Brad Rochelle – Sidelineland

Heel on Heel on Heel

June 20, 2024 wrestlebard2 Comments

“Holy shit, look at the size of this guy!” Jonny Firestorm appears genuinely impressed, when he and his long-time BFF Brad Rochelle stride into the ring room to find Monstah Mike flexing. “That’s a lot of man,” Brad agrees, equally as awed as Jonny is by what they see at the start of Three-Way Thrash 6: Bodybuilder Beatdown. What they see is awesome by any measure. Mike is a fucking specimen! The official numbers put him at 5’10 and 230 pounds, but the numbers can’t capture the pull of gravity this sculpted bodybuilder possesses. He’s come on like a house on fire since setting foot at BG East just last year and immediately winning Best Butt of 2023. Dude is dripping with big boss attitude and more than enough gargantuan muscle to back it up. Last year I called him “fucking amazingly pretty,” and despite seeing him chew up and spit out opponents one after another ever since, I stick by it. Yeah, yeah, he’s a fucking muscle monster(ah). He’s got serial killer facial hair and dazzlingly dangerous power. I buy it, without a doubt. Mike’s a fucking force of nature, not to be fucked with lightly, if at all, and badass to the core. But what makes all of that even more astonishing, is that he’s fucking gorgeous.

So, it’s not like Jonny and Brad are overselling him in the least. And it’s a fun bit of physical drama when Jonny, having newly reclaimed his title as Top Heel this past year, literally bounces off the bodybuilder when he tries to blindside the enforcer with chops to those humongous pecs. Jonny’s flying drop kicks, showing the veteran heel can still soar, similarly don’t move Mike an inch. If anything, it looks like trying to drop kick a brick wall might have legitimately injured Jonny’s ankle. Again, it’s melodrama, but I don’t think it’s an oversell for a second when Mike catches Jonny’s swinging fists in midair, before turning it into a test of strength that lasts a split second before Jonny is on his knees and yelping in fear for having his hands snapped off at the wrists. “This is my ship, now,” Mike claims, and Jonny’s in no position to argue, considering he’s suspended way off his feet in Mike’s two handed straight-armed overhead choke. Top Heel title holder or not, Jonny was walking into a massacre from the start of this match!

Good thing for Jonny, he brought back up. Mike’s no dummy, either, giving Brad a cold once-over when Jonny’s classic babyface BFF takes a seat on the couch to watch, wearing wrestling boots, trunks, a black leather jacket, and sunglasses. “Him? Oh, he’s just the time keeper, the bell ringer,” Jonny assures. “He’s never done this before. don’t worry about him.” Monstah Mike does not look worried in the least, even though you and I know that Brad has most definitely done “this” (ALL of this) before. Brad provides a little light comic relief with his spontaneous commentary as he watches Jonny run headlong, again and again, into that gorgeous brick wall. “Oh, my goodness,” Brad mutters like somebody’s grandma when Mike whips Jonny from corner to corner and then spears the Top Heel in the gut and send Jonny through the ropes and bouncing off the ring apron.

There’s something a little Harold and Kumar about Jonny and Brad. Or maybe it’s Bill and Ted? Whatever it is, the BFF chemistry between them cracks me up and turns me on so… fucking… hard (yeah, for the record, I’d pay to watch Harold and Kumar tag team against Bill and Ted any day!). Again, it could easily be oversold, the one liners, the clever quips and the working for laughs. But the self-congratulatory wisecracks paired with the beautiful violence of their diabolical double-teaming is perfectly balanced, as far as I’m concerned.

Monstah Mike is nearly muscle beast enough to knock them both on their asses, and STILL I say his dominating power is not oversold. But it’s when Jonny and Brad really start hitting their stride and beating the living fuck out of the amazingly pretty bodybuilder that this compelling drama turns into my favorite type of porn. Just like they did when Brad made his huge (HUGE) comeback last November, double-teaming achingly pretty muscle twink Kal Connor in The Comeback 3, the BFFs synchronized offense is a thing of beauty. Their double-team corner work is one of the highlights for me, when Brad, on the apron, has Mike trapped in a chin lock and nipple clamp, while Jonny, inside the ring, is clawing the fuck out Mike’s balls and biting his other nipple. Honestly, I’d have my money on Mike if he was taking on almost any other pair of BG East wrestlers on the roster, but against these diabolical heel/babyface wonder twins, he’s just a high protein lunch special.

It’s the Brad and Jonny show (and I’ll buy front row tickets for that every fucking time), but credit where it’s due: Mike tells the story. Mike morphs from snarling narcissist badass muscle monster into a sniveling, screaming, weeping mass of humiliation in a sensationally paced descent into ego-shattering despair. I sampled Mike’s screams and pleas in the first episode of Sidelineland Sounds because his deep, meaty bass boss voice crumbling into panicked begging and agony is epic suffering. He’s still got the gravitational pull of a neutron star, as the wonder twins manhandle and pummel him, but it collapses into the mysterious magnificence of a black hole, as his lush and meaty muscles writhe and strain and twitch and quiver with four vicious claws ripping him apart. With range like this, I can totally believe that Monstah Mike is, indeed, capable of being the franchise player he brags that he’s ready to be.

I’m officially infatuated with Jonny and Brad’s partnership. The boys genuinely look like they’re having fun ripping apart their prey. Their mutual appreciation mixed with good-natured sibling teasing is such a delightful vibe paired with their deep arsenal of low down double-team torture. And Mike’s cocky boasting that he’s the new sheriff of BGE is making me a believer more and more. Hot drama that’s over the top in just the right proportions to make me swoon in a way that heel on heel (on heel) action doesn’t always get from me!

My Thing

November 28, 2023 wrestlebard6 Comments

Next May, I’ll be celebrating the 15-year anniversary of starting this blog (someone remind me to celebrate). Just FYI, it’s the crystal anniversary, in case you’re searching for a gift. In those early days, I was figuring out what this blog was about and working to find my voice. There was more pop culture, more hunky journalists, more attempt at incisive critique, and a LOT less use of the word fuck.

Fuck, we’ve come a long way. So much has changed, but some things haven’t. Like, back when I was trying to decide if I’m a homoerotic wrestling “critic,” I posted a lot more about things I didn’t like than I do now. These days, if a wrestler or a match or a gimmick or a company isn’t a pleasure, I don’t take time to try to execute some take down about what doesn’t work for me. But more than a decade ago, I posted the occasional bitch and rant about a particular wrestler who’s overexposed, or a wrestler who (however pretty he might be) irritates me because he sucks so bad as a wrestler.

In hindsight, it makes sense to me that I got pushback, heat even, and sometimes brutal attempts at taking me or my tastes down. Like, I’d bitch about Rio Garza looking soooo pretty, but being overexposed and a poor sell, and one fierce Rio fan would come to his defense with a flame thrower. I complained about Z-Man being a ham and self-consciously over the top, and Z-Man devotees would insult my character and disparage my intelligence. In those early days, I sort of thought that “call ’em like I see ’em” approach to lobbing complaints into the ether lent me credibility, but it set a tone that I honestly regretted, pretty quickly.

I really started trying to right the ship when commenters began leaving scathing, intentionally cruel insults about wrestlers that I praised. There have been a few moments when I’ve debated just turning off all comments, but I’ve generally leaned toward just disallowing particular comments that become personal attacks on specific people. Particularly after I began to interact with these wrestlers, it seemed in poor taste to allow anonymous commenters to talk shit about them, probably mostly just to irritate me for some opinion that they didn’t like. I’ve intercepted or deleted some seriously messed up shit that commenters have put out there, insulting wrestlers’ looks, their bodies, their intelligence, all lobbed facelessly from proxy email addresses in an attempt to torch someone, apparently just for sport.

Again, I realize I contributed to that dynamic early on, but holy fuck, some homoerotic wrestling fans just want to burn some shit down! And it’s as if we all want to “win” the homoeroticism Olympics, or something. Like, there are readers who seem to NEED to convince me that I MUST become infatuated with what they are infatuated by. It includes the superfans who get irritated with me for not writing more about their favorite wrestlers, but it also includes the kinks and niches of homoeroticism that I may, or may not, necessarily get into. There was a superfan of foot worship who came on SO fucking strong for a while, like some sort of televangelist implying eternal hell and damnation if I didn’t spontaneously ejaculate over a sexy pair of bare feet. I mean, honestly, I was curious and explored the intense world of erotic foot worship when he started commenting about it, to really give it a chance. It’s not exactly my thing, I concluded. I mean, fuck, sexy feet are sexy feet, and there’s some value added to the rare toe suck in a homoerotic wrestling match for me. But I’m not exactly a convert, and it isn’t at the heart of what turns me on hard enough to take the time to write about here.

Gut Bash 14: Ash DeLeon vs Kenny Starr(‘s abs)

Gut punchers sometimes come on super strong that way too, like they must convince me to obsess over gut punching and only gut punching or else they must destroy me. Again, enthusiastic gut punchers (front of the line, of course, is Ash DeLeon) have definitely got me to watch a lot more gut punching-themed content than I might have otherwise, so the enthusiasm is NOT wasted on me, I swear. And fuck, some solid punching to a chiseled set of rock hard abs is like exclamation points to the sexiest beat poetry ever. I certainly get what watching gut punching is giving me, which is a little espresso shot of adrenaline around the time my heart is already pounding in my chest, my cock already in hand, and I’m riding the wave for as long as it’ll take me. Watching gut punching by itself, though, doesn’t get me off. It’s a super nice element in the overall drama of a homoerotic battle, but I don’t experience it quite the same way you hardcore gut punching fanatics do. It’s not my thing in quite the way it is for some.

Ultra Fights 2: Scott Williams vs Brad Rochelle (this is my thing!!!)

And I’m totally cool with that. Actually, I really love that! Homoerotic wrestling is a whole lot more delightfully nuanced than anyone outside of our community realizes, I’m sure. My tastes and triggers have been shaped by the enthusiasm of others, and I think that’s an amazingly awesome outcome to blogging for 14+ years and commenting with readers and exchanging emails and interacting on social media. I don’t need everyone to agree with me that what turns me on hardest has to turn them on hardest, as well, though. If you don’t fucking swoon over the sight of Scott Williams slightly dropping his jaw open a bit as he twists his hips and injects pulses of power into his headscissors in a match, that’s okay with me. I mean, I find it bewildering, but I accept it. As I’ve told Scott often and recently, I defy him to find someone to challenge my self-appointed status as his #1 fan and president of his fan club. If your crotch didn’t instantly twitch with excitement when you first heard Lon Dumont’s baritone voice dispassionately demanding that Eddy Rey flex on-demand for him, I can still sleep at night, because my thing doesn’t have to be your thing for me to be incredibly pleased that it’s my thing.

This is most definitely my thing!!! (Fantasymen 32)

This is a rambling post, I realize, but here’s the point: the homoerotic wrestling community is big enough for us to celebrate our diverse passions, and not have to try to burn each other to the ground if we don’t hang our hats on the same pegs. I realize I’m sounding like someone’s grandpa here, but it feels to me like there’s so much slash and burn happening in public discourse in general, and sometimes, it feels to me like it’s got a strong foothold in homoeroticism and wrestling kink circles. I won’t allow comments here on the blog that insult wrestlers, that trash the people who have the balls to strip down to nothing/next to nothing and grapple with one another for our pleasure. I’m relatively thick-skinned in terms of critiques of me and my tastes, but honestly, I’m not interested in being converted by anyone. I enjoy the passionate fan, the commenter eager to make sure I’ve seen a wrestler or a match that particularly turns them on. That’s what this blog has become for me for most of its life, really. Me sharing what’s turning me on, in the hopes it may promote the things that I find so hot, and occasionally me getting the benefit of a few hundred other sets of eyes and tastes of similarly (if not identically) minded fans of homoerotic wrestling. But no one wins if anyone’s enthusiasm succeeds only in shaming and scolding someone else away from doing what they love or enjoying what turns them on.

Ray/Rio vs Zack/Z-Man from Rock Hard Wrestling back when

For any wrestlers who I’ve offended in the past with misguided attempts to deliver harsh love in the form of brutal critique here on the pages of this blog, I apologize. I like to think that I’m more mature and wiser these days, so I hope that hasn’t happened in a while. And, those of you you slayed in the spirit televangelists out there that want to threaten me or anyone else with hell and damnation if we don’t see things the way you do can keep doing your thing. I certainly can’t stop you, even though I can, and occasionally do, prevent you from trying to set fires in the comments here on this blog. I honor your thing, and am happy for you that it gets you off. But it’s okay with me if my thing isn’t your thing, and if your thing isn’t my thing.

Dream Come True – Part 1

June 30, 2023 wrestlebard4 Comments

You know how they say that you should never meet your heroes? Well, whoever it is who says that, fuck them. Because I met mine, and it was spectacular. Meeting Scott Williams has been on my bucket list just about as long as I’ve been watching homoerotic wrestling videos. In order not to bury the lead, I’ll just say here that I can now check that off my list. I’ve been processing this for days now, thinking about what to say about it. I’ve got just SO fucking much running through my head, so this will NOT fit into one blog post. You’ll have to cope with the suspense, or check back in tomorrow to read this and part 2 back-to-back.

Scott Williams – Promotional Image for BG East’s Ultra Fight 2

I can’t be sure, but I believe that the first time I referred to Scott Williams (in print, anyway) as “the man of my dreams” was when I interviewed Shane McCall about 9 years ago. I’d been thinking it, though, from the moment I first caught sight of him in promotional material for Ultra Fight Two, probably at least 10 years prior to that, and then I studiously collected everything I could get my hands on with Scott in it. His body, his face, his attitude, everything about him just rubs me the right way. It’s borderline criminal that his entire BG East catalog contains only 4 matches (not counting that Spartans wrestling club release with Scott and Shane as babies, that I wish I could put my hands on again). I regularly run into wrestling fans similarly fixated on Scott’s hotness from just those 4 matches. When that happens, I promptly remind them that Scott deserves all the accolades, but I’m the undisputed president of his fan club. Don’t even try to test me on that, boys. I will beat you down mercilessly. Just sayin’.

Shane McCall (left) and Scott Williams backstage at BG East’s Wrestling with Pride 1

I’m not certain of when Scott first started commenting here on the blog, but I do know that I named it as my favorite blogging moment of 2015 when Scott sent me well-wishes in a comment to a post that year. In response to my lustful musings about whether he still wrestles, Scott assured me that he’s “still keeping in shape and wrestling privately here in Boston and when I travel…always will love it and will always make you proud on the mats or in the ring!” I melted when I read it. And then did again and again, when Scott continued to chime in over the last several years with his perspective on my reviews, sharing his opinions about new wrestlers, and reflecting on the homoerotic wrestling industry in general.

Scott with Shane McCall (center) and Brad Rochelle (right) at Wrestling with Pride 1

My longstanding simmering crush on Scott took an unexpectedly hot turn in 2017. There’s a slightly complex drama that I’ve documented elsewhere that led up to me receiving what might be the hottest surprise gift I never expected, namely a video of Ty Alexander working over Scott in private in a brutally merciless camel clutch, using the man of my dreams to challenge me to face Ty in a wrestling match. In the video, Ty just calmly trash talks me, as Scott whimpers and wails, submitting over and over as the Trophy Boy ignores him. The idea of Scott suffering because Ty knows how infatuated I am with him… fuck, that was fucking hot (sorry Scott/not sorry)!

A still from Ty’s torture of Scott, using the man-of-my-dreams to send me a message

I shamelessly appealed directly to Scott in May of 2020, penning a blog post addressed specifically to him, in which I asked him to weigh in on the hottest headscissors in the business, other than his. Honestly, we all had a lot going on around May of 2020, right? Well, Scott didn’t just reply, he broke down some of the science and aesthetics of punishing headscissors in just such a way that I immediately made a public commitment to never skip leg day again (which, no joke, I’ve pretty much kept!). In a follow up post, I concluded, “…if there’s ever a chance that someday I can slide Scott’s head between my quads, I’m determined to be ready to pack on enough pounds per square inch to make the man of my dreams gasp out at least 10 h’s.” In literature, we refer to that as foreshadowing.

Scott demonstrating his punishing headscissors in BG East’s Matmen 15.

Fast forward to my New Year’s Eve post just 6 months ago, when suddenly things heated up super fast. Having long teased me in his comments about the possibility of the two of us squaring off, suddenly Scott declared that 2023 was the year it would happen. Light trash talk ensued, in which I walked the fine line of reiterating how fucking hot I think Scott is, while at the same time speculating about the possibility of adding some of his tears to my treasured homoerotic wrestling souvenirs when he’s tapping out in my headscissors. Yeah, yeah, I know. Big talk from a very inexperienced wrestling fan. But, fuck it all, I love it when a plan comes together, because… holy shit, I’m writing this because it actually happened… I got to wrestle Scott the-man-of-my-dreams Williams!

And it was perfection. Not to totally blow his cover, because fans know how much Scott likes to posture and growl and taunt like a tough guy, but he was incredibly considerate as we figured out schedules. Sure, sure, he repeatedly dropped in taunts implying that any scheduling conflicts on my part were just fear-based excuses. And, yeah, he relentlessly predicted that he’d handle me and my quads without breaking a sweat. But seriously, Scott fans back me up here: that’s just par for the course, right? In the meantime, I’ve been working out like a man possessed for the past 6 months in the hopes that this whole thing would actually go down. And, holy shit, just a few days ago… it did.

Not my face, but 100% my expression standing next to Scott.

In case you’re new to the blog or you don’t read the comments, you’re now pretty well caught up with how I found myself standing face-to-face with Scott Williams. Well, face-to-gorgeously-hairy-pecs, considering Scott is significantly taller than I am. Honestly, I’d have donated a kidney just for an autograph, but no, all of that trash talk back and forth sent this careening in the only direction that it possibly could go. I was standing in nothing but briefs and a shit-eating grin in front of the wrestler who makes my heart skip a beat unlike any other.

So that’s part 1 of my story of meeting the man of my dreams. I’ll persist in combing through the jumble of excitement and reflections on the experience of meeting and wrestling him, and continue the narrative tomorrow. Suffice it to say, for now, I keep pausing in the middle of doing other stuff and ask myself, “Holy shit, did that really happen!?” Happily for me, I have photographic evidence that it did, and happily for you, Scott has given me unrestricted permission to share the pics and talk about the whole thing here. Unhappily for me, it just occurred to me that I forgot to actually get an autograph (fuckfuckfuck). But what I got is a thousand times better…

Let Me Entertain You

February 3, 2023 wrestlebard6 Comments

I hate the comments on almost anything OTHER than this blog. If you’ve skipped the comments, I sympathize, but I also have to tell you may have missed the super steamy heat that ignited after I posted my News Year’s look-back, when I wondered out loud if Scott Williams’ teasing offers to test drive my legs would actually amount to crushing his handsome face between my quads in 2023. Nobody has ever challenged my assertion that I am THE #1 Scott Williams fan… nay, fanatic. I think that’s wise of the rest of you, frankly, because I’ve got years of pent up lust and a reservoir of adrenaline stored up. I have not been coy about my adoration of Scott over the years, and I get a little star struck anytime (any. fucking. time.) Scott posts a comment around these parts. I do my best to keep my fanaticism for Scott’s smoking hot bod, and his fucking sensationally sexy way of milking a hold, just this side of full-on Annie Wilkes. I’ve tried to lure him into making an on-camera BGE comeback, but he just pshaws me. But when he floated the idea of him giving me a shot at the man of my dreams, one on one… holy shit, I’ve been feeding on that almost exclusively for a couple of years now. As the self-appointed and undisputed (?) #1 Scott fan, I can tell you that what Scott respects more than anything is a headscissors bear trap that can make the handsome hunk see stars. Thus, I’ve been doubling down on leg days and wracking up frequent flyer miles on my bicycle for the past couple of years, getting ready to make him beg. In his last reply to that post, after (once again) promising to make this happen, Scott chided me for being “WAYYYY too cocky,” and assured me, “You’re lucky that I find your confidence, like Rochelle’s and others….. VERY entertaining.”

That sent me combing through the archives of this blog for my review of Ultra Fight 2, to check out that chemistry again between Scott and Brad Rochelle again. Which then left me shocked when I realized I’ve never reviewed that match! Holy fuck, how did THAT happen? Honestly, scenes from that match still today suddenly intrude on my waking thoughts, some 15 years or so after I first saw it. I’ve never, ever made it through the entire match in one sitting without needing to towel off and re-hydrate. Fuck, who am I kidding? I’ve never made it through more than 5 minutes at a time of the 40 minute mat marathon without needing to towel off and re-hydrate.

That chemistry between Scott and Brad is lush. The cockiness that Scott finds so entertaining is seriously compelling. It has that feel of the freshly minted young buck on the scene (this was early in Brad’s BGE days, long before the Contract), setting his sights on knocking a seasoned alpha off his throne. “You’re not wasting my time or anything, are you,” Scott demands to know as they’re warming up. “Absolutely not,” Brad chirps back with a smirk. When they start to circle, the tension building for their fucking SENSATIONAL muscled bodies to finally come into contact, Brad slaps him in the face with a taunting sneer. Oh, fuck, you can see the irritation and bitter determination settle on Scott like a winter chill.

The submissions are fast and furious, and I mean genuinely, fucking, furious. Literally in under 15 seconds, Brad swarms him in a rear naked choke and Scott taps out. Slower and more indulgently, Scott roars back to life, locking on a side headlock and hip tossing gorgeous Brad to the mat with authority. He locks Brad’s left arm between his sensationally sexy legs and stretches him out, not really threatening the elbow, but just teasing it, like he wants Brad to know he could snap him, but just wants to milk the moment as the tanned, toned, babyface beefcake writhes and wriggles on the hook. “You just stay there for a while,” Scott taunts. Finally, he cranks on the side headlock like he’s yanking on the pull cord of a stubborn lawnmower, crushing Brad’s pretty, pretty, pretty face against Scott’s gorgeously hairy chest. He flexes his mile long legs, slowly hyperextending the captured elbow, and twists viciously on Brad’s neck. “You’re looking really good down there,” Scott says what every fan who’s watched this video was thinking at that very moment. He wrenches a squealing submission out of the young hunk a few moments later. And… fuck, I think I need to towel off and rehydrate now.

This is peak Brad. He’s got to have just come back from a beach vacation, with a bronze glow and a well-rested pump for getting down to business. At one point, Scott is working figure-4 headscissors, alligator rolling the coverboy across the mat at will. He punches those smooth, never bigger, never more beautiful pecs on Brad, before leaning back on one elbow, crushing his skull, looking like he’s the one enjoying a leisurely day stretched out on a beach towel. When Scott lets the stubborn punk up without wringing out another submission, Brad turns absolutely feral. He snaps on an armbar of his own and threatens to snap Scott’s elbow, making the man of my dreams squeak and tap out in panic. “You shouldn’t have let me up,” Brad snarls, climbing onto his back and wrenching Scott’s right arm so high between his shoulder blades in a hammer that Scott can actually scratch the back of his own head. When Scott gasps another submission out, like he’s sucking on a torment lollipop, Brad lets him go magnanimously and paces around the mat. “I’ll give you some time to glue that arm back on,” Brad taunts.

Okay, so this is a marathon of a match, as I said, and I’ve got SO much to say about every 5 minutes or so of it. But in the interest of not losing myself entirely in this post, let me just speed things along by saying Brad dominates… DOMINATES Scott in the final third of this contest or so. Fuck, Brad’s bronzed, pumped muscles are glistening with sweat as the flexes his most muscular pose over top of Scott, looking like he wants to fuck somebody right then and there, he’s riding that pump of domination so hard. “What’s the matter, boy?” Fuck, when Brad calls him boy, I swear the temperature instantly rises on both sides of the screen. “All that shit you were talking, it amounted to NOTHING!” He’s screaming, as he pumps his fantasyman bod in victory. “Look at this,” he demands that his stunning physique be acknowledged.

But then there are those last 3 minutes. Shit, Brad keeps trash talking. Scott can’t help himself but trash talk back. “I’ll be fucking nastier next time,” Scott promises. “You can be as nasty as you want,” the young hunk snarks right back, getting pissed that the beast he just bested still won’t shut the fuck up. “Please,” he snarls, when Scott is about to charge back to his feet for more, right here and now. “You think you’ve got enough gas in the tank to fuck with me?!” Fuck, that final fall. Fuck! One gorgeous hunk’s voice is an octave and a half higher, whimpering and crying, giving up that last and most humiliating submission of all.

The camera loves these two gorgeous bodies almost as much as I do. This is pre-HD, and I’ve got a young friend who complains about the relatively grainy resolution and low light and dark shadows in matches like this. But I don’t know if I’ve ever seen two wrestlers look better AND deliver authentic, exhausting, dehydrating ego-fueled bitterness and snark.

Apparently, dialing up ego-fueled bitterness and snark is entertaining for Scott. I’m practicing channeling my inner Brad now. If there’s one thing I want to come out of what would be THE fan fantasy face-off of the century, it’s that I want both Scott and me to be entertained!

“All that shit your were talking,” Brad snarled. “It amounted to nothing!”

Hall of Fame

January 8, 2023 wrestlebard16 Comments

I’m still combing through the results of the Best of BG East 2022 awards and marveling at this cream of the latest crop of hot wrestling. As I was sending up congratulations to the winners that I’m connected to on social media, I got an intriguing, possibly even provocative reply from Lon Dumont, asking, “When’s my Hall of Fame induction?” And I’ve been obsessed with this question ever since.

Brad Rochelle receiving the Rookie of the Year Award from previous winner, Shane McCall, at Wrestlefest 2.

Not necessarily the question of when should Lon be inducted (five years ago is the correct answer). But I’m taken by the question of celebrating the mainstays, the sensational BG East wrestlers who put their blood, sweat, and tears into showing up, stripping down, and going at it for us homoerotic wrestling fans. There isn’t a Hall of Fame, is there? I mean, I believe that at the end of Wrestlefest 2, there was “technically” an awarding of a “Lifetime Achievement” award to Doug Warren. I say “technically,” because the Boss announced it, welcomed Doug to the ring, and then locked on a kiss of death, knocking hunky Doug out cold. Kid Leopard expressed his contempt for the notion of awarding anyone else a lifetime achievement award, before he, himself had been awarded one. So, yeah… I think there’s technically the start of a Hall of Fame, that rises above the yearly awards based on new releases! Unless I’m mistaken, I think Doug is the only member of that club so far, but… yeah, I think there IS a Hall of Fame, and perhaps it IS time to celebrate some more lifetime achievements of the hunks who live on in our fondest wrestling fantasies, even though they don’t appear in new releases any longer.

Like I told Lon, I am immediately and sincerely initiating my campaign to get this train rolling now! First up, I’d like to nominate Kid Leopard. I have to agree with his bitter, withering assessment of the idea he expressed moments after he knocked Doug Warren out cold: if ANYONE deserves to be lauded for monumental, even Herculean contributions to basically building what homoerotic wrestling is today from the ground up, it’s the Boss. I still keep his matches on repeat, because, honestly, no one has ever walked that line of legitimate pro wrestling sell and dazzling, sizzling, insanely hot homoeroticism as perfectly. And his contributions to the industry in terms of recruitment, production, distribution, and championing wrestling for a gay erotic eye is simply unmatched. And, let’s face it, he’ll kick the ass of anyone else we try to nominate, until his inaugural role in the Hall of Fame is certified.

But then who? Lon, of course. Don’t even try to argue with me on this, because I will swat you down so hard you’ll wake up just in time for the voting for the 2023 BG East Besties. But when we think of the wrestlers who stuck with BG East, who put in the sweat-equity to building this industry that fuels our fantasies, who never flinched from stripping down to next-to-nothing (or nothing) and entertaining an enthusiastic audience of guys who get off to wrestling… who should be the next class of inductees. After Kid Leopard. Let’s just all agree he’s in a class by himself.

BG East Fantasies

September 30, 2022December 31, 2022 wrestlebard5 Comments

It may not have looked like it, but I’ve been pretty damn busy when it comes to exercising my homoerotic wrestling imagination. I’ve authored a few BG East match descriptions for their not new releases. AR and I have been exploring just how up close and personal it can get when we combine my prose and his graphic art, mixed together with a shared passion for homoerotic wrestling, and BG East, in particular (more on that later). And in that vain, I’ve been fishing more of my old archived homoerotic wrestling fiction out of the old, defunct Sidelineland Stories archives and uploading them to the Sidelineland Stories Reboot.

It’s not like BG East doesn’t produce enough blindingly hot wrestling fare to satisfy me, but knowing how out of control my imagination gets, it should come as little to surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I authored my own fan fiction to explore BG East matches that never were. The first match explores the corporate intrigue and espionage that I always imagined was going on between competing homoerotic wrestling companies. This was after Rio Garza had started wrestling with BG East, but then went to Rock Hard Wrestling, and before Z-Man had done the reverse. The tag team match featured those two babyface beauties, facing off against my personal dream team, Mitch Colby and Derek DaSilva.

I also rebooted the story of a fitness model who got in way over his head wrestling for BG East, getting schooled hard by Mitch (yeah, this was deep, deep in my infatuation with Mitch phase). I enjoyed “recruiting” someone new to the BG East universe, and played heavily off of the Contract Series that was still going hot and heavy around then.

The third match I just migrated over to the new archives was the sequel to James Dawson’s tragic contract negotiations with BG East, in which the ripped, gorgeous muscle hunk next had to square off against the bulldozer Joe Robbins.

The fourth old match you can now find in the new archives was another dream combination that, sadly, was never to be IRL. Brad Rochelle and Mitch Colby squared off in that wrestling fantasy, ticking all the boxes of babyface beauties I go weak in the knees for.

And the final match I migrated in this genre (for now) was a super clever little piece that co-author Metellus and worked on, flipping scripts and putting a literal underwear model in the BG East ring against Enforcer, and discovering that not all underwear models are “just” underwear models.

All of these BG East-inspired fantasies have been dovetailing into some really exciting works that AR and I are doing, similarly finding angles and wrestlers that would otherwise just not find their way in front of a BG East camera for real, but who, nevertheless, make for sensationally sexy homoerotic wrestling fantasies in our imaginations. More on that to come soon, I hope!

Art

January 6, 2021 wrestlebard2 Comments

With some frequency, I refer to a particular wrestling hold or image as art. In saying that, I’m trying to convey what I think transcends the solely titillating aspect of the wrestling moment, and suggest that I think there’s something transcendentally aesthetic about it. Should a prude deign to take a look, I argue that said prude ought to recognize the stunning beauty displayed, whether or not they are turned on by, or in any way interested in homoerotic wrestling. Every so often, a wrestling image sparks something in my memory, reminding me that it’s not just aesthetics in the abstract that’s drawing my attention to the artfulness of a scene. Here are a few of the wrestling images that I’ve managed to track down, in the filing cabinet of my memory as well as in the catalog of available images on the internet, demonstrating homoerotic wrestling life imitating art, or, more likely, how relatively transcendent motifs, proportions, and angles echo through different artistic genres, including homoerotic wrestling.

Hercules wrestling Antaeus has haunted me ever since I first saw Steve Reeves, as Hercules, play out this scene in Hercules Unchained. The key plot point of the myth is that Antaeus must be suspended off the ground in order to deny him the inexhaustible strength he draws from contact with the earth. So big, lifting bearhugs abound in artistic renderings of this moment. I believe this bronze of the scene, with a gorgeous, dominating reverse bearhug, is on display in Vienna. Similarly, BG East’s Johnny Modesto is Hercules to Brad Rochelle’s Antaeus in Matmen 16.

The first time I visited Stockholm, I took about 1,000 photos of the Sun Singer, a naked Apollo greeting the rising sun. It’s a pose of celebration and vulnerability. If you’re ever walking around Stockholm, you can’t avoid gazing at the spectacle of beauty, with his arms raised invitingly toward the sun. Austin Cooper’s pose for the BG East promotion of Hunkbash 14, both in substance and shadow, accomplishes the same ends, and similarly, I can’t take my eyes off his magnificent ass!

This bronze of the classical sculpture The Wrestlers has been often reproduced, though the oldest surviving version of it is, I believe, in Florence. It’s so directly erotically-inclined, it’s no wonder homoerotic mat wrestling regularly draws to my mind the allusion to this sensational image of intimacy and domination, with naked wrestlers (with perfectly muscled bodies) entangled so completely that it’s not always apparent which limb belongs to which combatant. I grabbed this comparable vintage black and white image from BG East’s Arena (Vintage Collections). I don’t know it’s provenance, but it so perfectly captures every last angle, that it almost certainly had to have been posed. Clearly, I’m not the only one who sees the homoerotic text and subtext in it!

The Torah telling of Jacob wrestling with the angel has inspired many artistic visions throughout history. The heavily muscled bearhugs are my personal favorites, like this French oil painting, with a naked Jacob who I wouldn’t mind squeezing me in nice and tight like that. Damien Rush captures the futility of Leloir’s angel, grasping at big Joe Robbins huge arms that, once latched on, will not let go until satisfaction is attained. There’s plenty to appreciate in Demolition 23!

Finally, back to Stockholm, because… Swedes. This sculpture of the Fången Viking (“captured viking”) again highlights the aesthetic beauty of youthful power tamed, constrained, and displayed in intimate vulnerability. A handcuffed Nino Leone, pinned against the mat room wall by Kayden Keller in BG East Grudge Match 6, signals the same gorgeous vulnerability.

Saving Up to Give a Gift

July 20, 2020July 20, 2020 wrestlebard5 Comments

1430_lg — Trey Dixon tastes the superhuman power of Logan Vaughn’s legs in Florida Fights 5.

Am I the only one who doubled down on leg day after reading Scott Williams’ response to my recent post about scissors? Of course, I’d get insta-hard just listening to Scott reading from the phone book (do they still make those?). So just imagine what it does to me when he waxes poetic about the raw details of a recent “session” he had with a guy who was particularly passionate and adept at applying punishing head scissors. Read between the lines, and it’s apparent that it was Scott’s head that got punished relentlessly until his opponent was sure Scott was wrecked. Scott concludes the account by simply exclaiming, “Ahhhhhhh.” That’s seven “h’s.” I counted them. And I think that they mean that Scott found getting his cranium crushed in his own signature hold a turn on. And now, I’ve never had quite this much motivation to not skip leg day. Honestly, I’ve been furiously blitzing my legs with squats and lunges, and biking around 20 miles on the other days. I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: all Scott has to do is ask, and I’m ready to deliver. And if there’s ever a chance that someday I can slide his head between my quads, I’m determined to be ready to pack on enough pounds per square inch to make the man of my dreams gasp out at least 10 h’s.

h0119_lg — Scott must have loved this moment in his match with Brad Rochelle!

In the mean time, all of this attention on crushing quads has sent me hunting for homoerotic wrestlers paying homage to sensationally sexy, dangerously powerful legs. Who knows, maybe one day when social distancing is a bad memory, my quads can earn Scott’s respect like this. If getting wrung out to dry can get Scott off, I feel certain we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement!

0628_lg — Lance Jackson cops a feel of Wildcard Carter’s tree trunks in The Great Outdoors 3.

0218_lg — Surge grabs hold of Magnus with both hands in Wrestle Worship 3: Masked Muscle.

0239_lg — Calvin Haynes sizes up Beauxregard in Muscle Worship 4: Muscle Power.

0934_lg — Ben Monaco is understandably in awe of Chace LaChance’s quads in Wrestleshack 20.

jake kasee — Kasee is in awe of Jake’s thighs in Vegas Battles 59.

jake dom9 — Jake can’t stretch both hands around Dom9’s lower quad in No Holds Barred 143.

clark duke — Clark cozies up to Duke’s mammoth quads in No Holds Barred 92.

aspen jake — Aspen can’t believe his luck, or Jake’s muscles in No Holds Barred 151.

Hair Pull Humpday

July 1, 2020June 30, 2020 wrestlebard2 Comments

1228_lg — Ray Naylor vs. Lauden Sevior – Sunshine Shooters 8

Hair pulls are one of those little, subtle pleasures that superboosts the erotic aspect of a wrestling match for me. It’s disrespectful. It’s often unnecessarily cruel. It’s frequently functional, permitting a pitcher to position his reluctant prey for new angles of punishment. It stokes the fires of domination, often as plot device to signal that a competitive match has turned into cruel playtime. It can be affectionate, but when it comes to wrestling, it’s value added for me when it’s mean, rough, and adding insult to abundant injury. