What Turned Me Gay (again, not really)

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I was a young adolescent when I first stumbled across the local wrestling show on television. Before there were nationally televised wrestling corporations, before cable television offered endless access to wrestling, I began watching the local wrestling show that came on at 11 p.m. every Saturday night. Just seeing scantily clad men grabbing one another would have likely been enough to cement wrestling in my homoerotic fantasies, but it was, without doubt, the appearance of a young Billy Jack Haynes that filled me with homoerotic awe. Billy Jack was huge, with hairy muscles, a slender waist, and an incredible round ass. Watching a physique like that move around the ring was a thrilling moment of discovery for me. This was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. His story lines worked on multiple levels. He was the perpetual jobber: younger, fitter, clearly more athletic than any of his doughy, bleach-blond opponents, but he typically lost as a result of his opponents’ cheating. The plot always worked for me, in that it made me root for Billy Jack all the more passionately. It cemented in me an investment in seeing the classic good vs. evil battle play itself out every Saturday evening, with Billy Jack as my champion. Of course, on a whole different level, it planted within me the seeds of a wrestling fetishist. I was aroused watching him flex and overpower his physically inferior opponents. His signature move was a standing full-nelson, with Billy Jack thrusting his hips into his opponents’ asses and lifting them off their feet. I was even more aroused witnessing this hairy, sweaty, muscle-bound god being picked apart, dominated, and destroyed, as he usually ended up. Eventually, more hot heroes (and anti-heroes) made their way through the local circuit and into my fantasies, notably including Tommy Zenk, the Dynamite Kid, and Lance Von Erich. Billy Jack did a stint in the WWF, of course, and returned to local productions as a heel, getting older, fatter, uglier. But I credit the image of him as a fierce young jobber as the start of my homoerotic wrestling fantasies.

Jokes and Jocks

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There’s something very sexy about a man who can make you laugh. Those blessed few that combine true comedic gifts with gorgeous looks seem to comprise a fantastic genre in entertainment these days: the funny hunk. Some current favorites of mine in this pantheon of comedy studs include Ryan Reynolds, who just seems to be getting more thickly muscled every day. I have my fingers crossed that his casting in the new Green Lantern movie will include lot’s of skin-tight spandex (which will then be removed). Chris Evans is another funny-man who just seems to ooze sex. When that fantastically hairy torso is bare, it’s hard to actually pay attention to his clever dialogue, but I’m willing to cope with that challenge. And finally, I think Sean Maguire is absolutely stunning. Funny, astonishingly hot, and an English accent?! Good God. I have to agree with SquareHippies‘ assessment that Sean’s is “the face of sex.” Whatever timing, attitude, self-assurance it takes to do comedy well seems to me to translate well to the wrestling ring. The cocky self-possession makes for great characters to battle it out… at least that’s where my imagination takes me. The Producer’s Ring has one hot and sweaty match between Ryan and Chris already, with more comedian hunk appearances on deck.

The Victory Pose

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It’s been nice to get some recent feedback on the blog and the Producer’s Ring. I’m very motivated by positive feedback, and I can generally handle constructive comments as well, so if you like what you see or have some helpful suggestions, please leave comments. I was recently musing over the wrestling victory pose. It’s always complete camp. It’s almost never spontaneous. And yet, without exception, it always gets my blood pumping. The Wrestling Arsenal has a nice page focusing on the victory pose, where he proposes that “all victory poses are actually sexual positions demonstrating domination and submission.” Perhaps that’s the case – it’s just a metaphorical cock-test – the wrestling victory as a symbol for whose dick is bigger. In homoerotic wrestling, I think it’s a very special thrill to see the victor carrying the defeated off. The loser-gets-fucked scenarios are hottest when the victor turns tender, I think, rather than when the violence of competition turns into the violence of “forced” sex. Whatever the case, I enjoy the plot of good wrestling, and the victory pose is a very satisfying, essential denouement.

Xerxes… actually?

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How in the hell did I miss the fact that the stunningly gorgeous HOTTIE in Love Actually was the same actor that played the fantastically gender-bending Xerxes in 300? The Brazilian, Rodrigo Santoro, looks like he’s got some good projects coming up. I’m not sure what I’ll make of the gay-prison comedy I Love You Philip Morris, but it looks like Rodrigo may play-it-gay. More of these sexually secure 6’4″ Brazilian hunks, please…

Gay Wrestling Videos

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I remember the first time I ordered a gay wrestling video.  I was just about light-headed with excitement when it arrived in the mail.  Popping it in the VCR, I was struck with the realization that I wasn’t alone – not as a gay man, nor as a gay man turned on by wrestling.  The internet probably gets that message across much more effectively these days.  In this day of immediate gratification, I doubt many people are waiting for their homoerotica to arrive in the (literal) mailbox.  But for all that “gay adult entertainment” ever was and wasn’t, at least in part I believe it was a lifeline to isolated gay men, a hint that there are enough of us to make gay porn (soft and hard) a thriving industry.  Not to overstate the case, of course… it’s first and foremost about getting our rocks off.  Glad to see gay wrestling productions like BG East and Can-Am expanding their presence on the net.  And I think it’s great that BG Wrestling is posting some clips of their materials on YouTube.  I hope there are young gay men coming across some of these vintage clips and discovering a little wrestling-fetishist within themselves!

