I was recently chatting with a friend about the potent allure of a baby heel. I love it when they’re fresh and young and hot and mean as fuck. I also love suspense, so when an up-and-coming heel cockily climbs into the ring with an air of vulnerability about his nascent career, I get excited to see what happens.

Chase Addams has successfully excited me for the past year and half as he’s started clawing his way into BG East. He’s frequently indulged my prurient curiosity in him by granting me interviews. In fact, I’m guessing I’ve never interviewed a rookie this often with this few matches under his belt. I like the look and sound of Chase. I like his explicit devotion to promoting quality professional wrestling for a gay audience. I love his moves and his ambition. I want to see him kick ass as he settles into the role of a vicious, obviously dangerous, unapologetically sexy baby heel. But he’s still raw, rawer than he’d probably like to admit. For all of his studied skills and training, he could get his ass kicked based on chance and inexperience alone. He’s a mean fucker, so my money is typically going to be on him, but then again, he could lose, and that potential turns me on twice as hard as I watch him step into the ring in Ringwars 28.

Chase’s opponent is big Toney Rico. This is my first serious look at Toney in the ring. Fuck, he’s huge. I actually saw Toney in passing during my visit to BG East this summer. He’d been stuck in traffic on his way to tape this match, in fact. So when he blew in, he stripped down to those shiny silver square cuts, hydrated extensively, and then almost immediately headed to the ring room with a now slightly iced Chase. On the one hand, this gave me a chance to interview Chase and to study the fit of those black, custom trunks that I sponsored for him a couple of months ago. With a knowing grin, Chase let me eye fuck him as he showed off every angle, lifting his arms and turning on my command as I read his ass.

So, sure, I owe big Toney for more Chase time. But on the other hand, I sensed that Chase was feeling just a little miffed at being left hanging. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to admit it, but the delay may have frayed the young stud’s nerves just a tad, as impatience crept into his voice.

 

I’d half suspect that big Toney did it on purpose, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s such a fucking Boy Scout. A hunk this beefy and this sportsmanly is a rarity in this business. He holds the ropes for Chase to more conveniently climb into the ring. I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking it, too.  Chase was thinking it, as well. Toney was in perfect position to exploit Chase with one foot in and one foot out of the ring. He could have viciously yanked up on the middle rope and racked the baby heel. He could have driven a knee to Chase’s chest as he crouched underneath the top rope. It was a vulnerable moment that Chase cautiously walked into with his eyes wide open. But Toney didn’t do any of those things. He was just being helpful. What the fuck?!

Chase similarly struggles to believe the read he’s getting on Toney as the big rookie repeatedly offers a sportsmanly handshake to demonstrate he has no hard feelings. He’s so fucking upright.  With a body that beautifully built, he could dictate his own rules against an opponent Chase’s size (40 pounds lighter). But he’s such a Dudley Do-Right that he just obeys all the rules of fairness and civil conduct. He’s banking entirely on his physical strength and newbie ring skills to give him the fighting chance he needs to demonstrate his clean-cut superiority. Oh, fuck, I’m hating this guy so much. Make this fucker weep like a baby, Chase!

The battle is a sweetly engaging teeter-totter, baby heel vs. baby babyface. Big Toney can essentially shot put Chase across the ring at will. Toney works his advantages with blunt force, muscle dominating Chase with tests of strength and effortless lifts. He impales Chase’s gut with a shoulder block in the corner, but like the goodie-goodie he is, he pulls Chase off the ropes to snap mare him into the middle of the ring.

For his part, Chase sucks down the pounding punishment like a pro and delivers surgical, vicious, rule-breaking strikes to level the playing field. A sudden heel strike to the side of Toney’s knee drops the big man abruptly. Instantly, he positions Toney’s throat across the bottom rope and chokes him relentlessly, kicking, butt dropping, and eventually full out standing on the babyface’s shoulders, full bodyweight pressing Toney’s throat into the rope and cutting off air to his lungs. The baby heel is unquestionably vulnerable against the overwhelming muscle and mass of his opponent, but as fresh as he is, this is definitely not Chase’s first rodeo. They trade momentum back and forth, but I can totally believe that Chase is on his way to pulling this out.

But then Toney scoops Chase up in an effortless cradle and holds him there. It’s a boss move. It’s completely fair and totally bad ass, demonstrating that Chase’s hot body is at his mercy. Finally, big Toney drops to one knee and slams the living fuck out of Chase’s back, holding him for a couple of seconds in an OTK, literally bouncing the baby heel on his knee before spilling him to the mat in a heap of anguish. Toney deliberately drops to the mat and pins his opponent’s shoulders to the mat, slapping down a 2 count before Chase kicks out. As they start to get to their feet, Toney offers another handshake to demonstrate that he’s still got no hard feelings, despite his sick ass brutal muscle domination. “Get that away from me!” Chase snaps furiously. “What is wrong with you!?”

And right there and then, I’m starting to get worried about our boy. It seems almost as if Chase was prepared to go toe to toe with another rule breaking bad boy, but is thrown off his game by big Toney’s extravagant sportsmanship. That note of impatience that I sensed in Chase’s voice a half an hour earlier creeps back in, as if Toney is ironically crawling under Chase’s skin with his iconoclastic, straight laced, dispassionately rule-abiding earnestness. There’s a bubbling rage in Chase that makes me seriously worried that he could get plowed under here, if his emotions get the best of him.

Indeed, Toney is pitching in probably a little over 50% of this match, and every gentlemanly offer of a handshake just keeps riling Chase up worse and worse. The baby heel gets rung out in more than one sensationally intimate bearhug. The desperation rises in Chase’s voice as he’s slapped down and ground underneath this mountain of straight-edge muscle. As I think about it, I was probably interviewing Kayden Keller out back right around the time Toney was scooping Chase up again in that total boss cradle, parading him around the ring, and pounding him down into another OTK. Then Toney muscles him up again, still in that same cradle, takes a step, and fucking drives Chase’s back down across his thigh, making the baby heel cry out. Then again, Toney muscles him up in that same cradle, takes another step, and drives him down again, pounding Chase’s tingling spine across his OTK still again, making our boy scream.

This is nowhere near the end of this match, and fortunes turn back and forth with sweet suspense. And since we’re talking about boss moves, you’ll have to watch for Chase trussing Toney up in a corner, spread-eagle suspended across the bottom ropes, before taking a running point-after kick driving Toney’s balls up into his throat. Both of these sweat soaked battlers celebrate victory with a pin fall.  It’s just that one of them celebrates too soon.

So if you can’t tell, I love this match. I love the personalities. I love (to hate) big Toney’s relentless good guy schtick. I’m sucked in, as always, by the acrobatics and dexterity of Chase’s high class pro submissions. I love the psychological battle almost as much as the physical battle. I love not knowing who’s going to walk out of the ring the winner, leaving his battered opponent completely unconscious and drowning in a pool of both men’s sweat, liplocked and bested.

But I also love this match for how it sucks me in. When my boy Chase is getting pummeled and humiliated, it makes me want to dive into the ring and rescue him. Watching Toney bounce him in that OTK, listening to Chase scream, it ignites in me that same type of fantasy that drew me in so completely, watching pro wrestling as a kid. It makes me want to be there, to pick sides, to put my finger to the scales by wrapping my big bicep across Toney’s throat just when he thinks he’s got Chase owned.  I want to hang from Toney’s chinlock as I bend him backward across the top rope, for Chase to deliver another vicious punt to the big man’s balls. I think it’s why I favor competitive matches, and why I’m so eager to pick my favorites. At its best, pro wrestling always drags me into the action in my mind. In this case it’s just that much more poignant knowing I was literally just 100 yards away.

In addition to getting off on the action as well as on the rewrite in my mind that ends with Toney screaming a final submission completely suspended off the mat in my Boston crab back-to-sweaty-back with Chase’s chinlock camel clutch, I’m also enjoying this match for whatever comes next. I have been craving a big, dominant, babyface bruiser to leave a wake at BG East for a while, and holy shit, Toney Rico could very well fill those wrestling boots. Of course I can’t wait to see him suffer, but I get the strong impression that big Toney will take down more than his fair share of hopeful heels along the way, perhaps balancing the scales just a bit at the notoriously heel-dominated company. And I’m also looking forward to watching Chase become, match by match, more himself. I want to see him grow meaner, more focused, and enjoy it just a little more. And I hope he just can’t shake that little twist of baby heel vulnerability that makes me believe he could use a little hand now and then from an amorous fan.

I’ve got your back, Chase.