Often it’s hard to notice the absence of a thing.  For example, out of over 7 years of blogging, feeling like I’ve said it all, knowing full well I’ve repeated myself often, I often don’t catch what I’ve neglected to mention. For example, it appears I’ve almost never mentioned how soon after discovering the liberating world of companies specializing in wrestling for gay eyes, combing through the catalogs of Can-Am, BG, and BG East, wanting to watch and own everything but having the resources for ordering up just a couple at a time, I purchased Can-Am’s Young Musclestud Wrestling 3 out of my instant infatuation with dazzling pretty boy Maverick.

Sometime between Top Gun and the underground alter ego of Tony Nese, there was this ridiculously delicious All-American hunk of man meat and Hollywood prettiness wrestling under the call sign Maverick. There were actually several wrestlers on Young Musclestuds 3 that turned me on from the catalog photos and descriptions, but my heart’s desire in ponying up the cash for this collection was crazy-beautiful Maverick.

 

Speaking of crazy, Maverick’s singles opponent in YMW3 was what Can-Am described as “quirky” Chris Duran. Built like Conan the Barbarian’s little brother, as dazzlingly pretty as Chris is, he makes a good call in ceding the pretty boy role over to his opponent and throwing himself full throated into his “mentally unstable” gimmick. Before the action starts, he’s singing to himself, lounging in the corner, picking out ear wax and eating it. When the bell rings, he dances and twists aimlessly in and out of his opponent’s reach, and when he secures an immobilizing armbar on his confused opponent right out of the gate, Chris’ face twists into a Joker grin as he leans forward and threatens to kiss the pretty boy’s coverboy mug (fuck, yes). A sensationally toned muscle body like Chris’ belies a methodical commitment to the long game that’s surely completely incompatible with the unhinged, impulsive, fly by the seat of his pants character in the ring. Nevertheless, paired with Maverick’s heroic uprightness and show-stopping beauty, Chris’ irrational antics and maniacal offense come across as dangerously dastardly.

But like I said, it’s Maverick’s babyface beauty that reached right through my computer screen and grabbed hold of my wallet with one hand and my cock with the other. He wrestles in tangerine trunks and black boots. He possesses sensationally ripped, smooth legs and a dancer’s ass that will not be contained. Maverick has that thick, dark brown hair cut in the early-90’s anti-mullet, trimmed super tight across the sides and back and shaggy on top.  Happily for everyone (but Maverick), the glam rock mental patient drags him by his perfectly useful shock of hair early and often.

Maverick suffers like the bitterly frustrated muscleboy he is, his beautiful muscles taut with resisting the madman’s offense. Early on, Chris has the babyface on his stomach, straddling Maverick’s small waist, holding on to a hammerlock and waving his free hand overhead like a rodeo bronco rider. “How’s it feel to be rode, boy!?” Chris shouts with glee. “Here, come and take a walk with Daddy,” Chris demands, dragging Maverick to his feet by the armbar and using and Irish whip to send the battered babyface sprinting into and then bouncing off of the ropes at serious speed.

Off the ropes, Maverick  executes a pro level clothesline that slams the villain to his rock hard glutes. “What about that, hippie mother-fucker!? Huh!?” the gorgeous hero snarls with righteous indignation. He’s got a lazy Texas drawl that cups my balls just right (think Matthew McConaughey monologuing in Magic Mike). Although he has that heroic square jaw and dimpled cheeks, Maverick isn’t above retaliating with hair pulling and taunting trash talk of his own. But he never initiates that underhandedness. Like the magnificent babyface hero he is, he steps into the muck only far enough to keep up with his amoral tormentor.

The story hinges on the judicious application of athleticism and technical wrestling by the gorgeous babyface farm boy counterbalanced by the unpredictable absence of concern for life or limb (of either of them) by the almost as lovely glam rock villain. Maverick is choked across the rope, with Chris’ fantastic muscled ass bearing down across his back.  The babyface is stretched out and displayed to perfection in a crucifix pin, while his dangerously disturbed opponent does leg raises and narrates the exercise in a Richard Simmons’ imitation. The villain kicks him when he’s down, taunts and torments body and soul, and our smooth, charming knight dances on the edge of despair.

