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What a Shame

September 7, 2023 wrestlebardLeave a comment

Someone who has wrestled for both indy pro promoters and homoerotic wrestling producers once told me that in mainstream pro wrestling, making cash on the side by wrestling for gay eyes is considered a dirty little joke. Like, everyone knows that a lot of “legit” pro wrestlers do it, but it’s sort of an embarrassment that you aren’t supposed to talk about. I get the impression that it’s an “understandable” (to the straight gaze) side hustle, but it’s a roll-your-eyes-and-smirk sort of thing. Wrestling kink is the nudge-nudge-wink-wink punch line in an otherwise (still) hetero/macho dominated bro-y locker room culture. Playing up a gay trope in the ring has been around for generations. Openly gay wrestlers have been making a name for themselves in mainstream pro wrestling for a few years now, and while I’m sure it’s hardly easy sailing, it’s marketable enough for them to still get work. But having wrestled for BG East or W4H or Muscleboy or Weekend or any of the wrestling producers marketing not just to gay eyes, but to the homoerotic gaze turned on in particular by wrestling, isn’t something to be proud of.

Adrian Adonis, not gay, but wrestled gay for a mainstream pro wrestling audience

Over the past 14 years of blogging, I’ve occasionally had wrestlers contact me to ask me to pull down images and reviews of them as they take a run at breaking into mainstream pro wrestling. Sometimes, it’s specifically more erotically-oriented wrestling that they’d like to expunge from the internet record. Sometimes it’s just the fact that they wrestled for a company that explicitly markets to a wrestling kink-oriented audience. In either case, I always do it; and it always feels a little like I’m propping up the erotic-shame machine that so many of us have had to come to terms with in one fashion or another. The only reason I can think that it would help a wrestler’s chances to catch a break in wrestling for a mainstream (<–read hetero) audience is that the audience and the producers figuring out how to squeeze their marks couldn’t see their wrestling talent through the blurry haze of social stigma and shame encircling them for having done their thing knowing full-well guys like me are getting off on it. It’s not how talented they can be in the ring or in front of the camera. It’s the scarlet letter “K” tattooed across their chest for having been stained by association with wrestling kink.

I’ve been mulling all of this anew lately because MeetFighers recently released, with some aplomb and fanfare, an announcement entitled “Welcome to: Dating, Erotic content, Porn, Fetish, Kink, and Sex!” (exclamation point and misused colon included). You can read it here, but what’s been provoking deeper thoughts from me about it is this careful line that the administrators of MeetFighters and related sites are drawing between wrestling (and other combat sports) and wrestling kink. Apparently, they’ve received a lot of feedback for a while asking for them to reconsider their “firm stance on erotic content limits, especially when it comes to avatar pictures.” As back story, publicly visible pics on MeetFighters cannot be “too” erotic, and especially avatar photos used for MeetFighters accounts. What is “too” erotic, as you might guess, is a matter for debate among wildly disparate points of view. Ostensibly, if someone might see similar content and body exposure on mainstream television, then it’s okay. However, I’ve spoken with several guys who’ve shared avatar pics that have been disallowed as “too erotic,” and honestly, I cannot tell what line they’ve crossed. No full frontal, but having a big package, for example, appears to trip the sensors (sorry, Mr. Joshua, I hope you don’t dare show your award-winning bulge around those parts). The approval process for MeetFighters is crowd-sourced, and for the past several months, I’ve been diligently reviewing photos and giving my feedback on how erotic they appear to me to be. After you’ve assigned a rating, you can later see how you rated a photo and what the “final decision” was based on other crowd sourced ratings, and, seriously, I seem to be some sort of raving libertine, always (always) rating content at least one or two standard deviations less erotic than they’re eventually deemed to be. Anyway, all of that simply to say that MeetFighters has apparently been trying to police the incredibly subjective moving target of eroticism for a long time, in ways that many have disagreed with and found frustrating, of course.

Clayton Nash & Ross Davidson, Frisco Fights 2 (gay)

What catches my attention most in the MeetFighters announcement is the line that says, “Simply put, your public avatar and profile should represent the sport, not porn.” That is, there’s a clear and marked distinction between the sport of wrestling and kink. “The sport” refers to wrestling (and other combat sports represented on MeetFighters, but as far as I can tell, it’s predominantly wrestling-focused), and “porn” appears to refer to open acknowledgement of being turned on by wrestling. For context, when you sign up for MeetFighters and set up your profile, as I did a few months ago, there are several categories of preset, point-and-click options that the platform offers for you to provide your interests/reasons for having a profile:

“…profile should represent the sport, not porn.”

One of those sets of potential interests is entitled (by MeetFighters) as “Fetishes,” in which you can click on preferences such as being interested in sex, wanting to “wrestle for top,” be interested in cock-and-ball torture, having an interest in jacking off with an opponent (among many others). That’s part of the built-in options MeetFighters gives for users’ profiles… and… “your public avatar and profile should represent the sport, not porn.” I’m not pointing this out trying to call anyone out for hypocrisy or point fingers, but simply to point out that there isn’t an objective, clearly identifiable demarcation between what is “wrestling” and what is wrestling kink, and disentangling the two is… well, I’ll just say that it’s obviously fraught.

Pro wrestlers Effy and Chris Dickinson wrestling for Beyond Wrestling (performatively gay to a presumably non-kink audience)

MeetFighters new move in this chess game of social propriety is to create a new, separate platform. This new platform is called Lustfinity.com, and “promises to be an inclusive sanctuary for every imaginable fantasy and kink.” The roll out of Lustfinity appears to be all about kinks and fetishes, with nary a word about wrestling. It feels a lot like… well, like everything else that’s part of the erotic-shaming industrial complex, that says, “Your erotic interests in wrestling are not a wrestling interest. Don’t sully recreational meet-up wrestling with too much open discussion of your motivation being about how turned on you are by wrestling, by watching wrestling, by wrestling other guys, by talking about it and writing about it and sharing what you find hot about it. That’s a conversation about lust, not wrestling.” And those who are interested in meet-up wrestling and also clicking the “not interested in fetishes” preset option in their profile, apparently may be scandalized by the not-so-well-kept secret that a whole lot (a WHOLE FUCKING LOT) of MeetFighters profiles are for guys deeply invested in one or more homoerotic aspects of wrestling. These are all, ostensibly, adults, mind you (you have to be to sign up for an account). Of the 20 newest accounts created just today, as I write this, 16 of them list specific fetishes they’re interest in under “fetishes” or describe erotic scenarios they’re interested in as part of their introduction. I have no idea how representative of a sample that is of MeetFighters as a whole, but… that line between being turned on by wrestling and “the sport” is not objectively discernible.

Wade Cutler and Phil Latini in X-Fights 15 (gay)

The social project of policing the erotic (not just sex, but what is erotic) has a long, complex, and pretty insidious history. The “shame industrial complex,” as I described it above, reinforces all sorts of structures of social power that disenfranchise some and privilege others in concrete ways. MeetFighers’ Lustfinity project isn’t the first effort, and certainly won’t be the last, to distinguish eroticism from more socially acceptable topics, even when everyone reads the erotic subtext long coded into those socially acceptable topics (especially when everyone reads the erotic subtext!). I don’t think there’s any singular nefarious actor or tsk-tsking church lady to blame, because we’re all swimming in this same stream of history, in small ways and big ways going with the flow (and thereby making the flow that much more compelling for everyone), or, occasionally, swimming up stream, and bumping into and irritating the majority of folks who’d just rather be swept along with the subjective, changeable, ultimately unequally apportioned opportunities that come with the status quo.

