I’ve seen a lot in eight years of blogging about wrestling. I used to wonder if reflecting on my infatuation with wrestling might make me jaded, if reviewing as much homoerotic wrestling as I do might habituate me to such an extent that it doesn’t get me off anymore. Happily for me, there’s no sign of that happening anytime soon. However, it does take quite a bit to seriously surprise me anymore. I won’t say I’ve seen it all, but I’ve seen countless variations on most of it. I love a surprise, but they are fewer and farther between having seen hundreds of sensationally gorgeous wrestlers applying several dozen different holds in more than a couple of handfuls of different contexts. So to say there’s something novel, even shocking, about Muscle Domination Wrestling’s Oil Hunks 10 is a major compliment coming from me.

The most obvious shocker is the moment Damien Rush steps on the mat, snarling at Brad Barnes about bogarting the weights back stage at a bodybuilding competition. The backstage bodybuilding story is sweetly novel. It’s the same garage in which most MDW is taped, but the MDW boys continue to put the fantasy in fantasy pro wrestling, and they’ve put their finger on a scenario rich with homoerotic potential. I’ve been turned on by the idea of marginally naked muscle freaks with carb-deprived short fuses strutting and flexing in front of each other with tensions high awaiting their turn to be physique worshipped by screaming fans at a bodybuilding competition. That’s the set-up for Oil Hunks 10. Brad is in minuscule red posing briefs, marginally more than a thong, but not much more. I’ve never seen him in better condition, and I’ve seen him a lot over the past few years. He’s tanned, smooth as butter, and absolutely whittled to massive muscles, bone, and prominent veins. Check out the vascularity on his inner thighs (which sounds like a double entendre, but it isn’t). Fuck, he’s sensationally gorgeous.

But no, the real shocker isn’t any of that. It’s Damien. Holy fucking homoerotic wrestling gods! He’s GARGANTUAN! I’ve been a studied fan of Damien’s hot, hairy body from the beginning, but… fuck, his size leaves me speechless. There are gains, and then there’s THIS! Damien is hugely muscled, and his luxurious coat of dark hair typically covering his torso and legs has been entirely shaved (which is a shame, but then again, of course he’s smooth for competition). He’s tanned, but still looks pale compared to the dark bronze of Brad. His weight class is apparently not due to hit the stage for a little while, because Damien is in relatively modest blue cotton briefs. He flexes a double bicep and POW! Those upper arms are just about the biggest I’ve ever seen. He’s lats are magnificently broad. His quads are monstrously huge. Damien has always had a mouthwateringly sexy body, in my estimation. But he has seemingly abruptly gone from sexy pin up boy to, no shit, legitimate bodybuilder in the blink of an eye!

“I’m going win this competition,” Damien growls, waving Brad away from the weights he was using to get that last minute pump before hitting the stage. “You got that small fry?” Damien growls. “Okay, big fry,” Brad smirks, looking directly into the camera as if to say get a load of this character!

I’ve found Brad stingy in the past with digging deeply into the homoeroticism of homoerotic wrestling. But he takes a slow lap around Damien, pumping up his huge upper body, and openly admires the heavyweight’s hot muscles. He even goes so far as to agree with Damien that he almost certainly will win his superheavy weight class. Brad is impressed, slowly appraising this newly minted muscle god. “So you’ll take the super heavies,” Brad concludes decisively. “I”ll take the light heavies,” Brad announces without any false modesty. “And, obviously, I’ll take overall.”

Yep, that’s the backstage bodybuilding competition melodrama that I’ve fantasized about plenty long before now. Both boys seem to concede the facts that Damien’s size is superior, but Brad’s conditioning is out of this world over the top. Quantity versus quality. Mass versus aesthetics. Self-infatuated bodybuilder versus self-infatuated bodybuilder, moments before they vie for screaming worshippers. Fuck, the homoerotic potential is tastable.

There are obligatory arm wrestling and tests of strength. They all end up pretty  much even, though a highlight for me is watching relatively petite Brad muscle the mountain to his knees. I can no longer find a Wrestler Profile page on the new MDW site, which is a loss, but elsewhere in the homoerotic wrestling universe, I find it suggested that Damien is about 3 inches taller than Brad. I don’t know if it’s the titanic muscle mass Damien is now sporting, but he looks gigantic in comparison to Brad now. So getting powered to his muscled ass in that test of strength is absolutely lovely drama to watch.

Damien fans will be unsurprised to hear that he’s now pissed. If there’s one thing that is entirely static here, it’s Damien’s dialogue/monologues. “Real men wrestle,” Damien growls in that way he has of bitching and whining about getting shown up. “That’s the true test of strength of a real man,” he announces, insisting on a wrestling match mere minutes before they’re both supposed to go on stage. I have to say that MDW has made me sort of hate phrases like “real men,” and “alpha dog.” Damien is one of the chiefest offenders of selling us the packaging that the eroticism of wrestling is rooted in discovering the flawed masculinity of one man when pitted against another. I don’t subscribe to this gender theory. At all. It strikes me as a lazy way of framing homoerotic wrestling motivation for wrestlers who, my hunch is, don’t get it. Damien’s bluster and comic book villain snarling could sour me, frankly, but then I flash back to his sexy ass, erotic-forward humbling by little guys like Charlie Evans and Lorenzo Lowe and I can forgive the bad gender politics and fragile hold on masculinity implied by Damien’s classic “real men” banter.