Brush with Fame

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It was 1992, at an isolated truck stop in the middle of no where. I was driving late at night, and stopped off for some caffeine to keep me awake. The food mart was empty, other than me and the disinterested cashier. In walked two men, chatting. As I turned a corner, suddenly in front of me was a very handsome man with long blond hair. It took me just half a second to realize that it was Jeff Jarrett, at that time wrestling for a regional wrestling company. He was shorter than I expected (NOT the 6′ he’s billed as). As recognition must have washed across my face, he quickly looked down and walked by me, up the candy aisle. It was shortly after that that I saw this somewhat bizarre, yet oddly hot performance-art piece of Jarrett and Mantel wrestling with percussion accompaniment. His eventual heel turn in the WWF was never convincing for me, as I always pictured that handsome man walking in the store, shyly avoiding making eye contact. Glad to see he’s got a video out about his career.

Swedish Delight

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Solidly under the category, “beautiful men,” Alexander Skarsgård stAdd Imageeals every scene I see him in in his current series, True Blood. Seeing photos of him when not in character as Eric Northman, it’s amazing to see how slender (yet athletic) his body is. When in-character as the Swedish vampire sheriff of Louisiana, he looks like a hugely muscled beast. When you’re 6’4″, though, I suppose it’s not hard to look huge in a cast. I loved him as the moronic, yet oh-so-pretty model Meekus in Zoolander, and just as soon as I finish some Swedish lessons, I’m tracking down some of his untranslated works. I’ve also loved many works by his father, Stellan Skarsgård.

Gay Wrestling Fiction

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I came across gay wrestling fiction on the internet about twelve years ago. I stumbled across a sincere little site with very short stories of celebrities mixing it up at various levels of wrestling skill. Each match-up had headshots of the featured celebrities at the top of the page, with a shorthand description of the match. Somewhere along the way, the link died.


I eventually found some gay wrestling fiction of widely differing quality. Men on the Net has a lot of crappy stories, but some that are fun, including some celebrity matches. Mangler’s Wrestling Stories is a multi-author collection that aren’t often celebrity-based, but some are quite homoerotic. I recently rediscovered a celebrity wrestling group through the portal-blog Rants Roids & Rasslin by John Savage. You have to wait for a sign up period to access the Arena Island Celebrity Wrestling stories by Savage, and he’s adamant that you need to participate by leaving comments on the matches, but the writing and the story lines are entertaining and hot (definitely worth it).

Over the past 6 months, I’ve been enjoying writing my own homoerotic wrestling fiction, Producer’s Ring, featuring celebrity personalities. It’s all a fun game of “what if.” What if the world had truly been revolutionized by the internet? What if consumer capitalism expanded to its logical conclusion, where everything and everyone became a commodity for consumption? And most importantly, what if the entertainment-industry built and destroyed celebrity careers based on wrestling match-ups between the actors that keep gay men buying movie tickets? I write about a different world that caters much more explicitly to homoeroticism, but it’s not necessarily a world I’d particularly like to live in. But I greatly enjoy visiting there every so often. I’m currently working on a series of matches featuring Christopher Meloni, inspired by this awesome photo at the top.

Young David

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Some great old matches of “Davey Boy” Smith, wrestling as a youth in Britain as Young David, can be found on YouTube. This bout, apparently from the early eighties, features a tanned, very sexy Young David and a hot young incarnation of Fit Finlay. Comparing how amazing he looked and moved when young, one has to wonder (or not, I guess), as to what it took to transform Young David into the bulky, poorly defined mass of a man he was when he worked in the U.S as The British Bulldog. It’s nice to see his older matches available as a tribute to the beautiful man he was and impressive wrestling roots from which he came.

Seriously?

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From reading his website, I’d get the impression that former Mr. Japan, Ken Yasuda may take himself a little too seriously. The “samurai warrior of the 21st century” bit is a little gratuitous and potentially ethnically-exploitative, I think. But catching this clip from “Just Another Romantic Wrestling Comedy,” makes me suspect that he may not take himself all that seriously after all. The scene of him all sweaty and aggressive in the ring (despite the fact his opponent is a woman) is very hot! Bodybuilders this big frequently don’t quite do it for me, but there’s something quite beautiful about his shape and motion. And if taking himself too seriously is the worst thing that could be said about him, I give him complete credit for building a stunning physique, competing naturally, and sincerely working hard to promote himself.