I’ve described myself before as having a bit of a voyeur kink. I like watching. Specifically, I like watching hot wrestling. It hasn’t been that long since I took the plunge into meet-up wrestling, while on the other hand, I’ve been getting off on watching homoerotic wrestling for about 25 years, and some of the first igniting of my erotic interests were watching pro wrestling on television when I was growing up. An honest question I had for myself when I was anticipating my first meet-up wrestling matches was whether it would be the same turn-on as watching wrestling. For most of my life, my wrestling fantasies have projected me into hot match scenarios that I watch. So, I wasn’t just watching Tommy Zenk pumping on a side headlock, I was imagining that it was my face being crushed against Tommy’s flexing pec, trapped by his muscles and under his control. I wasn’t just watching Jeff Phoenix twisting Brad Rochelle’s spine in an over-the-knee backbreaker, I was imagining myself, with Brad’s scorching hot body at my mercy, laid out before me, suffering at my will and whim. I was certain that the experience of wrestling wouldn’t be the same as the experience of watching it, but I wondered how close the experience of wrestling would be to where my imagination takes me when I’m watching. The quick answer is that I experience them very differently. Both are an intense turn-on, but with very different stimuli and reactions.

WrestleFest NYC last week presented me several opportunities to explore some of the nuances between what turns me on about watching wrestling and what turns me on wrestling. The first of these opportunities popped up unexpectedly during my first match of the fest. It was my first time meeting this particular hot, hunky opponent. As a veteran of several past fests, my opponent came prepared. He had a small suite with enough room to lay out wrestling mats he brought with him (mat wrestling is SUCH a different beast than making-do with a hotel mattress!). He was stocked with flats of bottled water and an impressive bar. And he had connected is laptop to the hotel TV, where he was playing classic, old school BG matches from back in the day (you know the ones, the blue mats, small room, mirrored wall). My host and I enjoyed talking wrestling a while before we actually wrestled (a way I work through my nerves with a first-time opponent), and I kept finding myself distracted by watching the screen where these beautiful, sweat-soaked twinks were stripping each other naked and grappling fiercely to settle who’s going to end up on top. Fuck. I kept getting sucked into the scene on the TV, turned on by how I imagine their hot bodies feel slapping and thumping and grinding into each other. When my opponent and I finally hit the mats, I was pretty primed by the on screen inspiration. But locking up and suddenly scrapping against his Brazilian jiu-jistu training and potently concentrated muscles, I tapped into something completely different. The scramble and flex and chess match of holds yanked me entirely out of my head and into my body. The hot video playing in the background disappeared, and there was just me and my opponent and the raw, fierce battle of strength and will and skill. And it was hot in an incomparable way to the hotness of watching the BG match moments earlier. The turn-on was related, but definitely not the same.

On Saturday evening, I had another fascinating opportunity to think and experience deeply what turns me on about watching wrestling in contrast to what turns me on about wrestling. That night, my friend Scooter produced WrestleFest Live, which was this cool scene for homoerotic wrestling in the round. I’ve been saying for years I want someone to save me a front row seat to watch some live hot homoerotic wrestling, and holy hell, that’s exactly what this was! I watched the first half of the card, featuring 3 intense matches starring incredibly sexy and talented wrestlers with extensive studio and self-produced wrestling resumes. I was one of about 20 audience members, with another 15 or so wrestlers and volunteers there with us in the New York loft a few blocks from the Empire State Building. Tickets were $30, and I sat next to my friend TxWresl, who I’d just wrestled earlier that day. Sitting right in front of me was my Gay Wrestling History panel co-moderator Bob Wood, and I made a new friend of the audience member sitting on the other side of me, as we all chatted before the matches began. Although I’ve been saying I want exactly this type of experience, I honestly didn’t know what to expect or how I’d react to being so up close to smoking hot wrestling while sitting alongside a few dozen other onlookers. Well, I’m happy to report it was intense and oddly intimate and sexy as fuck! Each of the three matches I watched (Sunny DeLeon vs. Jaxon Valliant, Gabe Steel vs. Tanner Ripley, and Bobby Carter vs. Seon Cruz) was a sensationally fought battle. The wrestlers seriously went for it. They had high impact blows, long held holds, and gorgeous, sweaty bodies working hard for domination. There were a few moments when I was a little worried Bob, sitting in the front row in front of me, was going to have a wrestler dumped in his lap, though I’m not exactly sure if Bob would have minded. It wasn’t like watching homoerotic wrestling in private on my screen. Rocky Sparks, the videographer, was spinning and scrambling across the mat in front of us, capturing the matches on camera to be uploaded to WatchFighters. The wrestlers worked up a sweat that was that much more immediate because not only could I see their muscles glistening, I could smell it and clearly hear the wet slap of their bodies in a more intense way than when watching a video.

