Every so often, I take heat for the opinions I express here at neverland. Most of you fine readers, even when you disagree with me, demonstrate class and grace in pointing out where you believe I’ve missed the mark in identifying the hottest trending homoerotic wrestling. Every so often, however, I’ve been accused of a variety of insidious, irrational vendettas against one wrestler or another, or one match or another, because I didn’t show it the proper respect in the pages of this blog. On just a few, rare occasions, the criticisms have veered toward personal attacks, questioning my integrity, sanity, or intelligence. In late spring of this year, I polled a few of my fellow homoerotic wrestling bloggers to discover that I’m not alone in this experience. So in response, I began collecting testimonials from bloggers and regular commenters, exploring what should be the most intriguing and delightful part of wrestling kink sensibilities: our diverse tastes.

JoFX is right up Joe’s alley

Posting the “Diverse Tastes” series this summer was most definitely one of the top highlights of my year. As I suspected would happen, posing the simple, straightforward question “what turns you on?” sparked a beautiful variety of responses from the assembled voices. Joe at Ringside at Skull Island kicked the series off with interests ranging from Mighty Mouse to Stoney Hooker to just about any tall, dark Italian with a pronounced adam’s apple, a slightly convex and strong belly, hairy chest, small ears and big nose.

Randy Orton makes SP feel randy.

Regular commenter and, since then, fellow homoerotic wrestling blogger Stay Puft followed up with an erotic taste range that still makes me gasp. Where Joe drilled right down to the prototypical object of his lusts (acknowledging that he’s fickle and refuses to be pinned down… unless you earn it), SP’s tastes stretch from TNA Wrestling’s Daffney to Jamie Scott of Grafitti6 to Kate Beckinsale to Big Rob Terry. What readers of SP’s blog, Inner Jobber, will quickly point out is that while variety is clearly the spice of SP’s life, he’s got a special place for a certain Randy wrestler fantasy man.

Pablo Martin has a big hunk of wood between his thighs!

Bruno of Beefcakes of Wrestling offered a contribution to the series that introduced me to instant infatuations in the form of Spanish language soap hunks William Levy and Pablo Martin. This is what I love about lots of eyes on the prize in homoerotic wrestling! Without the discussion, the mutual respect and the genuine interest, I might never have “come across” smoldering William and Pablo. On my to-do list for 2012 is to introduce these two hunks to the brutal world of the Producer’s Ring!

Dante Rosetti demonstrates exactly what AH likes to see.

And yet again, regular reader and commenter AH contributed to the series from an entirely different angle. For AH, the question focused him on the particular hold that makes homoerotic wrestling the tastiest for him: the slow, withering sleeper. The drama of the sleeper touches the core of AH, as the crowd watches a muscled warrior get the consciousness squeezed out of him like juicing a lemon… the ref raises a hand that drops limply to the mat… the victim’s eyes flutter as he’s held upright entirely at the mercy of the man with the bicep pressed against his carotid.

Fashion models David Gandy and Noah Mills star in Metellus’ and my homoerotic wrestling imaginations.

Co-author and commenter Metellus added to the series with some specific recommendations of wrestlers that he likes, with a common theme of nice bodies, nice faces, wearing trunks and jobbing. Metellus also raised the topic of media, noting the particular allure of homoerotic wrestling fiction in his repertoire of wrestling kink delivery for its capacity to incite his imagination to go where live action has yet to take him.

Cage Thunder relishes “the turning point.”

Wrestling stud, Cage Thunder who journals online about homoerotic wrestling, succeeded in yet again stroking my wrestling fantasies with his contribution to the series in which he focuses much less on the body or the hold, but the attitude and the moment in a match that send him over the edge. Cage Thunder keys in on the moment when the tide has once and for all turned, that point in the match when one wrestler has built up just too much momentum to be denied, when there’s more wrestling to happen, but it’s icing on the domination cake from that point forward.

Choices, choices, choices…

The final installment of the Diverse Tastes Guest Series came from the wicked sharp insight and creative mind of blogger Manof1000Holds, the author of Wrestling Arsenal. Having been at this homoerotic wrestling blogging longer than most (all?), Manof1000Holds knew exactly what I was talking about from around 5 seconds into my explanation of the concept of the Diverse Tastes series. And like a cruise missile, he zoomed in on the heart of the matter. Each of us, everyone one of us, has our triggers, our short hairs, the little moments and scenarios that set our hearts pumping the hardest. So he created a Cosmo-style quiz for readers to take to assess their own profile. Now, some could take the idea of the quiz too seriously and get bent out of shape about being pegged as one thing or another. But that’s the piece of this puzzle that I think all of my guest contributors get (and just a couple of readers haven’t quite cottoned onto yet): essential to fully appreciating our wrestling kink diversity is a healthy sense of humor. It’s all fun, or at least it all should be fun, as far as I’m concerned. It’s all about seeing reflected back from the wrestling drama in front of us something about our own fantasies, our own vulnerabilities, our own idiosyncratic longings that we have to hold gently, with some humility and a lot of kindness for our ourselves and others.

Regular star of my favorite wrestling fantasies: Lon Dumont

What all of my guest contributors this summer proved was that the homoerotic wrestling universe is beautifully varied and populated by fans and wrestlers that run the full gamut of bodies, holds, venues, gear, and scenarios that our powerful homoerotic wrestling imaginations can devise. I’m humbled by the wisdom and generosity of my fellow writers, and their contributions as a whole most definitely rank among my most favorite moments of this year!