MJF and Jonathan Gresham wrestling for Limitless Wrestling (not gay)

But all of this makes me think of a couple of things about my own swimming strokes. One of the things that has consistently surprised me from blogging about my homoerotic wrestling interests has been the number of individuals who have reached out to say, “I thought I was the only one!” I think that’s the way the shame industrial complex works, really. Silencing the erotic leaves most of us questioning why do we have these feelings? Why do we react this way? If it’s not heteronormative erotic-romanticism force fed to us in popular media, then we’re left under the mistaken impression that our experience is novel, niche, marginal, and aberrant. So, stumbling upon someone naming something that propriety defines as out of bounds for acceptable conversation feels revelatory. I can’t tell you how much back channel feedback I got about my recent post about growing up keying off of wrestling and fitness magazines, from so many readers who had the same experience, or close enough of that experience to feel seen by me writing about my experience. I’m proud of that, and it’s something that keeps me investing in writing more posts. I think that Lustfinity and other kink-positive corners of the internet offer some of that normalizing atmosphere. But I also think that a kink-ghetto probably advances the shame industrial complex at least as much as it works against it. The aspect of it all that says, “you aren’t into wrestling, you’re into your kink, so take that conversation elsewhere” probably isn’t 100% oppressive or liberatory, but I think it’s a little more the former.

Tyrell Tomsen and Braden Charron in Strip Stakes 1 (gay)

The other thing that this has led me to reflect on more deeply is the ways in which I buy into the shame industrial complex. I disclose A LOT on here about myself, but strategically don’t disclose everything, in order to try to bifurcate my life into what is and isn’t socially proper. A lot of people in my life who could know that I’m into homoerotic wrestling don’t, because I haven’t chosen to have that conversation in all of the places where people might otherwise casually talk about their erotic interests. I don’t exactly know where even I think the line ought to be between how I engage in the world as someone who participates in erotic interests and as someone who participates in any of the other interests that define me. My hunch is that shame tends to lean on that line more than I’d really like it to or am aware of. And when I don’t disclose with friends at the same level they do with me about what they find attractive, titillating, provocative and sexually exciting, I’m doing my little part to hold the whole edifice of shame and social power up. Like we all do, whenever we get tired of swimming against what feels like an irresistible current.

Pro wrestlers Kip Sabian and Dom Kubrick wrestling for Bar Wrestling (not gay)

I’m not sure what my point is here, other than to say I’m into wrestling. Maybe not the way you are, or for the same reasons. I’m into wrestling, and it’s a primary turn on for me. In into wrestling, and its homoerotic text and subtext give me a lot of pleasure. I’m gay, and turned on by wrestling, and turned on when I’m wrestling. I’m into wrestling, and I reject anyone else trying to tell me to pipe down and take that “naughty talk” out back. I’m into wrestling. Deal with it.

Next Time, Be Ready!

September 5, 2023 wrestlebardLeave a comment

“No rush or anything, I’m just facing some bitch, Kirk.”

“Hey, we didn’t ask for a deep tissue massage, buddy,” Leroy Blaze complains when his masseur starts digging in a little deep. “You can lighten up. No rush, or anything. I’m just facing that bitch Kirk.” What Leroy doesn’t realize is that Kirk Donahue just showed up and silently interrupted his massage, paying off the masseur (fuck, $100 is the going bribe?!?), and taking over the job(ber) himself. Unbeknownst to the jobber, Kirk silently claws at Leroy’s hot, lean muscles. He digs his knuckles and his elbows into the muscle fibers, grinding and crushing in a way that probably isn’t all the “therapeutic,” really. Kirk suddenly hammerlock’s Leroy’s right arm behind his back and claws the fuck out of his shoulders. Pretense aside, Leroy looks up to realize he’s in a world of danger. Kirk wraps Leroy’s towel around the jobber’s throat and drags him through the facilities to deposit him in the ring.

It’s that fucking attitude of Leroy’s the just keeps getting him into trouble. He’s double-booked the start of his match with Kirk and his last 30 minutes of his massage. With astonishing contempt for his opponent (astonishing, considering the way Leroy’s been steamrolled thus far in his BG East career), he just keeps asking for it. And holy fuck, BG East heels see this jobber’s long, lean, ripped physique and tuck into him like he’s a Thanksgiving turkey. The rising champ of over-the-top snark, Leroy bitches about not having “paid for deep tissue massage” even as Kirk is carving into him. Oh, fuck yeah, he’s deserving every relentlessly vicious, crippling attack he gets. “You’re just mad you weren’t the one getting a massage,” Leroy snarks unwisely between getting stomped and trampled like the mudroom rug. Fuck. Would Kirk be the sadistic dick of a heel he is if Leroy wasn’t such a smart ass? Trust me. We’ll never know the answer to that question for sure (because Leroy is SUCH a fucking smart ass).

Maybe next time get that massage after the match?

I mean, fuck, yeah, Leroy looks tasty. Those shiny silver trunks accentuate his skinny-boy-perky-booty nicely. He’s an illustration from a college anatomy and physiology textbook, every fucking muscle in crystal clear relief as every long inch of him is being stretched out and tortured. Once again, he has that barefoot babyface vibe, a mix of equal parts ambition, earnestness, athleticism, and naivete. When he’s getting slammed inches into the ring again and again, you can see the bolts of agony arcing their way through the length of his long limbs. His legs twisting and writhing, kicking uselessly behind him as he’s tapping out to a chin lock and knee to the back, is a compellingly steamy vision of hot jock suffering.

This match is apparently the Kirk-as-heel side of “The Two Sides of Kirk,” and coming off of watching him get upset by sultry lightweight Mason Broder, I can’t help but read his bitterness toward Leroy as classic transference. I mean, sure, Leroy’s disrespectful double-booking deserves the heat. But it’s like Kirk is earning back self-respect from some deficit far deeper than just being left waiting in the ring while Leroy gets his shiatsu in. Next to Leroy (and Mason, for that matter), Kirk looks like the seriously beefy heel on the rampage. His (disputed… only by me) award-winning butt looks tasty even to me, squeezed into those lime green trunks. And he’s mean to the core. At one point, he offers to let Leroy submit as soon as the jobber taps the mat… and then locks Leroy’s arms behind his back not letting his digits anywhere near the mat. “Who gets a massage before a wrestling match,” he demands to know, rhetorically, because Leroy’s choking on the pain as Kirk’s boot crushes his spine. “You’re going to need physical therapy after this one!”

It’s pro-quality punishment dished out onto a punishment sponge, so there’s an organic feel to the pairing of these two. Kirk fights vicious and dirty in a way that seems in keeping with an indy pro veteran let loose on a jobber without a ref anywhere in sight. He yanks on Leroy’s hair. He chokes him in the ropes. He does everything and anything to royally fuck up Leroy’s back and destroy any good qi the jobber was storing up from his interrupted massage.

