Much has already been written about BG East’s recent Demolition 10 match featuring Ty Alexander and Guido Genatto. I’m not sure that I have a lot more to add to the conversation, but it’s an important conversation to have, so let me add not more than about two cents worth. Also, Ty is one of what Joe has referred to as my personal homoerotic wrestling boyband, and I always want to promote my favorites.

Alex Miller at The Cave wrote the definitive review of the initially released match, including raves for the sensationally sexy execution of a totally over the top domination match. Alex also had more pointed critical comments of Big Daddy Guido’s choice of mid-match taunts, which apparently veered persistently toward the homophobic end of the pool.

I say “apparently” not only because there’s a running bit about the word in the match, but also because I’ve only seen the post-production edited version, after which BG East staff, including Kid Leopard himself, took a closer look at the text and agreed that the slurs took a decidedly politically unaffirming turn. Staying true to their pro-gay raison d’etre, the final release of this match has a few moments of carefully muted audio that a sharp ear can note. However, if I hadn’t read Alex’s review, I wouldn’t have known that specific reason for it.

So my comments are mostly about the post-edit, though I will say that I think Alex, other fans who reflected on the topic on his blog, and Kid Leopard all deserve a ton of respect for having what could be a difficult conversation about the wrestling that turns us on.  I stopped watching some gay-targeted wrestling companies years ago for repeatedly charging headlong into a “smear the queer” type of storytelling.  I also freely admit that I have quite a bit of ambivalence about companies like MDW that similarly dip their toes in those waters, but after a similarly ethics-forward conversation I had with Muscle Master Kevin at MDW, I’m pleased that they have begun more carefully targeted and labeling their products for the gay fans who get off on gay bashing (which I will never understand), and gay fans who get off on wrestling.

Guido’s dialogue even in the post-edit is angry, aggressive and intentionally provocative. “Have you even gone through fucking puberty yet?!,” he taunts Ty the moment he sees him. In one of a few long, deep, intimate face-to-crotch headscissors, Guido acknowledges what you and I (and Ty) are seeing in sharpest focus. “Take a good look at that,” Guido orders the babyfaced beauty with his nose jammed into the massive heel’s balls. “You like those red trunks, huh? My fucking hot sausage looks good in those trunks, huh?”  The fact that Guido names the obvious homoeroticism of this fabulous hold stirs something deep down in me. “Smells like fucking testosterone!,” he barks, “like a real fucking man, not a little fucking twink!”

My hunch is that the editor’s finger on the mute button had to get lively not long after this. Personally, some of my favorite homoerotic wrestlers are twinks. I think Ty may be the twinkiest babyface in competition these days. And the roaring narrative of a big, hairy bear crushing a lightweight twink and demanding to be called “Daddy” is golden. Twink isn’t a problem for me as a term, at all. But Guido certainly seems like he could be escalating the taunts rapidly at this point in the match.

The sexual innuendo is thick in Guido’s endless, taunting monologue. “That’s right,” he growls as Ty struggles to pry his smooth, tenderized body off the mat. “Get on your hands and knees, bitch! That’s just where I fucking want you!” Guido alternately sounds like a gay hardcore porn star and a seductively empathic lover, switching back and forth in an awesome mindfuck for a dazed plaything like Ty. “How does that feel,” Guido suddenly asks, like he’s interested, as if he’s pounding for his own pleasure but suddenly wants to make sure he’s tickling Ty’s prostate just right. Then, back again to the hardcore porn side, Guido snarls, “I’m going to fucking stretch you out like a little hole!”  Grabbing his own crotch and giving it a hearty tug, Guido muses, “More fucking meat than you can handle.” Then there’s a half second mute that you have to be sharp to catch.

I’m happy that BG East is on it and committed to lifting up gay men, and perhaps I should feel more ambivalent knowing some of the backstory of this match, but I’m don’t. Ty looks sweet enough to eat with a spoon. Sure, he’s in my boyband for a reason, but he’s lean and lush and if he sold his wailing, writhing, terrorized suffering an ounce less, Guido wouldn’t be half as terrifying as he is. Screaming with his face stomped underneath the heel’s big boot, whimpering helplessly in a tree of woe, and most of all, hung out to dry gorgeously in Guido’s torture rack, Ty is an incredibly tasty morsel.

And Guido is a bear daddy fantasy man. He works up a lather of sweat that makes his fantastically bulging muscles glisten hypnotically beneath his thick coat of fur. He’s a raging beast, filling the role of unstoppable dominator like the pro he is. When he straddles Ty’s chest with the Toy Boy hanging in that tree of woe, and then slides his hips backward to cock pin Ty’s smothered face, despite what my gaydar tells me, I’m momentarily convinced that the taunts and insults are just the particular brand of foreplay that works that aforementioned meat into action.

The whole brutalizing catch weight bully match is a time honored genre of course, but I have to muse about more novel homoerotic wrestling narratives where my mind wanders. For whatever boundary crossing he engaged in pre-edit, could there be any finer retribution than to have Guido slated to face my entire boyband of babyface beauties who have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that hot, sweaty, naked wrestling action turns them on? That’s right, Guido in the middle of the ring, still all strut and swagger, but with an unmistakable note of apprehension with the four corners populated by Ty, Drake, Kayden, and Mason. I have no idea of Big Daddy Guido is secure enough in his sexuality to be quadruple teamed by the unapologetically gay-positive wrestlers who never fail to delight me without qualification. But that, I would like to see.