I won’t name names, because that ALWAYS gets me in more trouble than it’s worth. I’ll just say that the same disappointing thought has occurred to me more than once recently as I’ve been sampling homoerotic wrestling new releases.  This recurring thought is, Grabbing crotch does not make wrestling homoerotic.

100% homoerotic wrestling featuring (among many other elements) Mitch Colby grabbing Derek da Silva’s crotch in Crotch Crushers 1.

Do you know what I mean? I’ve seen an anecdotal rise in the number of wrestling products marketed to you and me in which the most homo and/or erotic content is almost entirely limited to a crotch grab. Now, I love a nice crotch grab. That goes for all sorts of contexts and purposes, actually.  The feel of a pulsing, raging cock in my hand is absolutely intoxicating! Two raging cocks in my hand, and I’m guaranteed to have a hangover the next morning. I do not have anything at all against the homoeroticism of taking another man’s cock firmly in hand, per se.

Jobe Zander looks like he’s searching for his keys at the bottom of his purse in Can-Am’s DeCrotchery 3

But my beef, so to speak, is the over reliance on this device to sell wrestling as gay. I realize that there’s a sub-fetish contingent out there with a particular kink for watching and/or experiencing cock abuse. While I don’t count myself in that particular tribe, I can appreciate and get turned on by some cock control as a tool of soul crushing erotic domination. But if that’s really the only element in a match that might distinguish it from a TBS prime time mainstream episode of plasticized canned wrestling drama, then it’s just got one toe on our side of the fence, as far as I’m concerned.

Gino Liotta and Joshua Goodman engage in mutual crotch crushing as just one element of steamy action in Crotch Crushers 2.

Running across a bevy of barely homoerotic wrestling trying to take a short cut with crotch shots as credentials for checking in with you and me as gay-oriented has started to grate on my nerves.  So sure, you squeezed his balls… if you’ve got a disinterested look on your face, it sort of douses the heat. You grabbed a handful of whatever is stuffed down the front of his trunks, okay. But, if neither your hand nor his suffering seem to sell me that you’re about to rip him apart out of a primal lust to own his muscled body, then the stagecraft wears thin.

Friend of neverland, Ben Monaco, convinces me long before he goes for Alex Arias’ crotch that he’s all-in for homoerotic wrestling in Mat Rookies 1!

All this begs the question, of course, what it is that distinguishes some wrestling as homoerotic and others as something else. Of course, mainstream wrestling can turn me on (when it isn’t pissing me off with over-the-top homophobia). Just about any wrestling itself speaks to me as homoerotic almost by definition.  But I propose that there’s an ontologically different beast that is homoerotic wrestling. I’ve danced around this topic many times in the past. It’s a know-when-I-see-it sort of concept, in large part. It also overlaps with the cliche of “chemistry” between wrestlers, which is nearly impossible to quantify but, nevertheless, is unmistakable when its absent. I don’t know that I can put a finger on the baseline requirements (for me), but what makes something distinctively homoerotic wrestling always hits me on many levels.

Muscleboy Tyler St. James checks for a hernia in Pro Sex Fight 8.

Of course, explicit sexuality never hurts to sell wrestling as homoerotic. A suck, a fuck, a kiss even (especially), and I’m a long way to being sold that this wrestling is all about me and my kink. Hell, just having the boys talk openly about the eroticism hanging in the air between them is plenty to suck me in, and when it’s done right, eroticized banter will rev me up a hundred times hotter than an going-through-the-motions post-match fuck.

Reese Wells works 5 different angles at once in dishing out dominating abuse over  Jobe Zander’s package in Ball Busters 1.

It doesn’t require explicitness, though. It can be the fixed gaze of one wrestler and the self-conscious glance at the ground by the other that piques my homoerotic wrestling gaydar. It can be the intimacy of the setting, the gear, the lighting even, that contribute to making me recognize that this is homoerotic wrestling.  It can, and often is, one wrestler so narcissistic that he convinces me that, if humanly possible, he’d fuck himself into a stupor if that annoying opponent of his would just get the fuck out of his face.

Michael Vineland works the joystick from behind in Pro Sex Fight 8.

The best in the business push the homoerotic button from the instant the camera brings them into focus. Homoerotic wrestlers of the month Cage Thunder and (spoiler alert… keep reading at your own risk… oh, wait, too late!) Lightning Rod aka KV are beautiful examples. A half a second after I see their eyes lock onto the body of their opponents like sizing up a juicy filet, I understand without a doubt that the combat that’s about to unfold is first and foremost sexual. They communicate a hunger to grab hold of and consume their opponent that’s instantly arousing. The crotch grab is perfectly homoerotic when they latch on and threaten to rip an opponent out by the roots, because of everything else they’ve done to make it clear that they get off on this!

In Ball Bash 2, Reese Wells gets harder the more vicious Jonny Firestorm attacks his crotch! Now that’s homoerotic and hot!

There are plenty of wrestling products that push me way over the edge without ever veering into crotch grabs, fucking, or nudity even. They’re often completely homoerotic in my eyes for a dozen other elements that signal to me that this isn’t wrestling for 8 year-old boys with g-rated comic book fantasies of heroes and villains.  And equally as true, a gratuitous ball claw or tug at a cock is seldom the end-game for landing a wrestling match firmly within the circle of what I consider gay-themed, for gay eyes, wrestling kink, or homoerotic.

Unmasked and unsheathed, Stinger swells with excitement as Homoerotic Wrestlers of the Month Cage Thunder and Lightning Rod batter his stinger mercilessly.

As the photos I’ve attached to this post illustrate, the crotch grab is a delightfully hot tool in the tool belt of the accomplished homoerotic wrestler.  When it’s dished out in measured quantity, it’s fantastic! When placed as an integral component of an onslaught of unmistakably homoerotic content, the crotch grab is often precisely the point at which I lose all self-restraint. However, and I’m not naming names, but I just need to say it: solely based on a wrestler grabbing his opponent’s crotch, it doesn’t make it homoerotic wrestling. A one-trick pony gimmick in an otherwise lukewarm bath of run of the mill wrestling does not a homoerotic wrestling match make.