I enjoy seeing flashes of brilliant offense from Leroy when Kirk sinks a fraction too deep into his narcissistic self-worship. Leroy leapfrogs out of the corner he’s thrown into at one point, does a (ragged but respectable) cartwheel, and then catches the heel across the neck with a superhero-quality flying lariat. But then, of course, he loses every shred of humility he ought to have been saving up from the first 15 minutes of the match. Leroy gets cocky, strutting and snarking and gloating over every flinch and grunt from Kirk. Like the postmodern babyface he is, he chokes his opponent in the ropes and slaps him in the face just to add insult to injury. He flicks his sweat in Kirk’s face. He flies high, pushing the seasoned heel hard, taking a gloating, no-effort, foot-on-the-chest pinfall from the rocked indy pro stud. Holy FUCK he takes out such an impossibly huge line of credit, he’s going to be paying that back for the next 20 years.

Kirk puts a stop to that shit decisively and in an instant. There are countless high impact OTKs (hello, made to order for a certain blogger?!). Leroy’s anatomy chart body twisted and tortured in the ropes is stunning. The final 13 minutes of the match are just the first installment on Leroy’s payment plan to try to make a dent in the interest he’s already accrued on that line of credit he just took out gloating and strutting. Kirk uses every inch of the ring to catapult and pummel and pound the hot jobber. He twist-ties Leroy’s once relaxed back around the ring post. Will Leroy walk away from this beating a little wiser? Maybe a little more circumspect? A little less cocky? Will he take Kirk’s parting advice, “Next time, be ready!?” Will he throw fewer punch lines at a vicious heel’s expense? Watching him writhe and choke on his humiliation and anguish, my head tells me that surely Leroy’s learned his lesson. But my heart tells me that we haven’t seen the last of his long, lean, hardbodied smart assness.

RecPro Wrestling

September 1, 2023 wrestlebardLeave a comment

I recently stumbled across some hot new content produced under the name RecPro Wrestling by WRSLMEDIA. It appears to be an earnest as hell little cottage industry that plucks a retro chord paired with smarty, savvy editing, and it feels novel to me. It’s super fresh, with just a few matches currently available after starting to post content about a month ago, but I’ve reached out to the team behind RecPro and they assure me that they’ve got plenty more in the pipeline and on their schedule. It’s a little more organized and thought-through as a cohesive concept than a lot of what I’ve found on WatchFighters. While I am, admittedly, quite new to exploring WatchFighters, I also would venture to say that the editing and final product of RecPro Wrestling is better than the majority of the self-produced content I’ve seen. They’re building a brand, with a fun flavor that feels respectful of homoerotic wrestling histories and sensibilities.

WRSLMSK lives large and in charge at RecPro Wrestling

In their own words, RecPro Wrestling aims to be “a modern day throwback… to the old school traditional style, gear, and pace of the great 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s pro wrestling action.” It’s a little deceptive, because the matches have this pop-up (aka, recreational) feel to them, but the two-camera editing is packaged with some hot polish that gives them great immediacy. I feel like I’m in the room. The damp thuds of sweaty bodies slamming into each other almost echo on my side of the screen. The hand held camera angle, edited skillfully together with a stationary camera, makes the bumps vibrate inside my chest. One of the production team members for RecPro described their brand for me as “raw, underproduced backroom bar-pro-aesthetic,” but I think “underproduced” undersells the quality of the videos so far. There’s a ton of potential, but they’ve already achieved something that feels professional to me.

WRSLMSK on the receiving end of some hot punishment in 001

The wrestling is fucking INTENSE. The pricing so far feels reasonable to me, particularly considering how short the matches are (match 001 is about 15 minutes, match 002 is about 14, each currently for $9.99). But again, the time stamps are deceiving. There’s not a wasted second. The wrestlers are going at it from 00:01, with no editing breaks, no breathers, no pre-match posturing (though, to be honest, I’d love a little pre-match posturing for context with these guys). They are earning that sweat, and they deserve every hard fought submission and pin, and there’s a TON of wrestling happening in that concise time frame.

WRSLMSK appears to be the franchise, starring in everything so far. He’s handsome, with a hot body, and fuck, he’s cocky as he confidently executes sensationally sold pro wrestling moves with hungry, erotic seasoning. And, holy hell, I had NO idea what an itch I had that only a sneering, gloating, taunting Australian accent can scratch.

Mean Machismo’s ass is (screen-) grabable

I think the matches are getting better and better. Match 002 is a nudge better than Match 001, which is a nudge better than the “Genesis Grapple” prequel. I’m pretty sure there’s a mathematical formula that, if this progress were plotted and an x/y axis, would have RecPro taking over the world within a couple of years. But it’s ground floor right here and now, and there’s something exciting about catching sight of their nascent vision.

002, my favorite thus far, features sensational chemistry between WRSLMSK and his leaner, possibly just a fraction less mean opponent, Mean Machismo. I don’t know exactly how these two ended up tearing into each other with this much heat. The super brief match description just says, “This slow methodical school yard bully-meets-jobber beatdown gets started before the bell rings.” Mean Machismo gets a couple of licks in, and I am on the record as a fan of a bully heel taking some licks along the way (WRSLMSK gets worked harder by his 001 opponent). But Mean Machismo in jeopardy, sweet ass wedged and slapped red, rolled over and folded in half like origami, is hot as hell. He’s a fierce, hot hunk, mind you, which only makes it that much more incendiary when Machismo is literally crawling across the mat in full on retreat, trying to claw his battered body to the nearest exit before he gets bashed and groped and possessed any more. (Spoiler alert: he gets bashed, groped, and possessed more). It’s erotic without being explicit, which can be a fine line to walk, but wrapped up in this intensely produced package, it’s just fucking hot.

So, the polished product plays on a “rough cut” VHS aesthetic in 21st century HD, which brings a ton of character. I’d LOVE to know more of the context on the other, unseen edges of the rough cut. Like who are these guys?! Why does WRSLMSK want to fucking DEVOUR Mean Machismo, and why does Mean Machismo put his ass on the line like that against this clearly dangerous sadist? I mean, I know why I would want to fucking DEVOUR Mean Machismo, but that’s the backstory I bring. I’m looking forward to the continued RecPro build out with just… more! More text, more context, more showcasing of the personalities that are shining through the fast and furious quality wrestling. Already, I’m invested, damn it. I want stills. I want bios. I want WRSLMSK to talk to us in that contemptuous Aussie accent about what twisted, fucked up things must have happened to him in his past to make him want to out-hustle and out-muscle tasty opponents and cock-pin their faces to the mat.

Sorry. Sorry. I’ll try not to get ahead of myself, or to jump into the future when RecPro is the fully formed finished product that it hints at with its seriously nice hook of a brand. My thanks to the RecPro boys for giving me permission to share these images here, and for letting me dump a boatload of enthusiastic fanboy feedback into their DMs. Check them out on WatchFighters, and it looks like they’re starting to build out their own web presence on GumRoad.

Remember My Name

August 25, 2023 wrestlebard2 Comments

Apparently, Gabe Steel has met Zach Ramos before, but doesn’t remember him. Now, I’m a virtuoso when it comes to suspending disbelief. I can swallow a whole lot (figuratively speaking), but holy shit, the idea that someone could forget meeting Zach stretches even my professional-level imagination. He’s 6-foot, 200 pounds, and so fucking effortlessly sexy! The goatee. The ponytail. The slyly handsome face. And that ambition?! Fuck. “You’re going to be hearing a lot more of me,” Zach says, smirking in Gabe’s face. And then, when Zach explains that he’s going to make his name at BG East by kicking Gabe’s legendary ass in his debut match, I’m sold.

