Hey again, homoerotic wrestling fans! This is Bard, the author of the blog Sidelineland, and most recently, I’ve also been working on this limited release podcast, Sidelineland Sounds, where I serve as host, producer, audio engineer, tech support, marketing director, and head of research. And, of course, by head of research, I mean I’m the guy devotedly watching hours and hours of homoerotic wrestling videos in order to sample some choice clips to illustrate what turns me on about the sounds of hot wrestling action. In episode 2, I took a meandering stroll through the topic of trash talk, where I focused on the taunts and insults of wrestlers when they’re confident, riding high, playing the intimidation game. In that episode, we listened to the verbal attacks of sexy wrestlers on offense. Today, I’m switching the focus to the other side of the equation, turning up the volume on what I find hot about the sounds of suffering.

[Bell Ring – sound credit: BG East’s Three-Way Thrash 6]

To start with, I wanted to just share a quick story. when I had the honor of co-hosting the Gay Wrestling Panel at Wrestlefest New York this past February, in the question and answer period, an audience member asked for advice for an aspiring new jobber. There was some awesome advice generously offered, including Kid Leopard himself telling all would-be jobbers that their job #1 is selling their heels. Now, my understanding is that “selling” in pro wrestling is the way the wrestlers, especially the wrestler  on the receiving end of a hold or maneuver telegraphs to the audience the damage done. So, if one wrestler drives a punch into his opponent’s gut (a blatantly illegal move, by the way, shame on you wrestlers when you do that), his opponent folds over his fist and “oofs” out the air from his lungs. The one on the receiving end demonstrably suffers, thus selling the offense of his attacker. 

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s Demolition 27 starring Shane McCall and Drake Marcos]

I think your sense of what good sell is comes clearest when it’s missing. When a wrestler is locked in what should be a crippling hold, but he’s not even breaking a sweat. Or, worse, when a wrestler takes some huge hammer blow that the wrestling conventions dictate should be devastating, but he bounces up and is on offense as if nothing happened. Fuck, what a buzz kill for me. I think in pro wrestling there’s this unspoken contract between the wrestlers and the audience. We, the audience, agree to suspend our disbelief when it comes to the extreme edges of violence we’re witnessing, and in turn, the wrestlers agree to go all in and tell us a story that entertains and, for a homoerotic wrestling audience, turns us on. So when the wrestlers fall short on their end of the bargain, I feel like I want my money back, you know?

One of my first homoerotic wrestling video purchases was Can-Am’s Canadian Musclehunk Oil Wrestling 3. There are a lot of hot bodies on that product, but there’s one particular moment that sticks with me in the match between Beau Hopkins and Jimmy Royce. It’s a back and forth battle, and honestly, I can’t decide which of them is hotter glistening with oil and going at it in that clumsy, awkward way that oil wrestling demands. They both look like they’ve got some legit amateur wrestling skills, and they’re both aggressive and a bit mean. But Beau keeps scrambling on top, and he repeatedly catches Jimmy in a double hammerlock. Jimmy genuinely looks like he’s got a trick left shoulder, and more than once, Beau has to really crank on it to rotate it around in his shoulder socket and secure it in that hammerlock. And, like the vicious little bastard he is, Beau keeps doing it. In round 3, he’s got Jimmy face down in the oil, and Beau is sitting on the back of Jimmy’s head, yanking on Jimmy’s hugely muscled arms until they’re wrenched way up high between his shoulder blades. And then he bounces on the arms, just fucking up Jimmy’s shoulders as Jimmy grunts in time to each vicious yank and bounce. And suddenly, there’s this panic in Jimmy’s voice…

[Audio Clip – sound credit: Can-Am’s Canadian Musclehunk Oil Wrestling 3 starring Jimmy Royce and Beau Hopkins]

