There’s some fascinating combat happening in the comments over at Naked Kombat. The past 4 new releases at NK have been promoted as part of a “Top Cock” series.  Each week’s match has some sort of jock-themed drama attached to it. For example, last week ass-tastic Nick Capra and muscle princess Billy Santoro got into a tiff while working out at the gym.  Personally, I think they should both be spanked mercilessly for using the leg extension machine, but I have to agree with Nick that based on the orgasmic grunting Billy was making, you’d have thought the muscle stud was squatting an elephant. But no, he was working with way low weights, which inspired Nick to taunt him with merciless contempt while showing him up.  Words, pushes, shoves… Naked Kombat breaks out.

The kombat doesn’t precisely stick to the NK script. The pre-match dramas are the same fare you’ll see in the first 90 seconds of most porn, including wooden acting, severe cuts and editing, and contrived melodrama. NK ref Sebastian Keyes appears out of nowhere, dousing the kombatants in oil and signaling a start to the grudge match. Both hot porn boys are naked from the start (no trunks or jock straps rounds).  They still work for NK points, but it’s one 10 minute round and then a quick segue to the sex round, which turns back into fairly traditional domination porn fare.

I love the fact that fans are taking to the comments to complain bitterly about the backgrounding of the wrestling. I mean, I LOVE that wrestling fans are reminding NK precisely what it is that draws at least some of us to plop down our dough for yet another gay wrestling production. NK has always and unapologetically gone to pornboys for their talent, making NK a pretty cool experiment each week to see what stars of porn can actually wrestle and dominate, and what stars may have lots of pretty muscles, but clearly don’t know a thing about using them in mat combat. I don’t really spend a lot of time with mainstream gay porn, but my guess is that at least some of the shining standouts in NK success are not necessarily the headliners for mainstream porn. Which is all awesome as hell, I think.

So I seriously sympathize with the critics complaining that 10 minutes of oil wrestling is a major downgrade for what NK has excelled at for several years. I’ve been one of the voices saying that I’d like to see NK shake up the overly formulaic constraints they’ve existed within, but this isn’t a promising direction. The pre-match melodramas are distracting, drawing in an inauthenticity to what NK has done so well at selling as honest to god pornboy combat.  I’ll keep tuning in a while, but I could be another one of the fans who may drop my subscription (for what, the 3rd time?) if the Top Cock genre continues to dominate what NK puts out each week.

That said, I also need to say Nick Capra’s ass is a work of art. I’d loved to have seen a full-blown Naked Kombat marathon between him and Billy, because they are both some of the most compelling characters currently competing at NK. Nick is over the top hyper-masculine. He calls his fabulous cock “Tarzan” and refers to it in the third person on Twitter, for god’s sakes.  There’s something perpetually, lustfully hungry about him, and true enough, although he’s no amateur wrestling master, he’s raw and aggressive and sensational to watch. And that ass… And as I mentioned the first time I was captivated by him, when unscripted, he’s fucking awesome and intense and authentic. Which makes that opening scene gym tiff such a let down.

I’m totally into Billy for entirely different reasons. In still frame he’s Wolverine: hot, handsome, hairy and bulging in all the right places. Then you see him in motion, on camera, and he’s finger waving, eye rolling bitch queen. And he throws down with the likes of Nick, and I’m just completely captivated, trying to decide whether I’m pulling for the musclebound bitch queen with attitude or the hyper-masculine Italian thoroughbred who has actual conversations with his own cock. It’s an incredibly tough call, because I really like seeing hardbodied, hairy bitch queens in homoerotic wrestling (more, more, more please). Billy sucks me in to pulling for the nelly poof who’s all grown up, infatuated with his own muscles, and doesn’t take shit from anyone anymore, without needing to be any less nelly than he ever was.  But then again… Nick Capra’s ass….

The action is, as mentioned, all too brief before the camera cuts awkwardly to the sex round already in progress. The sex round takes up about 50% more air-time than the naked kombat.  I appreciate about 90% of the kombat and 5% of the sex round. The math gets complicated, but suffice it to say that as much as am entranced by Nick’s freakishly massive muscle glutes, I’m not very satisfied with the overall Top Cock formula. I hope they foreground the competition and improvisation again. It’ll be a loss if this is a replacement for their old formula, even as formulaic as it’s been at times.