Zach’s BG East debut against Gabe takes place in the new release Ruff ‘N’ Raunchy 7. The match catches me by surprise for a few reasons. For one reason, Gabe has been eating up and chewing out newbies lately, and I was totally expecting a steam roller of a match. Not that Gabe can’t take a lot, but he’s just been dishing it out so much lately. He’s proven he can squash an outmatched newbie with panache. He looks bigger, harder, and stronger in every match. The next BGE Wrestlefest, save this hunk a seat on the heel bench. So squaring off against another hot newbie babyface has “one-sided romp” written all over it. And early days, it totally reads that way when Gabe muscle bullies the big, pretty boy relentlessly. He has 200 pound Zach off his feet in a bearhug within seconds. He suplexes the rookie with abandon, planting the boy’s lower lumbar inches deep into the ring. And, no shit, within the first couple of minutes, he manhandles Zach suspended upside down and delivers a piledriver to the stunned stud. “I thought you were going to do something, that you were going to make a name for yourself.” Big Gabe has already busted out a sweaty sheen, crowing and sneering over the bashed babyface at his feet. “Still waiting!”

But, just when I’m settled in only half paying attention because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this movie before, Zach stops taking punches and starts delivering them. Just when Gabe has peeled him off the mat like roadkill and has him kneeling at his feet, the rookie starts punching the rock hard wall of Gabe’s gut, and he just doesn’t stop! The punches connect. I’m fucking sold, watching coiled Zach unspool a roundhouse that lifts Gabe off his feet. He beats the big man down with sheer nerve and conviction and has him in a cradle pin that Gabe is too rocked to kick out of. He pries the rising muscle heel apart, joint by joint, with a kneeling surfboard, literally, gleefully, genuinely laughing when Gabe tries to muscle his way to an escape and can’t pull it off. “When I’m done with you, everyone’s going to know my name!”

So Zach packing serious offense and big, big personality to match that big, beautiful body is surprise #1 for me. Surprise #2 is how relentlessly erotic this match turns. It’s like the pull of gravity sending a satellite plunging back to earth, it’s just so fucking irresistible. So, sure, it’s in the Ruff ‘N’ Raunchy product line, so I’m expecting this to turn way sexy. But fuck, I was NOT expecting this! Both hunks go for broke targeting each other’s balls, which isn’t the surprising part. They both get super handsy, shoving their mitts inside each other’s pouches and squeezing the obvious excitement they’re both experiencing harder and harder (again, this ISN’T really the surprising part for me). The crotch-to-crotch grinding, pounding, that fine line between raging domination and just careening toward getting off on each other’s suffering starts to take me a bit by surprise, not so much because it happens, but the ferocity with which it keeps happening. But when the hands on the crotch stop squeezing and start stroking, it absolutely catches me off guard. When the trunks come off and the wrestling continues, every inch of their bodies explored and displayed… fuck, yeah, that was more intense than I expected…

…but holy fuck, when Zach is suspended naked in an inverted bearhug and forced (fuck, no one is telling me he’s not loving his job right then, though) to give the infamous heel head while he hangs there, I’m genuinely surprised by the level of intimacy, strength, and acrobatics. And then, mid-servicing, Gabe delivers a gorgeous, naked piledriver to the rookie!?!? Holy fuck, maybe the biggest surprise for me is that Gabe’s cock is still attached, because I was seriously worried how a mid-fellatio piledriver might turn out for either/both of them.

Zach lands with full on personality. That almost unhinged little spontaneous laugh of his absolutely sends me, making me buy that he’s thrilled to be putting his ass on the line in this bid to establish himself as a BG East wrestler to be remembered. And, sure, maybe, just maybe, I can’t help but identify with him, coming face-to-face with an A-List gay who can’t be bothered to even remember that they’ve met before, and beating the living shit out of him, savoring the moment of Gabe’s suffering on behalf of all of us not quite (yet) impressive enough for a cocky white party it-boy to recall his name.

I’m not saying he comes out on top in this match. But I will put money down on the fact that Gabe is going to remember the name Zach Ramos from this point onward. And the name Zach Ramos is certainly lingering on my lips. Get this gorgeous side of beef back into the ring, pronto!

Crush

August 21, 2023 wrestlebard10 Comments

If you’ve read ANY posts prior to this one, it will come as no surprise when I say that I’m prone to crushes. In no small way, the past 1,683 posts document in excessive detail (I admit) hundreds of moments of my infatuation. They all rotate around the gravitational pull of erotic wrestling for me, of course. Whether I’m crushing on erotic wrestlers, pro wrestlers, or amateur wrestlers, or imagining erotic wrestling between hot actors, models, bodybuilders, or people I spy in my everyday life, my crushes are varied and, simultaneously, singular. I’ve been asked several times recently about my original motivation and approach to starting this blog. Honestly, it took a while for me to spiral in on the heart of what it has become, but at this point, I think of that heart as being about the wrestling crushes that linger, that I feel compelled to explore here. It’s the reason why when, occasionally, someone critiques or complains about what I’ve written about, that it sort of takes me by surprise. This is me, reflecting “out loud” on where my lustful eye lands. I’m thrilled when my reflections intersect with or provoke reflections in others, but honestly, it’s all about me. I swear, I don’t walk through my life prattling on and on about what/who turns me on, but here… yeah. If you’re looking for other content, I’m sure you can find it elsewhere.

Most of what I write about has been wrestling-for-gay-eyes. It’s not always “gay wrestling,” and definitely not always erotic wrestling, but most of my attention settles on the industry that has grown up marketing to guys like me. For about half of the life of the blog, I was maintaining running tallies of my current favorite homoerotic wrestlers, picking out my lasting crushes and my instant infatuations among the new releases from the likes of BG East, Can-Am, Naked Kombat, and the half a dozen more companies that have sprouted from the fertile soil of the early innovators and entrepreneurs. Starting the “discipline” of keeping track of who my favorite wrestler was at any one time, and combing through the new releases each month to highlight one hunk who grabbed me by the balls hardest, probably deserves a lot of the credit for the overall vibe of what I think I’m using this blog for. Like, when I picked Mitch Colby in May of 2009 to be my inaugural reigning favorite homoerotic wrestler, it’s not that I expected him to be everyone’s favorite. I wasn’t proscribing Mitch as somehow independently verifiable as superior to anyone else by any metric other than for being the stunning, 6’2, 200 pound marble statue of Adonis that I couldn’t get my mind off of at the time. When, over the years, commenters have quibble about a choice I’ve made for my reigning favorite homoerotic wrestler, I would always delight in comparing notes, but… no, the choice was never “wrong,” because it was always about who turned me on (and, yeah, I’m THE expert in that, if nothing else!).

Me wrestling TxWresl at Wrestlefest Canada

As I’ve documented here, over the past few months I’ve enjoyed exploring meet-up wrestling for the first time. It’s been an interesting evolution from long-time homoerotic wrestling fanatic to rookie homoerotic wrestler. Well, it’s not like I’ve evolved out of being a fanatic. I continue to nurse my infatuations over the wrestlers that show up regularly on my screens in new releases and classic favorites. I’m both a seasoned, long-time aficionado and a very fresh and untested rookie at the same time. But both in the (over)abundance of what I’ve learned about the pleasure I get from watching homoerotic wrestling, and in my nascent understanding of what I enjoy about participating in homoerotic wrestling myself, my natural inclinations remain the same. The holds and the heat, the range of bodies and builds, the necessary chemistry and vibe are close to the same in turning me on watching or wrestling.