Fuck, that panicked up-pitch in his voice, with notes of despair and pleading… I could sip on that bouquet all day long. There’s character, as well as plot, in how a wrestler suffers, too. Like, at the beginning of BG East’s Jobberpaloozer 12, we watch barefoot Jake Jenkins, with those sewn-on tight metallic teal trunks warming up before his scheduled match with Jonny Firestorm. Jake’s running warm-up drills from his days of competitive amateur wrestling, showing off his speed and moves, stretching his back and neck in a super high bridge. He looks legit as fuck, right? The gorgeously muscled, limber, agile athlete all set to do battle. When Jonny arrives, Jake smirks at him and calls him an “out of shape monkey.” Jonny’s sucker punch to Jake’s washboard abs shuts down that line of argument real quick, and 6 minutes later, Jake’s twisted in the ropes, his right arm locked under Jonny’s armpit overhead, and screaming as his armpit hair is ripped out by the vicious “monkey.” 

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s Jobberpaloozer 12 starring Jake Jenkins and Jonny Firestorm]

The quality and quantity of suffering document more than just Jonny’s brutality. They track the catastrophic fall of the cocky, hot bodied preppy who looked so earnest and legit just a few minutes ago.

I did an interview with Dante Lesen not long after he debuted in BG East’s Rookie Wreckers 3. Dante was the titular rookie that got wrecked by Masked Menace. Visually, it’s a striking match to watch for a lot of reasons. At 6’3, Dante towers over 5’5 Menace, but the even more striking mismatch is in experience. Menace has wrestled thousands of opponents, and that’s probably not even an exaggeration, while Dante is the first to admit that he walked onto the mat with nothing but enthusiasm on his resume. So Menace has his way with the long tall hottie. But in my interview, I actually mentioned to Dante that one of the things that grabbed me was his suffering.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s Rookie Wreckers 3 starring Dante Lesen and Masked Menace]

Dante sounds like a newbie getting ripped apart, limb from mile long limb, by the heartless veteran heel. There’s this edge of despair, as he chokes on the pain. Like the last 13 minutes of him screaming in agony earns him nothing but more crushing abuse, but he can’t stop himself but to continue screaming. He also has this stop and start to his crying out, like he’s trying to swallow it, trying not to show his panicked pain, but his body just won’t obey him, and his anguished screams just keep getting milked out of him anyway. The sweet suffering is totally testament to Masked Menace’s limitless heel skills, right? But it also builds this gorgeous character of a tall, fit, baby faced pretty boy with military training who just gets overwhelmed and driven right over the edge his first time giving this homoerotic wrestling thing a try.

Suffering as character building, so to speak, is also this crucial meta theme for an iconic homoerotic wrestler like Brad Rochelle. So, yeah, I recognize I’m now 3 for 3 when it comes to episodes where I sample Brad, but honestly, listen to this and you tell me this isn’t extra level hot.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s Demolition 3 starring Dom the Dominator and Brad Rochelle]

That’s Brad getting bounced around in Dom the Dominator’s torture rack in BG East’s Demolition 3. Fuck, Brad suffered so fucking well. He was the rock hard, stunningly handsome, fratboy jock, and he got demolished so gorgeously that they made an entire series just built on his character arc, trapped in the nefarious small print of Kid Leopard’s contract. Honestly, I think you have to have gotten off to Brad getting demolished in order to truly appreciate the stunning 180 degrees of post Combeback Brad, who’s been burning shit down as Jonny Firestorm’s back-up dancer, charging in and double-teaming Jonny’s opponent’s when Jonny can’t quite seem to get the job done all on his own. Yeah, honestly, anyone who has yet to get off on Brad squashed back around the turn of the century, put down your dicks and get that homework done first before you savor Brad snarling and sneering and intoxicated by the delicious allure of the dark side in 2024.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s The Comeback 3 starring Kal Connor, Jonny Firestorm, and Brad Rochelle]

Yeah, that’s Brad laughing maniacally as he works with Jonny to double-team Kal Connor, announcing that Kal’s youth and good looks are an affront to the veterans age and experience, and thus he deserves to get his face stomped. It’s more than 25 years in the making, and it brings it all full circle, as Brad wrings out of gorgeous Kal the same terror and agony that got crushed out of him those many years ago.

