Leroy Blaze and Evan Sterling occupy a similar spot in my brain. I mean, they’re a study in contrasts. Black. White. Long and lean. Luxuriously beefy. Deceptively baby-faced. Nefariously mustachioed. It’s not like I’m going to mistake one for the other with a cursory glance. But they arrived at BG East around the same time, and have had a similarly tough go in their first matches. I think the folder they both get filed under in my brain is eye-catching rookie hunks with attitudes befitting serious contenders, but who, so far, have looked an awful lot like major league jobbers.

Not that I have anything against jobbers. Far from it, in fact. But Leroy and Evan both give off vibes that they definitely wouldn’t want to get typecast as a doormat. So seeing the two of them square off in Babyface Brawls 6 feels a little momentous to me, because all signs are pointing to one of them scoring his first victory and maybe, just maybe, not finding himself nominated for best jobber at the end of the year.

Leroy may have the smaller frame, but he’s got the bigger personality. He’s playing mind games from the start, taunting Evan when the muscle man pauses to look suspiciously at Leroy’s offer of an opening handshake. Leroy has that fucking smirk that you know every opponent he ever faces is going to instantly itch to smack off his face. They wrestle like rookies. Not messy or half-hearted (at all), but just without the smooth edges and polished shine of more seasoned veterans. Their collar and elbow opening pushes are just a little awkward, like they know where their hands should go, but take an extra beat to figure out the positioning. In early days, Leroy challenges Evan to a test of strength (yeah, re-read that sentence). It’s that fucking smirk again that, I’m sure, is what lures Evan in to show off his clearly superior muscle mass and strength. But Leroy’s quick, sharp, cheap shot kick to the gut stomps the momentum right out of the mustachioed muscle man. Leroy’s self-congratulatory sneer as he locks on a side headlock and cranks on it is so fucking irritating. “How do you like it,” the babyface scrapper snarls, trying to pad his resume as nobody’s jobber.

Evan is a workhorse. Sure, Leroy gets the jump on him repeatedly, and he’s digging his way out of one disadvantage after another through much of this match. But fuck, he muscles his way out of each predicament with serious power that Leroy just can’t tame. I don’t think the still photos of Evan quite capture the power he clearly packs in his chiseled, sculpted, sexy as fuck muscles. At one point, he’s cranking on a headlock and using his free hand to give Leroy’s suction packed silver trunks a wedgie. While fans are applauding the move, giving us a good look at the lean wrestler’s hot cheeks, Leroy’s seriously pissed off, which he channels into kneeing Evan in the gut, putting him down on the mat with authority, and ripping Evan’s trunks off in one fell swoop. Leroy is showboating (again), slapping Evan’s muscled glutes repeatedly. It’s this stunning, unexpected tableau of the “skinny” kid viciously taunting and bullying the hardbodied muscle man, and it’s fucking hot when Leroy’s choking the big man with his own trunks. But so is Evan having had fucking enough, flipping his opponent to his back and planting his balls on Leroy’s face to hold him in place as he punches the fuck out of Leroy’s pride-and-joy abs. When he climbs off of his stunned rival, Evan’s got a super sexy sweat stain on the back of his purple underwear tracing its way down his crack. And then the strong man stands there, wide stance, hands on his hips, sweaty muscles glistening, looking like he’s about to rip apart a rack of lamb with is bare hands. “I’m more comfortable now, anyways,” Evan growls, making lemonade out of lemons and hopefully knowing just how much we fans appreciate him owning his stripped down hotness.

I love that these guys are keeping track of their submissions. There’s definitely this ego-driven vibe about the contest, as they fight for each go-head fall. It feels like they’ve got stakes in mind. They haven’t said as much, but I swear they’re thinking what I’m thinking, namely that one of them is going to walk away a first-time winner, and the other one is going to have that much harder a time trying to convince anyone that he’s not a perennial jobber. They get mean, with that desperate edge of rookies struggling to decide just how vicious and low they’re prepared to go to make a serious run at the brutal world of our corner of pro wrestling. Evan’s absolute manhandling of Leroy into a sick-severe Boston crab, twisting the long lean scrapper’s spine into a U-shape (nearly V-shape), is ugly. Leroy screams out his submission, but the mustachioed muscle man just laughs like the 1930’s silent movie villain he looks like he is. “I’m not done yet,” he crows, his upper lip curling with delight at the panicked whimpers of his victim.

Leroy gives absolutely as convincingly as he gets, too. At one point, he kicks the big man to to his back, adding a few gratuitous stomps to make sure Evan stays down. Then he lifts the big guy’s sweaty, massive legs by his ankles and spreads them wide. He milks the suspense, delighting in the look of panic on Evan’s face, wondering if his balls are going come out of this still in 3 dimensions. Finally, Leroy stomps the shit out of the muscle man’s gut. Just when Evan is writhing and choking on the pain, Leroy leaps between his legs, and lands every ounce of his 150 pounds onto his shocked opponent’s throat. Like, fuck, that’s mean. Watching Evan wriggle and writhe, gaping like a fish out of water until his throat opens back up again and lets oxygen back into his lungs, is insanely hot. Leroy doing his own chuckling like a baby heel-in-training keeps that momentum careening forward, as they continue counting up the submissions with increasing fierceness.

I still say that both of these hot hunks have the raw ingredients to be serious contenders. Even as rookies, they tell a sweet, sweaty, suspenseful tale, just the two of them tearing into one another and sucking on what the promise of victory just might taste like. The final fall is decisive, and the post-match taunting delivers a message to the rest of the stable of wrestlers eyeing these new guys like corn-fed veal. One of these skilled men has had a taste of hard-earned victory, and he’s licking his lips and wanting more of it. The limp, passed out body of his defeated rival, glistening with sweat and helpless to defend himself against the winner’s nasty slap in the face.. well, that sends an entirely different message.