I’ve enjoyed all of my wrestling experiences so far, and I know that I shouldn’t take that for granted. Friends have shared with me stories of meet-ups that have not gone well, or just been downright bad. I haven’t had a match that I regret, or a bad experience with any of my opponents. And, to one extent or another, I develop mini-infatuations on all of them. What is intense and hot and enjoyable is both varied, and singular, as it has been with what I enjoy about watching good homoerotic wrestling. My most recent two matches definitely linger. In my downtime, I find myself wandering to them repeatedly, crushing on a hold, a look, a feel. Maybe these last two matches continue to linger because, well, they’re my most recent two. Or, maybe, it’s because they were both rematches, of a sort. Maybe the heat lingers because, a second (or more) time around with a wrestler, the intensity is jump started by familiarity? Of course, one of the two is Scott Williams, who has been entirely successfully translated from my homoerotic wrestling-watching crush into a homoerotic wrestling opponent crush. This surprises me not in the least, although it still tickles me that Scott is apparently having enough fun with his #1 fan to stubbornly keep coming back for more. He’s been starring in the masturbation reel in my mind for years, and he continues to be hot as hell. So, of course, my mind wanders back to our last match a couple of weeks ago, giving me a little uncomfortable pressure in my pants at inopportune times (no complaints from me, though).

SeattleFight making me wonder whose camel clutch is most punishing, Scott’s or his

The other intrusive, pleasurable memories that my mind’s eye keeps settling on feature the last opponent I wrestled in Toronto three weeks ago. I wrote then about the instant, magnetic impact SeattleFight had on me over and over at WrestleFest. Again, there are some obvious elements that go a long way to explaining why I experienced an instant crush on SeattleFight. He’s handsome and armored in gorgeous (and super functional) muscle. He’s unselfconsciously intense as fuck when he’s wrestling. Maybe less obvious, I also keep returning to my memories of him catching my eye, in groups, at the bar, in a random encounter in a shop on Church Street, and repeatedly experiencing this electric spark. When we’ve exchanged messages since, my heart skips just a little with excitement to see something from him. Yep, that’s me crushing.

When I’ve blogged about my favorite wrestlers featured in homoerotic wrestling products, I’ve routinely pitted contending crushes against one another, if only in my imagination. In my imagination, I’m doing it all the fucking time, picturing what would a match look like between two stunning hunks that, separately, I can’t get my mind off of. For example, in 2010, I was vacillating back and forth, almost month by month, between Mitch Colby and Rusty Stevens as my reigning favorite homoerotic wrestler. Both of them in their best shape, selling each of their distinctive attitudes and styles, classic babyface and pitch-perfect heel, gave me whiplash turning back and forth between their new releases, trying to decide which of them gets the penthouse suite living rent free in my head. I mused on the pages of this blog that what I really needed to see was the two of them settling the question by wrestling against each other. My faith in the existence of the homoerotic gods was cemented when less than a year later, BG East released their one and only match featuring Rusty… taking on Mitch. Fuuuck. I still manage to both melt and get hard at the same time just thinking about it.

When it comes to my lingering wrestling crushes on Scott and SeattleFight, it turns out they have wrestled each other in the past. Fuck, to be a fly on that wall! I haven’t heard too many details about their encounter. I realize not everyone has their inner monologue on public broadcast at all times quite like I do, so I’m not sure how polite it is for me to ask for details. But, fuck. I think seeing them, firsthand, square off against one another would make that divine moment of watching Mitch and Rusty wrestle in The Breaking Point pale by homoerotic comparison. One thing I’ve learned in my early experiences with meet-up wrestling is that just getting two interested wrestlers in the same place at the same time is more than half the challenge. So, I can’t imagine the luck and coordinated effort it would require to get all three of us in the same place. But, if Scott and SeattleFight ever have the rematch that the homoerotic wrestling gods WANT to happen (no, no, I’m not projecting…), and I’m within a days drive, holy FUCK I’d better get a front row seat! Hell, I’ll buy refs stripes and a whistle and be closer than the front row. Fuck, I’ll wear trunks underneath, just in case.

And now… that’s the image that’s going to live rent free in the penthouse apartment in my head.

Worth the Time

August 16, 2023August 15, 2023 wrestlebard4 Comments

A friend of mine recently posited that Ash DeLeon deserves most of the credit for the current popularity of gut bashing. I can’t really say, myself. I’ve only been at the margins of the serious gut bashing scene. One particular opponent I wrestled at Wrestlefest Canada couldn’t get enough of it, but it hasn’t been something that I’m seriously dialed into. Ash, however, seems way, way, way dialed into gut bashing. He said as much in my interview with him about 7 years ago, when he was just debuting with BG East, and in a follow up interview we had about 3 years ago.

Then, 7 years later, he sees Jason Aleqsander’s insanely ripped abs strolling by on his way down to the lake for an early evening swim, and there we have Backyard Brawls 17. Ash keeps it low key, but I’m convinced that he is salivating. He tells Jason he needs a pinch hitter to fill in for some no-show. “Is it worth my time?” Fuck, Jason keeps it cool. Ash assures him, “I think it’ll be worth the time for both of us.”

Ash’s swagger grows every time I see him in a new match. He’s full on heel, dubbing Jason “Abercrombie” instead of bothering to learn his name. He bullies the rookie easily for a while, out-muscling his lighter opponent and throwing him down to the mat with contempt. But fierce little Jason tears into him like a badger, tackling Ash and raining down punches and stomps in a fit of babyface rage. Ash chides him, though, after Jason reels in his rage and climbs off, giving Ash the break that he’d never, ever have offered if the shoe were on the other foot. “That’s not needed,” Jason coldly dismisses the idea that he should kick an opponent when he’s down. “This is just a game to me.”

This is what Jason has in mind when he plays games

I really, really enjoy Jason on offense. He’s aggressive and swarms Ash at one point, locking those sexy ass legs of his around him in a triangle choke. He starts slamming down sledge hammer punches into the gut-punch king’s abs, and there’s this flash of honey sweet passion from him. “This is what you wanted, huh?!”

Ash takes his fair share of lumps, but he’s all heel in this match. More than once, he lifts Jason off his feet and wrings him out relentlessly in bearhugs. They’re lush and long, and they show off that biteable ass on the swimmer boy beautifully. It’s Ash, of course, so a good 50-60% of him on offense is ab abuse. Punches, claws, bouncing fireman’s carries… tenderizing those stunningly visible abs on the blond prettyboy is the point for Ash. But Jason keeps things hot and spicy, sucking it down like a fucking sponge, refusing to submit for ages. “You think you’re really doing something,” Jason demands, and even through clenched teeth, it’s fucking defiant and sexy. “Those abs ARE going to give to me,” Ash snarls back furiously.

There’s a super sweet, rare moment, in a brief break in the action, when both stubborn boys reluctantly give each other credit for the hard fought battle so far. Honestly, I love that glimpse of genuine respect. It doesn’t take away even a stitch from the hot rivalry and battle of wills and bodies. It doesn’t cost them anything at all to acknowledge what’s clearly evident on this side of the screen, that they’re both sexy, tough-as-shit, quick-witted, well-matched young hunks. The drama holds together nicely, the suspense building through to the end, both wearing a little less than they started, one of them just a bit more humble than when he started.