The first fall belongs to the villain. Maverick is absolutely outmuscled and outwrestled to the point that I’m almost feeling embarrassed for him, with all that dazzling beauty and gorgeous physique tied up and tenderized like raw meat. The hero comes out guns blazing for the second fall, manhandling the maniacal muscleman with a graceful hip toss and a thunderstorm of leg drops and knees raining down on Chris’ bulging right bicep.  He isolates the arm with studied expertise, employing hammerlocks and armbars to apply steady pressure to the wounded appendage.

Maverick’s handsome face gets pounded into the turnbuckles so often, you just know that Chris is fully committed to beating the pretty right out of him. And that is, of course, the only true and right narrative that can make sense of all of that leading man beauty and classic fitness mag magnificence on Mav climbing into a pro wrestling ring. Can one man have it all, beauty, brawn, and confident athletic prowess that propels him to own the ring like he owns every room he walks into and every heart he instantly woos into total submission with his dimpled cheeks and built-for-erotic-worship physique? It’s hard not to root against the darling cowboy who has never, in his life, heard the word “no” before.

Like a lot of homoerotic wrestling from the early days (and not so uncommon still today), fortunes turn on a dime. Wasted warriors who one second struggle to pry their sweat soaked bodies off the mat, the next second are executing gravity defying flying drop kicks. Maverick takes the second fall with a fuck-I’m-no-rookie ceiling hold, not just executed to perfection but ante-upped by yanking on the glam rock madman’s out of control hair. Chris takes command to start the 3rd fall, but both ripped boys turn the heat way, way up as the momentum teeters back and forth. Maverick’s intensity triples, and I love the display of dominating control as he scoops his opponent up and holds him in mid-air, high and helpless, letting the blood rush to Chris’ head a few seconds before slamming him down to his muscled back with authority. Chris seems to be taking it personally, his shenanigans seeming much less arbitrary and much more competitive. A shocking snap mare reversal sends the babyface hero slamming to the mat, and Chris takes a lap to catch his breath and taunt. “I guess this long-haired hippie just kicked you in your redneck ass, huh?!”

As beautifully fit as they are, both muscle studs are coated in sweat and sucking down air as the 3rd fall careens out of control. But impressively, if anything the pace speeds up. The holds and escapes, moves and reversals strike like lightning, over and over.  There’s a little less taunting because they’re out of breath and suddenly seem more intent on claiming the decisive third fall victory. In the rough and raw battle between a righteous, achingly pretty Texas farmboy and his magnificently ripped, mentally unhinged glam rock opponent, there are no draws. There’s no sportsmanship or hard won respect. Just one infinitely fuckable hot body twisted and tortured with nothing left in the gas tank to prevent him from screaming his completely humiliated final submission.

Against 99.9% of the pro wrestlers I’ve ever seen, I’d have spent this entire post swooning over the physical perfection and unselfconsciously enthusiastic, over the top sell of Chris Duran.  But even now as I return to this sentimental favorite from so many years ago, it’s the babyface hero Maverick who holds my attention and demands my erotic fascination most. It’s quite a trip, re-watching this match so many years later. The homoerotic wrestling industry has come a long way, and the diversity of bodies and talents and characters has happily expanded greatly since the early 90s. These days I like a little more context and story behind a match than this one offers. I enjoy more slow boil and teetering, nuanced momentum. But even now, I look at both Maverick and Chris Duran and I think they have stunningly high quality physiques and gorgeous good looks. They’re unselfconscious about the ring, the cameras, or the pretense. They strut and suffer like champs, and they hold the suspense of a classic pro wrestling match with lush sell and endearing commitment. And though there’s no explicit erotic content, the trunks wedged high up both top notch asses and the intense focus on both physical and psychological domination leave me persistently crushing on the viewer-supplied fantasies of where all this near naked, intimate musclestud combat might go when the cameras are off and the victor takes full possession of the hunk he’s bested.