Wrestlefest 4 gave me my first glimpse of Nathan FX, in his public battle with Top Heel Kayden Keller. Technically, that isn’t true, because I’ve “glimpsed” him wrestling for other companies, I’m pretty sure, but only in promo photos. I’d never seen him wrestle, though. Within 30 seconds of him showing up to the ring, I’m wanting to see him get creamed. “It’s time you learned, baby,” FX shouts and points a threatening finger at Kayden, hopping around in American flag long shorts. A babyface rookie that cocky, calling out BGE’s reigning Top Heel, to the ecstatic adulation of the bevy of babyface boosters at ringside, is just too naive for me to stand it. But then FX rips off his tear-away long shorts, to reveal equally patriotic, but significantly more tiny briefs underneath, and I’m recalculating him. The pretty boy showed up in tear-away shorts, clearly planning all along on inflaming the exuberance of the babyfaces with his audacity and soft core strip tease?! Hm. Okay then. The lovely, lean rookie with the bad bleach job has me intrigued!

Kayden is classically, thoroughly, essentially Kayden in this match. Playing against the snarling, jeering babyfaces trying to crawl under his skin, and playing to his heel buddies on the other side of the ring, clearly brings out his Kayden-ness. Not waiting for a bell, he kicks FX in the gut and bulldogs the pretty boy, pretty much knocking the rookie out momentarily, about 15 seconds later. “Yeah, he really looks amazing,” the sinister, snarling heel taunts the protesting babyface bench, dragging his opponent’s barely responsive body up and slamming the star spangled rookie down in a gut buster. The babyfaces are on their feet, threatening pandemonium, slapping the ring apron to rouse their champ, pleading with him to come-to and put up a fight. “Listen to them,” Kayden taunts his prey, snapping his crushing, gorgeous legs around the bottle-blond head. “They’re counting on you,” he laughs mockingly.

If you know Kayden’s catalog even half as intimately as I do, then you are not surprised to learn that FX manages some super sweet, super sexy reversals of fortune on the raging heel. I often wonder whether Kayden voluntarily allows this to happen, because he gets off even harder on digging back from a deficit and plowing a once hopeful opponent into dust. In this case, FX has clearly had enough humiliation and kicks Kayden in the balls. With the hot heel bent over, that much easier for FX to rattle his cage convincingly with a sharp, seriously nasty flying knee strike to the face, before executing a brutal tit-for-tat revenge bulldog. Woah! I see you there, rookie. FX did NOT sign up to be Kayden’s punching bag, and I’m very much into that fierceness.

This is Wrestlefest, so the shit goes off the rails often and wildly. From the babyface bench, Brazilian heartthrob Dio Characi (see my post from yesterday for his contribution to this festival of homoerotic wrestling) pops up and grabs Kayden by the ankle when the heel is bouncing off the ropes to clothesline his dazed prey, making Kayden land face first on the mat. Oh. Fuck. Yes. You can literally see the steam rising off of the back of Kayden’s neck, he is so fucking pissed off. He dives outside the ring and shoves a finger in Dio’s face, and I’m pretty convinced this is a half a second away from turning into one huge bitter melee (speaking of which, where can I put in my order for a reboot of the orgiastic brilliance of Battle R-Oil from Wrestlefest 1?!?). Despite the heel bench egging Kayden on, the Top Heel executes a superhuman feat of self-control and climbs back in the ring. Oh, but he promises that he’s got a score to settle with the Brazilian babyface beefcake, and I’ll donate a kidney for a front row seat to THAT sequel. Kayden brings a chair into the ring to beat the living shit out of FX and repeatedly, REPEATEDLY piledrives the All-American doe-in-the-headlights into oblivion.

Wrestlelfest 4 sets up a long-awaited (by me) tipping point. On the one hand, Kayden has never been more Kaydeny, and it’s exactly his Kaydenness that has earned the hot hunk the title of Top Heel for FIVE years in a row! On the other hand, the second half of Wrestlefest 4 features the legendary heel himself, Jonny Firestorm, possibly nastier, more brutal, and more sadistic than I think I’ve ever seen him. So riddle me this, wrestling fans, who is the frontrunner to earn the title of Top Heel for 2022!? Fuck… what a choice. Honestly, I cannot, at this moment, say who it is I’d vote for, although I’m tempted to say that the one who literally bit his babyface opponent’s big, beautiful balls in front of a live audience might have the edge (?).

And finally, let me be super late to the party in welcoming Nathan FX to the BG East fold. I was not expecting the incredibly moving sell, and the capacity for barges full of suffering to get dumped on such a lean, untested, outmatched rookie like this. Fuck, I’m shedding a tear over here in sympathy pains for FX’s breathless writhing, wailing, and weeping! Even though I was initially rolling my eyes, I’m actually thrilled that he came in that hot and bothered to start this match, flexing his cute guns, shaking his lean, red-white-and-blue ass to the roaring approval of the babyface bench. He’s tougher than he looks, and he’s got a sensational range with nuance and pathos. I vote that he show up next in HairStakes 2, because I will hate on him even less once the bottle blond his sheared off. In the meantime, well played, rookie. Well played.