“You need to rearrange your fucking priorities!”

It’s a whole lot more than solely a gut-bashing match, but both sets of abs are severely tested along the way. The personalities are fun, the bodies hot, and the wrestling rough. It has a genuine feel of a spontaneous, chance encounter between two fierce competitors who enjoy putting their muscles, and skills, and self-assurance to the test against a worthy opponent.

“I’m going to make sure your abs remember me!”

Dirty Wrestling Pride

August 14, 2023 wrestlebard6 Comments

I took my first Uber ride two weeks ago. I mention this only to demonstrate an enduring truth about me: I am almost never an early adopter. My iPhone is about 7 generations old. A friend was harassing me just a couple days ago for not having Venmo. It’s not that I’m an avowed Luddite. I’m just such a devoted creature of habit. If what I’ve got in hand is working just fine, I tend to stick with it.

Mickey Knoxx gets stretched, broken, and crushed at the same time by Masked Menace

For several years, I’ve been curious about the clips of self-produced content that I’ve seen wrestlers posting on social media. OnlyFans, GumRoad, Watchfighters, JustForFans… on the one hand, I’ve always thought good on you. It’s got a little bit of the vibe of the proletariat reclaiming the direct fruits of their own labor. But, on the other hand, as I was recently talking with Txwresl about, it makes me worried for the homoerotic wrestling industry that has been a lifeline for me and so many others. Is there a risk of flooding the market with so much homoerotic wrestling content that the potential reward for any one producer is too little to make it worth anyone’s time to continue creating and innovating?

The hot-bodied rookie ROCKS the legendary heel… for a while….

I don’t know the answers to any of the big questions, but like adding the Uber app to my iPhone, I recently decided to sample the wild and woolly world of WatchFighters. My first impression was that the platform is overwhelming. Along the lines of my concerns about whether too much content may dilute the stream, I have a tough time finding what I’m looking for on WatchFighters, if I don’t already know what I’m looking for (if you know what I mean). Taking the advice of a friend (thanks, Bobby!), I looked up a content producer that I was already familiar with and found a match between two wrestlers I already knew I was turned on by, namely established veteran heel Masked Menace and one of my most recent crushes, BG East babyface rookie Mickey Knoxx.

Masked Menace puts the babyface in his place

Dirty Wrestling Pride, available on Watchfighters and GumRoad, takes place in a hotel room, where fresh meat Mickey is stretching out on the bed in sensationally snug rainbow trunks. The moment Masked Menace hits the scene, he’s in Mickey’s face. “Do you know who I fucking am?” The hunky, hairy, infamous masked veteran flexes, like maybe his bulging bicep might remind him. Of course, Mickey knows. “And you’re a fucking mouse, right,” Menace asks, contempt dripping from his lips. “I’m going to kick your ass, boy.”

Mickey pretty quickly has more than his fill of being taunted and degraded, of being shoved in his gorgeous pecs and grabbed by the balls. He snags the infamous masked heel in a side headlock and throws him down to the bed. He schoolboy pins Menace, slamming his crotch into that legendary masked face. “You want this? You think you can have it?!” Masked Menace snarls back, “fuck you,” but it’s pretty muffled and incoherent, his mouth gagged with Mickey’s eager package. Mickey just keeps rolling, not letting up an ounce of pressure, punishing the stunned heel with smothering headscissors. He slaps the frustrated heel in the masked face, taunting and sneering, rolling him up in a foldover pin. Mickey cock pins his opponent’s face, pumping his hips passionately, before staring those impossibly milky blue eyes directly into the camera, and taunting. “You’re going to make me pay for this? Who’s the fucking menace now?!” Holy fuck. Mickey serving up babyface rookie revenge is fucking sweet!

Mickey gets an impressive string of licks in, before a punch to his rainbow clad balls brings his menacing reign to an abrupt end. I’ve never heard Masked Menace as verbal in his BG East matches as he is with Mickey. His thick accent is dripping with contempt as he relentlessly trash talks dazzlingly pretty Mickey. “These balls are fucking mine, boy,” he growls, clawing the fuck out of the prettyboy’s crotch. Mickey’s balls take about 15 solid minutes of pounding, interrupted occasionally by the heel stroking the rookie’s cock so passionately that I can’t tell if Mickey is on the edge of passing out from the pain or cumming in ecstasy. “I can feel this fucking big hard cock, here. I know you enjoy that,” Masked Menace growls, his domination squirreling directly under Mickey’s flawless skin. “Because you’re my boy. My fucking prettyboy playboy.”

It’s a hotel bed, so it’s pretty fucking impressive when the seasoned heel scoops Mickey up in his arms, cradling him across his powerful, hairy chest, before pounding him down with authority into a long, lingering over-the-knee backbreaker. “This big, hard cock is fucking mine,” Masked Menace says again, and fuck it… I believe him! He slides his hand inside Mickey’s pouch, back and forth between crushing his balls and stroking his cock. Mickey looks like he has no fucking clue if he’s cumming or going. His entire body shakes with sobs (or rising orgasm?) when he’s stretched out in a leg nelson, the heel eventually unhooking one leg to continue pounding and stroking Mickey relentlessly back and forth. “You feel that?” It’s not like Masked Menace had to ask, considering every muscle in Mickey’s body is taut in response. “Yesssssss,” Mickey hisses, equally unnecessary, but fuck, so fucking sexy to watch him seemingly unable to stop himself from sounding like he’s just about to shoot.

Masked Menace heels the “mouse boy” for a solid 2/3rds of this 24 minute match. It’s constrained by the geography of a king size bed. They can’t help but sink into the mattress, built for comfort and not for providing a solid foundation for executing a submission hold. It’s produced thoughtfully, using two stationary cameras and some clever editing of both to lend some dimension to the tight quarters of the hotel room and show off both hot bodies locked in combat. Masked Menace is ALL about the D, but fuck, fuck, fuck, Mickey’s ass, once again, steals the show for me. There’s some clever storytelling, with the heel’s relentless call back of contempt for Mickey “the mouse” Knoxx and his foolish expectation that he could go toe-to-toe with a legend, run roughshod over him at the start, and still be conscious enough to defend himself by the time it’s all said and done.

Mickey is all sexy grit and determination to set the tone for this match

For $15.95, it’s mine to stream, pause, rewind, and watch Mickey’s rainbow covered ass flex and squirm in ecstatic agony/agonizing ecstasy all over again. Both of them pull off an aggressive wrestling-forward vibe that makes the hotel room context fade a bit into the background. It’s good storytelling, with Mickey’s early gloating rally coming back to haunt him, just like Masked Menace promised it would. Mickey’s suffering pairs exquisitely with Masked Menace’s relentless aggression and torrential trash talk. It feels sexy and suspenseful and brutal.

My sincere thanks to Masked Menace for giving me permission to post these scorching hot images! I’ll keep exploring Watchfighters. I doubt that it can fully scratch the itch that consistent production value, respect for the stream of wrestling history, and the world-building that comes from an experienced producer crafting characters and through-story, has long scratched for me. I don’t know what this all says about the future of the homoerotic wrestling industry. I don’t know if there may be a generational evolution happening, and different age cohorts within the homoerotic wrestling audience may be vying for growing or shrinking shares of new content in different formats. But I do know that Dirty Wrestling Pride entertains me and turns me on.