Van Skylar is another hot jock hunk who demonstrates how sweet suffering can be sensational character arc. When Van hit BG East, he was gorgeous as hell, looking like he climbed directly out of a go-go boy cage and into the ring. And like Brad, as a rookie, Van worked the long sell. Like in Jobberpaloozer 14, he refuses to admit to Brute Baynard that he doesn’t belong in the same ring with the huge pro heel. So, Van’s suffering starts off low key. He’s contained, almost making me worried he’s going to undersell, but no, it’s just him biting his lip and refusing to give Brute the satisfaction of hearing him hurting, everytime Brute demands to know, “Do you still think you belong in my ring!?”. So it’s that much more magnificent to watch that wall come crumbling down, and by two-thirds of the way through the match, he’s begging and weeping, which gets him nothing but more punishment, but now his filter is off. He’s just suffering hard, with that edge of what-the-fuck-was-I-thinking despair in his pleading voice.

 [Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s Jobberpaloozer 14 starring Brute Baynard and Van Skylar]

Of course, all of this sort of begs the question of why… why does the sound of convincing suffering make me swoon? What’s the circuitry that accounts for how me hearing a hot jock whimpering and wailing gets instantly translated into me being incredibly turned on? I hold “why” questions like this lightly at this point in my life. When it comes to reflecting on sexual tastes, particularly sexual tastes outside of the mainstream, why questions can easily collapse into feeling pressure to justify my sexual tastes, which I think is a waste of time that only serves to prop up mistaken ideas of what’s “normal.” But this question of why I’m so turned on by hot suffering wrestlers is an interesting intellectual question for me. It’s not like I’m turned on by suffering in almost any other context. I’m not getting off on people’s pain and misery under any other circumstances. But I think part of what makes it so hot for me in the context of wrestling is the implicit contract between the wrestlers. They’ve both signed up for this. The only difference between the one suffering and the one gloating is who’s managed to come out on top. Back at the start of the match, they were both cocky, optimistic, looking forward to proving themselves as the better man, and both picturing themselves as the victor savoring the suffering and humiliation of their opponent. It’s not like criminal assault gets me hard, but that battle of wills and skills and egos that turns into one wrestler being crushed and possessed… that does. And clearly, it turns on others, as well. Sometimes, clearly, even the wrestlers want it. There’s this magical moment in BG East’s the Great Outdoors, when Kid Karisma and Carter Alexander are locked in a back and forth battle of insanely hot physiques. They’re both plucky and cocky, and despite being a novice, Carter is giving as good as he gets for a while, boasting that he will not, cannot ever submit. And then the Kid Karisma train starts rolling down the tracks, and Carter is seriously regretting those words. He’s taking a mountain of humiliating punishment, and the more he refuses to submit, the more nasty KK gets. Kid Karisma is threatening to knock the big boy out in a rear naked choke, and he’s latched on and Carter’s going nowhere, and he starts pulling on Carter’s hair…

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s The Great Outdoors 2 starring Carter Alexander and Kid Karisma]

Yeah, fuck, you heard right. Carter says he likes it when Kid Karisma pulls on his hair. He begs him to pull on his hair again and again, even as he’s grunting and choking and struggling to stay awake with KK’s gargantuan arm clamped across his throat. Okay, so sure, I don’t know if Carter intended it more as a bro-down trashtalk defense, but I read it as this incredibly erotic moment of sincerity. When push comes to shove, Carter demands that Kid Karisma hurt him more because he likes it. Holy fuck. Keep watching that match for more little erotic gems, like Carter sitting on KK’s face in a fold over pin and punching the fuck out of the redhead’s award winning muscle ass and Carter absolutely crowing about how much fun he’s having pounding that ass.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s The Great Outdoors 2 starring Carter Alexander and Kid Karisma]

So, whether wrestlers want to get hurt, or they’re just willing to risk getting hurt in order to put the hurt on an opponent, the suffering that results is like a shot of adrenaline coursing through my body as I watch and listen. Of course, there is such a thing as too much sell. There’s a brand of wrestler who so clearly gets off on being dominated and beaten up that he’s telegraphing it from the start. So, early on in the match, he’s screaming bloody murder from any incidental bump in a blatant oversell that sort of deflates the premise for me. Again, my policy is not to call out what wrestlers or matches that I think are getting it wrong, but… I’ll just say, my best wrestling-obsessed buddy and I have a short list of the wrestlers who make us roll our eyes because they so clearly oversell and want to get beat up just a bit too much.  It’s definitely not a more is more scenario, when it comes to how a wrestler’s suffering is an erotic turn on for me. What’s hot is just the right amount of suffering, in proportion to the hold that the wrestler is in, and where they are in the match, and just what the stakes are that he’s facing if he loses. And what’s “just right” can depend on the wrestler himself who’s owning it, getting vulnerable in a way that’s genuine to him, and letting the rest of us watch him get laid bare.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s Gut Bash 9 starring Eli Black and Morgan Cruise]

That’s Eli Black pummeled way past the point of no return by Morgan Cruise in BG East’s Gut Bash 9. I always love the suspense of watching Eli wrestle, because he’s a dangerous competitor no matter how things play out. When he’s on top and heeling, he’s relentlessly sadistic, which makes it that much more intense watching him in a match like this where he’s absolutely trounced and stomped into a quivering mess of weeping humiliation.

Why does that turn me on? Fuck, I don’t even really know. I just know it does, and honestly, that’s enough for me.

So, what about you? How does suffering figure in what turns you on about homoerotic wrestling? Let me know, and let me know whose screams and cries and whimpers trigger the circuitry in you to make you swoon. You can share your take by commenting on the blog, like adorable Donny, who commented on the post for episode 2. It feels hugely validating to hear Donny say that reading the blog and listening to Sidelineland Sounds makes him feel seen and understood as he explores his guilty pleasure of enjoying homoerotic wrestling. I got a few messages over on Instagram, including Cecil who disclosed that he’s in the camp that finds trash talk “yawn emoji,” but it’s all good, because Cecil and I agree completely that watching Jake Jenkins wrestle is always a pleasure. Also on Instagram, Dave chimed in to chide me for not mentioning Scott Williams as the biggest trash talker of all, though, in my defense, I did sample Scott’s trash talk as paradigmatic of the genre back in episode 1. Also commenting on the topic of trash talk from episode 2, Joey V made a compelling case for the trash talking skills of Chace LaChance and Rock Hard Wrestling’s Alex Waters, so thanks Joey for those recommendations! So drop me a line one way or another and let me know your thoughts about the sounds of suffering by commenting on the blog, on Instagram, or by email at wrestlebard@gmail.com. No one has yet to share an audio comment, so I’m still waiting for someone to break that ice and verbally join in the conversation as well.

I’ll call that a wrap on Sidelineland Sounds episode 3. For the next episode, I plan on tuning the mic to listen to the nonverbal sounds that make my pulse pound hotter in a wrestling match, like the collision of muscles, the thump of punches and slap of chest chops, and all of the ambient noises like ropes squeaking and bodies pounding into a ring that make me involuntarily salivate like Pavlov’s dog. Until then, keep enjoying what you enjoy about homoerotic wrestling and let me know what and who is turning you in homoerotic wrestling on these days, and if you’re interested in one man’s take on the same topic, keep your eyes on Sidelineland… because you you know, I’m going to keep telling you what’s turning me on about it. 

[Bell Ring – sound credit: BG East’s Three-Way Thrash 6]