I’ve hardly been subtle when it comes to my keen interest in interviewing homoerotic wrestlers. Reading Joe’s awesome interviews has given me a powerful craving to sit down with the athletes that have inspired so many of my fondest erotic fantasies and find out what it’s like being on their side of the camera. My interview with reigning homoerotic wrestler of the month and favorite homoerotic wrestler (non-pornboy division), Lon Dumont, pretty much gave me a natural high for about three months earlier this year. So it’s no wonder that I was ecstatic to receive an email from classic BG East jobber and hot, hairy, über-proudly Canadian, Ken Canada.
Turns out, Ken reads neverland! He had some interesting insights to share about some of our favorite current BG East wrestlers that we might like to double-team together (watch your back, Mr. Joshua!). Ever the intrepid pseudo-journalist and homoerotic wrestling fanatic, I followed up by asking Ken if he’d be willing to give me an interview. I tried to be all cool and non-chalant about it (while silently pleading to Gaelic gods of my ancestors, who I don’t actually believe in, for him to say yes). His enthusiastic agreement gave me a shot of adrenaline that’s still pumping through my veins.
Here’s the first half of our extensive conversation about Ken Canada’s journey of self-discovery through the world of homoerotic wrestling. I’m including links to the wrestling videos that he mentions (you’re going to want to re-discover these gems!), and I’ll post the second half of the interview tomorrow. So sit back, enjoy, and if you’re at all like me, you’ll be delighted to find that Ken Canada will charm the pants off you!
Bard: Let me just say again, for the record, how thrilled and humbled I am to get to interview The Ken Canada! How did you first get involved in wrestling?
Bard: Sounds like the jobbers really grabbed your attention early on.
Ken:
Among the hunk jobbers – and there’ve been so many over the years to “ogle” – Tom Zenk has always been closest to my heart…and to my more “southerly” body parts as well! Tommy Zenk’s still my all time favorite jobber. Aside from being drop dead gorgeous and having formerly held the very prestigious bodybuilding title of Mr. Minnesota, Tommy has always maintained his extraordinary body, keeping it in prime condition. Ever the consummate jobber, he also knew well which body positions he should adopt when being beaten down within the ring. While he’d be sprawled out upon on the ring floor, Z-Man excelled at “selling” feigned jobber agony by writhing about in a myriad of delightfully arousing contorted body positions – offering his audience a wide variety of sexually stimulating images, which (and thank God for VCR’s…and for the even more recent, and much better, PVR’s) they’d often tirelessly “scrotum-ize” over in private later. And so, it was via the pausing and then slow-mo forwarding of sexually arousing images of such wrestlers as Z-Man, Brad Armstrong, Steve Strong, Alex Wright, Rene Dupree, Romeo Roselli, etc. that I’d mitigated what would have otherwise been a somewhat traumatic, kicking-and-screaming eventual acceptance of my own homosexuality. These televised wrestlers became my brothers…my “Ken-dred” spirits!
Bard: I can totally identify. There’s a reason Tom Zenk in mid-dropkick is the banner image for my blog. What a fantasy man! So when did you get tuned into explicitly homoerotic wrestling?
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| BG East Classic: Brian Baxter |
Ken: When I was about twenty-eight, I was living in downtown Toronto, Ontario. I’d become friends with a couple of gay guys who shared my obsessive passion for pro-wrestling and for how I’d naturally eroticize the family-friendly ring choreography in the televised matches. One afternoon, one of my buddies had invited me over to his place to watch a new video that he’d recently received in the mail from an erotic wrestling company out of Pembroke, Massachusetts, called, BG East Wrestling. I sat next to him transfixed upon the screen. I couldn’t believe that what had been going on inside my mind over the past twelve or more years, had actually been captured on film! It seemed surreal! This life altering match, which had effectively served to throw open my morally locked flood gates and to subsequently release the long, backed-up flood waters within me, featured Brian Baxter and the head of the BG East empire himself…Mr. Kid Leopard. It was, and still is, a wildly hot, sexually explosive match.
Bard: Superbouts 1! I’ve got that on DVD, and it’s fantastic! Baxter drips cocky, smart-ass sexuality and KL pushes every single button I’ve got. I can completely understand how that match could catalyze a burgeoning wrestling kink!
Ken: It’s awesome!!! I ‘d bought one on video years ago, but I think it’s time that I order the upgraded, DVD version myself! Before leaving my friend’s apartment, I’d written down the BG East mailing address, which appeared at the end of the video. The next evening, I wrote a short note to Kid Leopard, in which I’d asked him if he ever welcomed Canadian guys to have a shot at becoming a BG East wrestler, and I’d mailed it off to him that next morning. I guess it was about maybe ten days or two weeks later; I was home making dinner and the phone rang. It was Kid Leopard himself! I couldn’t believe it! I felt just like a “gob-smacked”, word-challenged groupie!
Bard: Holy crap! Just like that? You see your first homoerotic wrestling match and two weeks later you’re talking to The Boss of BG East?! That’s incredible! When was this?
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| Ken hanging out in Pembroke |
Ken: I think the call came sometime in the spring of 1996. I’m pretty sure it was then, because, by the end of our conversation – which lasted over half an hour – Kid Leopard had invited me down to Pembroke, Massachusetts for the coming July Fourth weekend. He’d also invited maybe twelve or fifteen veteran BG East wrestlers from his wrestlers’ stable in order to film some hot wrestling matches in between the partying times. I’d arrived late on the Friday afternoon. I remember that my heart was racing wildly as I walked up to the front door. Now, here I was, on the doorstep of Kid Leopard’s lair and of the home of BG East. As the door opened, Kid Leopard greeted me with a big, grinning smile and a strong, wrestler’s handshake.