Pathways

August 11, 2023 wrestlebard3 Comments

Some of the most fun I’ve had exploring meet-up wrestling these past few months has been just chatting with opponents during breaks in the action. Well, it’s a different kind of fun, but still very fun, and the conversations have really stuck with me. For example, I was just wearing out again our buddy Scott (aka, the Man of My Dreams) a few days ago. He really wanted a chance to redeem himself, I think, after he got a little more blogger-turned-wrestler than he was counting on the first time we wrestled several weeks ago. He seemed undaunted by my warnings that I’d received some excellent coaching at Wrestlefest Toronto (thanks again, guys!), and I was itching to try out some new holds. Long story short, I definitely did get the opportunity to practice some new holds and wrung even more submissions out of Scott than the first time.

I lost count of which submission this was…

During a break, Scott and I were comparing notes about having first explored what turns us on about wrestling before the internet was what it is today. We had this vivid shared memory (experienced separately, but so entirely the same for both of us) of trying to casually cruise the magazine aisles at stores, to catch sight of hot, shirtless guys on covers. Scott echoed exactly my experience of feeling outrageously conspicuous to even be seen looking at the covers of wrestling or fitness magazines, like I’d instantly be spotted for the way they turned me on. To purchase one felt essentially like coming out to the cashier. I must’ve cruised magazine aisles for months before finally plucking up the desperate courage and buying one. My collection grew quickly from there, even though every purchase made my heart pound.

I owned this issue and obsessed over Mike Paris long before he came out

I had a similar conversation during a break in one of my matches with SeattleFight in Toronto. I told with him about this crystal clear memory I have (I can tell you exactly the store I was in, where on the magazine rack it was) of catching sight of Kevin Von Erich on the cover of a wrestling magazine. I’d never seen Kevin before. Instant erection. It was like porn, just sitting out there for everyone to see. Honestly, actual porn has never done for me quite what eye fucking the likes of barefoot Kevin in his yellow trunks in that magazine did for me, much less actually watching Kevin wrestle once I obsessively tracked down where to find World Class Championship Wrestling playing on my TV.

THE cover that stopped me in my closeted teenage tracks

I actually felt more conspicuous buying wrestling magazines than more generic bodybuilding magazines, because of the turn on I got from wrestling. My stash of masturbation inspiration was mostly populated with Muscle & Fitness and Musclemag International, because, in my still-sketchy theory of mind at the time, I felt like there was something less obviously sexual about bodybuilders in posing straps than hot pro wrestlers in classic 80’s trunks. But, of course, what really got me off about the bodybuilders was imagining them wrestling.

I wore this issue of Muscle & Fitness out, especially for Steve Bond’s baby oiled muscles on the cover.

In recent years, I’ve become friends with younger guys into wrestling, who discovered and explored what excites them by just typing some magic words into Google. Hell, I’ve even found out that some of these now-friends were bypassing the age-restrictions to read my homoerotic wrestling fiction 10 or more years ago, discovering the center and the edges of what turns them on about wrestling at least partially with the help of my words… as well as thousands of hours of pro wrestling matches on YouTube… as well as specifically gay wrestling producers connecting the dots between the erotic subtext of wrestling and babyface heroes and heel villains in mainstream pro.

I snapped up this issue of MuscleMag International, after Bob Paris came out, featuring he and his partner

There was a time when I wondered if I was so keyed into wrestling because, when I was coming of age, it was one of the few, regular, publicly consumable sources of hot, athletic guys wearing very little clothing, wrapping their hot bodies around each other (just writing this sentence is turning me on, frankly). Like, I’ve wondered if there is a wrestling kink, if erotic wrestling and erotic fiction and mainstream gay characters in media and, not to mention, ubiquitous porn, are available at the click of a button. Does mainstreaming the gay erotic gaze (or at least making it easier to focus it on a variety of sources) mean that a niche kink like gay erotic wrestling will even exist for long?

Jimmy Snuka’s pecs made watching mainstream pro wrestling in the company of others “hard” for me

I’m shit at predicting the future (I gave up on that after the 2016 US Presidential election), so I certainly don’t have a definitive answer. But my hunch is that wrestling kink is going to endure a while. While I’ve enjoyed so much meeting and wrestling with guys my age and older, I’ve also been pretty fascinated by meeting and wrestling with younger guys, who grew up with entirely different pathways and options for exploring what turns them on, and who found themselves at pretty much the same destination that I did. In an age when there are seemingly infinite sources of material to titillate, there are a lot gay and bisexual young guys powerfully drawn by their dizzying erections to watch mainstream wrestling, consume homoerotic wrestling, and explore what turns them on about it in the context of meet-up wrestling. And I know for a fact that some of them feel super self-conscious about it still, but it’s certainly a different world from when I was stopped dead in my tracks by Kevin Von Erich on the cover of a wrestling magazine, and thought to myself that I had never seen anything that sexy, and wondered if I ever would again.

Treasured this issue, and obsessed like crazy over Francis Benfatto’s body grappling in the hot recesses of my imagination

Something to Prove

August 9, 2023 wrestlebard2 Comments

I got my first glimpse of Anton Alvarez in his new Jobberpaloozer 22 release, and I like what I see. Technically speaking, I don’t think it’s quite true to say it was my “first” glimpse. I believe I saw him on the babyface bench cheering on WrestleFest 4. And honestly, the beefy, handsome, smiling babyface totally caught my eye on that bench. But I haven’t watched his debut yet, (Jobberpaloozer 19 against Ace Aarons), so settling in to see him square off against Kayden was all new.

Anton brightly cheered on fellow babyface beefcake Dio Characi at Wrestlefest 4

I like Anton’s look. A lot. He’s fucking solid. If I only saw his body, I’d guess he’s a sexy ass carnival strong man. And he’s adorably handsome. If I only saw his face, I’d guess he was 17. Those two characteristics combined make him an instant classic babyface, and, considering his first two trips to the BG East ring, a compelling jobber to watch.

“I’ve got some strength in me,” Anton boasts when Kayden sizes him up.

Two things jump out at me when I see him stroll into the Florida ring room, apparently having kept Kayden Keller waiting (holy fuck, rookie!). First, I’m thinking, this kid is fucking solid! According to the numbers, he’s over half a foot shorter than Kayden and only 10 pounds lighter. Meaning, fuck. This guy’s fucking. solid. The other thing that catches my attention is the crazy-happy smile on face. I don’t really know his full back story (time for us to have a sit down interview, Anton!), but he looks like he is absolutely living the dream. He wants to be no where else in the world but staring way, way, way up at the 6-time winner of the Top Heel award. I don’t know what he thinks his chances are of coming out of this intact, but I sort of get the impression he doesn’t give a flying fuck.

Anton shocks the notorious heel with raw, dominating power

Their first collar and elbow results in the babyface strongman shockingly muscling big Kayden back into a corner. The look of surprise on Kayden’s face mirrors my own. A test of strength a half a minute later is similarly stunning, as Anton nearly snaps the top heel’s hands right off his arms. He tells an awesome story of an earnest, eager powerhouse to be taken a whole lot more seriously than his dimples might suggest.

“You wanna break someone? I’ll show you how to break someone!”

Kayden snaps this right back into frame as a Jobberpaloozer release with a boot to his gut. “I’ve got a part of me that’s pretty freaking muscular too,” the heel deadpans, snapping the muscle jobber’s head between his thighs. The fierce babyface strongman starts kicking and screaming as Kayden takes possession of his body, clawing at his bulging lats, and ripping into his big, wide back muscles. The heel bullies the muscleboy relentlessly. He slaps him in the face and chokes him in the ropes. Kayden just keeps pounding all that beef down, again and again, and dragging him back up by the back of his trunks for more.