Another surprise in this match is Brad’s wrestling. I’ve always thought he’s ridiculously pretty, and I’ve been satisfied that he’s game for the genre enough to put his superhero jaw and massive pecs at our disposal in a wrestling match. But no shit, Brad sells pro wrestling in Oil Hunks 10! He’s quick and decisive. He fucking dances around Damien’s lumbering muscle bod, smoothly transitioning from a rear bearhug to side headlock to hammerlock with authority. Seriously, he fucking owns all of that hot new beef on big Damien, sucking on the feel of D’s head stuck in the vice in standing headscissors, standing tall and flexing proudly with the big man doubled over and humiliated.

One of the best moves I’ve seen in a long time happens when Damien muscles free and starts exploiting his size advantage, bullying Brad around. He squeezes and stretches him. He monologues like the Penguin with Batman suspended by a thread over a pit of alligators. Then he bends Brad backward into a sensationally sexy dragon sleeper. I haven’t mentioned just how tasty Brad’s tightly contained package is in those red posers, but fuck, what a teasing treat seeing him arching backward, totally at Damien’s mercy, his rippled, diamond cut muscles stretched and laid out like a feast. But shockingly, Brad jackknifes, pulling his legs off the mat and snapping them with total authority around Damien’s head. Damien is appropriately stunned, losing his grip on the sleeper and staring wide-eyed at the business end of Brad’s muscled ass now planted across his face. With an expert shift of his center of gravity, Brad yanks Damien off balance, flipping to his back, and landing still locked up sexy-tight in headscissors. Fucking magnificent counter!

They don’t talk about it explicitly, but there’s a hot drama to the moment that they start landing strikes. Mind you, Brad is due to be on stage any second. Damien will be up minutes later. So when Brad drives a sharp elbow into Damien’s ribs, I’m thinking, fuck, that’s going to leave a bruise!  Moments later when Damien has slammed Brad to the mat and starts stomping the shit out of his gut and upper legs, I keep thinking, damn, you are NOT going to look so pretty after all out there on stage, are you!?

The turning point in the match is when Brad locks Damien’s left arm nice and snug between Brad’s huge upper legs and starts prying Damien’s head off his neck with a sick chin lock. Again, there’s a decisiveness about it that I just don’t expect from Brad. It’s commanding and vicious, and Damien looks like he’s fucked good. Right up until the point that he ducks free from the chinlock, muscles his way up to his knees, and basically arm curls Brad’s entire bodyweight off the mat before slamming the SHIT out of his back pounded across Damien’s knee. It’s over, right there. The power move blows my mind! Damien owns this gorgeous slice of competitive beef then and there, as Brad arches his lower back in agony and genuinely looks like he’s sucking on air.

There’s more muscle domination. This is MDW, after all. Damien starts up the comic book monologuing again. Eventually, he picks Brad up in a fireman’s carry and threatens to throw him across the room. By Brad’s genuine look and sound of panic, I think it’s occurred to him that he’s going to look like shit in a couple of minutes with shiny, oiled up bruises from head to toe when he strolls out on stage. Damien gives him the option of conceding that Damien is destined to win it all. “You’ll win! You’ll win!” Brad pleads.

The “oil” in this Oil Hunks match disappoints me. Brad cannot get this done fast enough. He manages to lather D’s huge body up in under a minute. Muscle worship fans everywhere are going to call a red card on this party foul. This is one of Brad’s perpetual weaknesses, I find. I’m guessing he’s straight, and I’m assuming he doesn’t quite get why I’ve got my dick in hand as I’m watching this match climax, because he doesn’t take his job as “towel boy” (applier of the oil) seriously. If Damien were to actually walk out on stage with an uneven oil application like this, he’d get laughed right back off the stage. More importantly, the sensationally ripe moment of one muscle hunk putting the palms of his hands all over another muscle hunk’s body is woefully undersold by suddenly-bro Brad. I’ve seen him pull away from the spoils of defeat like this before. It gives an unmistakable hit of a dude choking down the “ick” factor and clocking in his most superficial attention in order to just get this discomfort over with. I wish he ‘d just fucking suck it up and sell his appreciation for another man’s body about half as well as he sells his own suffering (as of late). He can be bitter about it all he wants. Mores the fun, really. But the self-consciousness ruins the denouement of this otherwise shockingly hot, hard, huge hit.

Damien looks a little pissed about it as well, which makes me rescind some of my earlier comments about his not getting it. “Get on your knees,” he commands Brad after getting the sloppiest oiling up in bodybuilding competition history. I shit you not, Brad rolls his eyes a little, because he’s so fucking self-conscious in this moment. “Get on our knees and enjoy staring up at the true champion!” Damien barks, flashing his huge, shiny (in patches), shockingly developed physique for his vanquished opponent to garnish and you and I to feast our eyes on.

Oil Hunks 10 has a sweet balance of story and wrestling. The physiques are s-t-u-n-n-i-n-g! The scenario is sensationally novel with a hit of authenticity (like, I feel pretty convinced that these guys are actually, genuinely, both bodybuilding competition-ready). Brad sells himself as a legitimately skilled pro wrestler better than I’ve ever seen him before, and Damien is… MASSIVE. I’ll knock them both for perennial character weaknesses, but honestly, this is super satisfying bodybuilder on bodybuilder pro wrestling gut checks.

And if either of these beasts needs a more willing “towel boy” than Brad was, to meticulously apply baby oil to every last inch of their gorgeous muscles with perfect precision and enthusiasm, give me a call boys.