I’ve got a little crush on whoever is charting the social media course for BG East lately. I have bitched and complained mercilessly for a while about the need for homoerotic wrestling companies to up their social media game. It feels like the industry is solidly migrated to almost entirely a virtual existence online (DVD’s seeming to be going the way of the dinosaur, e.g.), so relying on eyes to reach company home pages on their own seems risky these days. And any failure to engage and titillate and evoke and provoke a virtually networked audience in between catalog releases feels downright old fashioned. So I’ve noticed with pleasure BG East’s increasing social media presence, including the excellent designation of this month as #JobberJune.

I’ve been accused in the past of hating on jobbers. I deny it vehemently, of course. Jobbers are an essential ingredient to the pro wrestling universe, and they populate plenty of my fondest homoerotic wrestling fantasies. I admit to being provoked hardest by heels and babyface heroes, but the doomed jobber is always a strongly compelling character as well. We can, and I’m sure will, debate the essence and the margins of what it means to be a jobber. I think of them as those wrestlers who routinely get their asses kicked, for whom a victory would seem an honest surprise. I don’t think of them as merely squash bait. A jobber can put up a fight, and personally I prefer it that way. But considering the sum total of their careers, when a wrestler seems fated again and again to end up beaten and humiliated, he meets my criteria for jobberhood.

The BG East social media maven has been celebrating #JobberJune with sensational call outs to classic jobbers. Casey Cutler, Wade Cutler, and Tony Consenti completely deserve this walk of shame, and seeing their photos  suck me right back to lush, key moments in which watching them wrestle had me rock hard for the potent melodrama of seeing them earnestly throwing their hot bodies into the breach again and again, only to get trashed and tossed to the curb. My nostalgia button is punched hard with seeing this retrospective of hot, doomed hunks from across the decades.

Adorably upright Ken Canada got a richly deserved spot in the #JobberJune rotation. A long-standing friend of this blog, Ken was that upstanding, earnest babyface brand of jobber. His lean muscles, lightly hairy pecs, and button nose were the sensational framework for a jobber. Especially after interviewing him, I think of Ken as this supremely earnest, eager, fully game hunk who had sensational raw material for competitive wrestling, which made his lamb-to-slaughter narrative that much more compelling.

So I’m putting #JobberJune on my recurring calendar notifications for years to come. And I’m excited to see who the social media maven at BGE comes up with next for the #JobberJune walk of shame. I’d most definitely nominate gorgeous little firecracker Reese Wells, who always seemed right on the edge of wrestling glory, only to be literally upended before the final fall.

Then there’s Ricky Martinez. Everything about him in still frame screamed sensationally equipped competitor, but over and over his pristine beauty was ruined by viciousness, cunning, and extravagant dirty tricks.

Surely top contender for the most popular jobber in BGE history has to be Rio Garza. I always longed to see Rio mobilize that fantasy man body to do better in competition. In retrospect, Rio’s capacity to make me call him out as a doormat has been, of course, testimony to what a compelling jobber he’s been. Being literally a winner of fan polls for best body AND possessing one of the most lopsided win-loss records on the books points to some of the most potent elements to why jobbers inhabit our wrestling fantasies. Beauty spoiled. Hot bodies broken down and laid bare. Ambition and promise crushed by an opponent more than willing to go darker, deeper, and nastier. Jobbers tell a story that turns us on.

Tommy Tara, Christopher Bruce, Mr. E, Muscle Mask… we keep watching not because we actually expect to see them pull out a victory. Personally, I want to be held in suspense, even if I know that fates are aligned against a particular hunk in the long run. But we watch because there’s something provocative about watching a man charge into the fray courageously, without a shred of realistic hope of coming out on top. It’s less about how a wrestler stacks up against any particular opponent, but more about a psychic flaw within him that makes the tick in the loser column inevitable, despite his most valiant efforts and magnificent potential. Somebody’s got to lose, and I think it’s a relatively rare wrestler who can do it so compellingly that we’re eager again and again to watch him do it, to see what inadequacy an opponent will discover amid a hot, powerful hunk’s blatantly obvious assets for kicking ass.

Who’s your favorite jobber?  Post a #JobberJune reply to BG East’s Facebook page and give the jobbers some well deserved love.

So a summer sangria toast to the jobbers, this #JobberJune. And to the BG East social media maven, the first round is on me.