All of Kayden’s domination clearly pushes the heel’s buttons just right. “You’ve got nice assets,” he announces, spanking the muscle boy’s butt hard enough to leave hand prints. “I think you’ll go far,” he predicts, and it’s clear this estimation is not based on his high appraisal of Anton as a wrestler. Like me, Kayden likes what he sees, and all of the muscle rookie’s writhing and weeping and sobbing and begging doesn’t exactly turn the heel’s attention away from him. A chicken wing piledriver finally knocks the pretty boy out cold. Kayden takes a full lap all over Anton’s beaten body, reappraising the property he’s just won the rights for. Straddling his face and flexing, Kayden tells him, “You have yourself a nice little nap. We’re going to have some more fun later.”

Tons of hot contrasts in this match. Size, experience, personality, fate. Like Kayden, I feel like muscleboy Anton could go far, and not just as a heel’s plaything. He’s bringing the earnestness and ambition back to the babyface bench, and maybe if the Boss would let the poor, sexy kid get some time in on an opponent other than the most sadistic and dominant heels on the roster, I think we just might see a compelling competitor! (And seriously, Anton, let’s do that interview!!!)

The Curated Self: Ollie Watts

August 6, 2023 wrestlebardLeave a comment

My last night in Toronto for Wrestlefest, I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting Ollie Watts. I didn’t get to enjoy much time with the stunningly handsome, slyly charming hunk, but I did get some fanboy pics and permission to post about it here. In our discussion back and forth, in which I insisted that Ollie is, most definitely, a wrestling star, he mentioned in passing that his favorite match, his “best work,” was one of his most recent ones, wrestling Nero the Beast for UKWrestlingHub.com. I love the idea of reviewing a match that a wrestler thinks of as his best work!

Ollie Watts ready to kick ass for UKWrestlingHub

I’ve seen clips of UKWH matches for quite a while, with it’s unmistakably idiosyncratic black ring and day glow green wrestling ropes. I follow, and have interacted with, several UKWH wrestlers on social media. Everything I’ve seen, and every interaction I’ve had, has had a fun, playful vibe, dancing back and forth across the line of pro wrestling kayfabe and snarky gay attitude. But Nero the Beast vs. Ollie Watts was my first UKWH download.

I haven’t followed the entire through-story (though, fuck, I LOVE a through-story), but apparently Nero the Beast (aka Bruno LaBestia aka Bruno the Beast) arrived in Birmingham and started tearing through the UKWH roster like only an ugly American can (metaphorically speaking… Nero’s honestly handsome as fuck). This included “stealing” (Ollie’s words) the UKWH championship belt, and declaring himself champion. As the 15-minute match opens, Nero is pretty much making out with the championship belt. He’s congratulating himself and talking about the belt like it’s his girlfriend. “I’m here with my sweet honey, just admiring her pretty little stars,” he says, giving the belt a flirtatious boop.

“All of this can end if you just give me the belt. I’m really a very nice person.”

So entranced is Nero, that he doesn’t pay due diligence when Ollie gets close enough to pound a knee into the champ’s balls. “Just like Americans,” Ollie muses on cultural stereotypes, “to come and take things that aren’t theirs.” Ollie is sensational when he’s pitching. His trash talk is coldly polished and razor sharp. After suplexing Nero and rolling on top of him in a schoolboy, he slaps down a delightfully backhanded compliment. “This is what you’re good at. Being the pretty face that gets the shit kicked out of him.” He chains together sensationally dominating holds. Wrenching The Beast into a sick camel clutch, he nearly rips Nero’s handsome face off, using every single finger to fishhook the American’s smart mouth. Putting on his best (really bad) American accent, he mocks the muscle packed petite powerhouse. ““O, look at me,” he deadpans. “I’m the champion. I’m 5’5. I’m just a leprechaun that ate steroids.” He’s sadistic and relentless in that diabolical way that makes you think Nero should be saying “please” and “thank you” to him when Ollie’s gas pedaling his balls.

“All you’re doing is delaying the inevitable.”

Nero is personality-forward in a way I don’t think I’ve really seen before. He’s all in as The Beast, snarling and sniffing and licking lovely Ollie like a dog with a bone. When he interrupts Ollie’s devastating offense and pushes the reset button, he wrangles in those slightly unhinged eccentricities to recenter on defending his belt. “Calm, peaceful thoughts,” he mutters to himself, apparently silencing some voices in his head. “We’re going to talk this out like gentlemen,” he says, casually walking across the ring and grabbing Ollie by the throat. All of that restrained, gentlemanly shit talk from Ollie comes back to haunt him. Nero chokes him out in the day glow green ropes. He wedgies Ollie’s yellow trunks way high up his ass as he tosses him around like a practice dummy. “Aren’t you pretty?” Nero muses (and the answer to the rhetorical question is absolutely, yes, Ollie is pretty). He musses the Brit’s hair as he uses Ollie’s own arms to choke himself. “I’m going to keep you as a pet,” Nero declares, almost affectionately. “What’s a good name? Sparky? Rex? I’m going to have to break you in first, though.”

“You had your little fun, your clever little British quips.”

The breaking in part is intense, turning more and more erotic by the second as Ollie can’t defend himself. “Maybe I need to give you a bath. How would you like that,” Nero asks, possessively stroking and pawing at the dazed beauty. He claws Ollie’s balls and smothers him with his armpit in a super sexy dragon sleeper. Ollie’s designs may have been to recapture the UKWH championship for the UK, but as the match is careening to a decisive end, there’s a whole lot more at stake. Ollie’s facing down the threat/promise of being forced to wear a pink collar and be leashed by his new Daddy Nero.

“I’ll get a nice little sparkly pink collar for you.”

It’s a hot 15 minutes, and the download includes a couple of tasty previews of other UKWH matches. I’m old enough to remember when ordering wrestling across national borders was a bit of a pain in the ass, but the site and the purchase were easy and fast. I have to say that the ring is way small, and it clearly limits the athleticism and improvisation that these two seasoned wrestlers have (I know I’m not the first point that out). I’ve seen clips from other UKWH matches in a larger ring that looks a little more conventional, and I bet the playful and clever vibe, managing to not take itself too seriously AND somehow sell heated competition, plays even better with more square footage for the wrestlers to work with. It’s definitely not overly produced, and with a couple of seriously clever, confident salesmen like these two, it’s not underproduced either. Fifteen continuous minutes of a story about a hot rivalry, laced with cultural insensitivity and cross-border stereotypes that make me laugh and think (just a little). Gentleman vs. gentleman brute… with suspense laced throughout about which is which.

I can see why Ollie’s proud of this. He looks hot as hell and he does an incredible job dishing it out and taking it. He’s rightfully chastised by Nero for digging his wedgied trunks out of his ass (“Oh, don’t fix that! That was the best part!”). But other than that, I have no complaints at all about handsome, clever Ollie’s self-curated best effort at defending UK pride. And, on behalf of all of the Americans who have surely earned such a low estimation from you, I sincerely apologize!

So, what about the rest of you hot wrestlers who’ve put yourself out there to entertain and titillate us? What’s your favorite match from your catalog?