The corporate experience was really what took me by surprise, though. There were grunts and groans and shouts of encouragement and taunts from audience members as the intense action played out. My voice was just one of the chorus, admiring the beauty and power and compelling homoerotic drama playing out right in front of us. None of us whipped it out like we probably would have if we were watching the drama in private, but I for one was aroused and it was a curiously intense experience for that to be the case surrounded by other homoerotic wrestling fans and the objects of my lustful attention close enough for me to literally touch. I’ll review the matches in detail soon, but for now, I just want to reflect on my subject experience, which included walking away, chatting with TxWresl and JJ Allen and others coincidentally in the elevator with us about what we’d just seen and experienced. And the debrief, having watched together, was totally added value.

WrestleFest NYC 2024 presented me with one final opportunity to reflect deeply on where the Venn diagram of me getting off on watching wrestling and me getting off on wrestling overlaps. I honestly didn’t actually know that two of my past opponents that I’ve written extensively about had a genuine grudge brewing between them. Scott Williams, the long-time object of my homoerotic wrestling infatuation, and SeattleFight, with whom I experienced such an immediate and intense spark in Toronto last summer, had some sore feelings toward one another predating my meeting either of them in person. Apparently, my fawning descriptions of wrestling each of them only added fuel to the fire of their rivalry after I had the intense pleasure of wrestling both of them, repeatedly, since last summer. It was SeattleFight’s idea that they should settle their scores at WrestleFest NYC, and both he and Scott invited me to witness, first hand, what would happen when my wrestling crushes collide. It happened late on my last night in NYC. Scott and SeattleFight squared off on mats in the living room of SeattleFight’s suite. His roommate and I perched expectantly on the couch, inches away from these two smoking hot grapplers stripped down to briefs. And, holy fuck, right there close enough for me to touch, they went at it hot and fierce. It was like my own private WrestleFest Live session, but even more intimate and intense and immediate. It had that same corporate experience of watching, with SeattleFight’s roommate and I reacting together, grunting at the same time to a particularly hard thump of pecs getting punched, moaning in that mixture of empathic pain and erotic pleasure at a particularly hard-earned and humiliating submission. Probably because I’ve been so turned on by my experiences of wrestling both of these gorgeous hunks, I was instantly and persistently turned on, without actually having to “imagine” the feel of their bodies. I wasn’t literally on the mat, but I hardly needed to “project” myself into the intense battle playing out at my feet, because I’d been locked in my own battle with each of these sexy-as-fuck gladiators several times before, including earlier that weekend. It was as close as I’ve come in being turned on by watching wrestling being identical to that experience of being turned on by engaging in wrestling itself.

Whatever the thin line that separates what turns me on about watching wrestling and what turns me on about engaging in wrestling suddenly and decisively disappeared. Having worked out their pent up frustrations on one another, one of these hot, sweaty hunks came out the undisputed victor in this stunningly fierce battle. Perched on top of a schoolboy pin, taunting and preening and demonstrating that the loser could do nothing else to defend himself, the winner turned his attention on me and invited me to join him. Fuckfuckfuck. I’m not sure if I’ve ever ripped off my street clothes that fast before, because it seemed like a fraction of a second later I was also straddling the demolished muscle hunk. Just like that, I crossed the line from watching to participating. And what aroused me about watching Scott and SeattleFight’s grudge match morphed into what was turning me on about literally becoming part of the action. I wasn’t just imagining or remembering the feel of their bodies and the power in their muscles, I was feeling it. The erotic pleasure that plays out in my head, when I’m watching, stepped seamlessly over the line into the pleasure that plays out in my body when I’m part of action itself. They are intimately related pleasures, essentially different from one another in my experience, but deeply connected to that same thing inside of me that has, for my entire life, been powerfully reactive to wrestling.

I continue to love this journey I’ve recently been on exploring who I am as a wrestler, but I also remain a passionate fan of watching homoerotic wrestling. Much of the history of this blog has been about my curious examination of what it is that turns me on about wrestling. But even at this point, quite a way along in my lifetime relationship with homoerotic wrestling, it’s a delight to discover new things about myself and new aspects of what turns me on, and how it turns me on. I occasionally bump into conversations about the lines that separate homoerotic wrestlers and homoerotic wrestling fans, and I get the impression that some folks are deeply invested in reifying the lines that divide the two. I’ve caught more than a hint of low key contempt from some wrestlers, for example, for “consumers” of wrestling, like one is real and the other is a weak approximation for the feint of heart. At least for me, I can report that they both reside within me, different expressions of one passionate connection I have to wrestling. And I love how much I continue to be turned on by watching homoerotic wresting, and I love how much I’m turned on by wrestling.