Bard: I know what you mean! I was there this summer, and my heart was racing when I stood there on the doorstep and KL opened the door. The BG East compound is amazing, isn’t it?
Ken: The house was magnificent. Everywhere I looked, the place dripped with tasteful elegance tempered by touches of cozy comfort. It felt like how home should feel. Within moments, I was downstairs in the Mat Room. There I was…actually standing on the BG East, black wrestling mats with their signature logo, where many young, muscular wrestling studs had lost their match, their dignity and puddles of hard- earned sweat, among other precious bodily fluids. Oh! If only those mats could talk! And then we headed back upstairs..all the way up to the uppermost floor to the BG East Ring Room! As the door to the room swung open and the ring became visible, I suddenly felt a small lump form in my throat. Wow! This is it! The mother lode! I felt just like Richard Dreyfus’ character must’ve felt in Speilberg’s, “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind”…awestruck, mesmerized, and not wanting to be anywhere else! This was it; my raison d’être. I wanted to climb up and enter that mothership of spaces and to be instantly transported up, up and away from this humdrum world. I just needed someone to pinch me in order to truly know that it was really real, and that I wasn’t just in the middle of some wonderful, but short-lived dream!
Bard: You were living a fantasy thousands of us have dreamed of!
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| BG East’s Sal Bruno |
Ken: That next day, Saturday, I received more than a mere pinch. I was punched, slapped, stretched, spread-eagled, and had my eagerly churning baby-makers punched and squeezed repeatedly by none other than big, bulging, sexy, sadistic heel, Sal Bruno. My inaugural BG East match was up against this hunky, muscular, goatee-sporting, monster heel of a man.
Bard: Looks like that was the only BG East match Sal Bruno wrestled. He looks like he was quite a hunk! What was it like to stand there in the ring with him?
Ken: He’d just keep coming at me in the ring relentlessly! Sure. I’d asked…O.K., begged for everything that was about to be handed me. And, as the old adage goes and as I would all too soon come to learn (…and painfully so): “Be careful what you ask for!” Sal Bruno pulled no punches. He did pull my hair, though. Reciprocating proved pretty challenging though. He was/is still pretty much bald, but I have to say that bald was, and shall always most definitely be, a very sexy look on Sal!
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| Ken Canada’s introduction to BG East wrestling |
Bard: Some of my favorite wrestlers are bald. What was your game plan against him?
Ken: So, failing at any attempts to strike back at the big lug by means of hair pulling, I was forced to resort to a more accessible target: the big, blue elephant in the room… Sal’s massive bulge. That was to be my intended target… prominent, hard to miss, and it appeared to grow even larger with every passing moment of our match! It was kinda’ exciting being trapped beneath Sal’s massive, sweaty bulge, though. OK, I have to admit that most of my protests to the contrary were merely weak attempts at acting like I was feeling humiliated or abused. Truth be known, I loved every moment that this big, hunky heel’s swollen, blue basket was pressed into/onto my face; covering and smothering my nose and mouth so that all I could breath and taste was Sal’s intoxicating man scent! (Ohhh, YEAHHHHHH! )
Bard: Oh my God. I may have to take a break here. This is turning me on! Oh, fuck it. I want to hear more…
Ken: The next night, I was to experience yet another unbelievably wonderful wrestling dream: BG East’s first ever oil-wrestling orgy in which every body part of every BG East wrestler who’d been there that weekend had been slathered up with oil and then thrown into the hot, writhing fray. Kid Leopard had called it, “Wrestlefest 1,” and all I can remember about having been part of it, is how I’ve never experienced anything even remotely close to the raunchy thrills I was experiencing in the BG East ring on that magical evening.
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| Ken Canada right where he belongs: the the middle of BG East’s Battle R’Oil |
Bard: The Wrestlefest Battle R’Oil!!! What an insanely hot scenario! That match was a veritable who’s who of classic BG East fantasymen. Dark Rogers, Ian Nesbitt, DW, Shane McCall… if I’m not mistaken, it looks like you were having an insanely good time slathered in oil. Was it even half as over-the-top sexy as it looks?
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| Ken and his brothers-in-wrestling |
Ken: On DVD, it looks hot, but believe me…actually being a part of it was ten times hotter! The arousing feeling of all those hot, slippery muscular bodies making full contact with each other, with many strong, curious hands eagerly reaching into each other’s bulging, oil-dripping spandex is unlike anything you’ve ever even dreamed of experiencing! And to add to the raunchiness, Kid Leopard had chosen to dim the room lights. Ahhhhhhh…Ohhhhh! Yeahhhhh! On my final night there, the film, “Independence Day” had just opened in the theaters, and I’d asked if we could all go as a group to see it. The film was a lot of fun, but what I’d most enjoyed that evening in that darkened theater was the feeling of being nestled next to my wrestling idols and newfound “brothers;” sharing something which went far beyond a movie – it felt almost as if I’d found a place in a second family which, up until that weekend, I didn’t even know I’d had. From a small group of like-minded, beautiful men who had, on that weekend, assembled in Pembroke, Massachusetts from all over the world, I’d made wonderful new friends, with whom I’ll be forever brothers in wrestling!
Bard: What a heart-warming image, picturing you all hanging out together and taking in a movie.
Ken: Yeah, I felt like I was sitting around the dinner table at the Walton’s house. “Good night, John Boy!”
Sidelineland 