!). Caleb has hot pro strikes, boots and knees flying and plowing into Shannon at every angle as the catcher suffers admirably.

Match 3 is another highly entertaining piece of wrestling art. Whereas watching the sweat stain growing on Trent Blayze’s trunks was worth a second viewing of match #1, watching the sheen of sweat grow in the valley between Alexi Adamov’s fit young pecs is worth an entire viewing or two (with many pushes of the pause button) over and above the ring action itself in match #3. The ride Alexi gives Nick Naughton as the sexy-one hangs from the rafters would be a sell-out at a homoerotic wrestling kink theme park. I’d wait for hours for a front seat! Nick also spends a whole lot of time camped out on the mat with his head stuck high and tight between Alexi’s long, hard thighs, which would surely also be a feature ride at the homoerotic wrestling kink theme park (if anyone ever opens one, I want creative credit). Alexi packs a pair of square cut trunks awfully nicely, particularly from behind. Nick’s smuggling citrus fruit in the front of his tight, tight blue trunks. They bring some very sexy, intense, acrobatic action. These are two rookies, however (early in Alexi’s career with BG East), and it shows. There are a few odd cuts. There’s a bell off camera to give the action some needed borders (which makes me again long for some homoerotic wrestling with a ref and an audience). Nick forgets to use his finisher, and has to come back from the showers well after Alexi is beaten and done with to tie up his rookie-loose-ends.

So, Joe is so right that Ringwars 19 is extremely high quality homoerotic wrestling action. But I still say Joe goes one step too far when he concludes that this collection puts a schoolboy pin overtop of the action in Sunshine Shooters 4. Like Joe, I don’t think that the Z-Man/Patrick Donovan match is really the goods that shine the most for Sunshine Shooters 4, despite the likely strong appeal for many fans of seeing the Z-Man get the BG East treatment. But the intensity of all three Sunshine matches, including Z-Man’s pecs and abs turning fluorescent red from the pounding that Patrick gives him, the incredibly slippery and non-stop shoot between Cole and Tony, and particularly the exhausting, ferocious face-off and strip down between Mitch Colby (back to #1 contender for my favorite homoerotic wrestling pornboy) and Brook Stetson, still makes this decisively the one purchase to prioritize. Ringwars 19 puts up some awfully nice looking boys in impressive ring action. But if you’re in the mood for big, powerful, relentless men in action (well, apart from Z-Man… he’s still got a boyband feel about him), you’re going to turn to Sunshine Shooters 4 every time.