I know few fans who spend nearly as much time as I do trying to put into words what it is that is so compelling about homoerotic wrestling. There’s something to be said for just experiencing the moment, not trying to analyze and categorize it. But for good or ill, I tend to spend a ton of time in my head, and I just have to marvel at the place wrestling holds in my homoerotic fantasies.
Ironically, I think that an essential quality of the very best homoerotic wrestling is, for lack of a better word, “presence.” That is, I always dock a wrestler a few points for overthinking, for telegraphing he self-consciousness, for failing to sell me on his singular focus on this moment, this man facing him, this battle of bodies and egos and desires. I’ve bitched about wrestlers not quite hitting this mark often. But I’m working on bitching less, so let me focus on a wrestler who I think is one of the absolute best, perhaps the best, at possessing the moment with complete, all-in, entirely focused presence: Kid Vicious.
Doing a quick review of my archives, I find that I’ve not really devoted an entire post to Kid Vicious, though he’s one of the most frequently mentioned wrestlers here at neverland. The word “master” and its derivations seem to be the most common description in my reflections on KV. I’ve called him the master of the OTK, because no one exploits the total vulnerability and self-serve sampling of an opponent’s crotch locked up tight in an OTK quite like him. I once dubbed him the master of the maneuver of an offensive liplock, with the apparent power to suck the will right out of an opponent and leave him in a pool of total erotic submission at his feet.
Obviously, I’m not the only one who recognizes Kid Vicious as iconic in the world of homoerotic wrestling. I I asked Ken Canada to reminisce about some of the wrestling icons he faced in the ring, Kid Vicious was the first name off his lips. Then it was my interview with Shane McCall that really got me thinking about what it is that KV does so, so right. Shane remembered several devastating private training sessions he experienced at the hands of Kid Vicious (what I wouldn’t pay to be a fly on that wall!). In addition to learning from the best how to brutally crush and humiliate an opponent, Shane reflected on more metaphysical aspects of homoerotic wrestling he learned from KV. He summarized Kid Vicious’ heel philosophy as, “if you are not enjoying every moment tearing a jobber apart piece by piece then your fans are not going to enjoy watching it.”
That gets me most of the way to what it is that makes me such a Kid Vicious fan. I enjoy watching him wrestle so much in large part because he so clearly enjoys his work. I believe him when he smiles with delight as a hot hunk is crumbling before him. It isn’t just that he smiles at all the right times, but that he inhabits each moment with an emotional authenticity that I can’t help but be captivated by. He growls and snarls at the same time his magnificent cock swells, leaving no doubt when a particular moment, a specific hold, a singular whimper or spasm of pain from his opponent is turning him on. His Billy Idol lip curl makes me weak in the knees for all of its self-congratulatory cockiness and hunger with just the right sprinkling of amusement at how far his opponent is about to fall. But yeah, it’s that smile the probably testifies most directly to the truth in Shane’s words: Kid Vicious makes me enjoy watching him tear his opponents apart because he, so clearly, enjoys every moment of tearing his opponents apart. Piece by throbbing piece.
At the top of my list of blogging frustrations is never (yet) getting an interview with Kid Vicious. I did get to meet him when I made my pilgrimage to BG East a few years ago. After picking my jaw up off the floor and wiping away the drool from my lips, I got to talk for quite a while with him, but it wasn’t exactly an interview. And that was one of those rare moments when the present was just too overwhelming for me to analyze and categories and take notes to remember in order to report later. In follow up correspondence, I did get him to agree to an interview sometime. Sometime.
In the mean time, I hope we see more of the iconic homoerotic heel in the ring soon. And I hope that a lot of the sexy, young slices of beef strutting and preening their way into homoerotic wrestling matches today take a few notes from the master about enjoying your wrestling matches, taking pleasure in your opponents, and turning off the “am I doing this right” inner monologue long enough just be in that fucking ring with that hot opponent trying to conquer you.
Sidelineland 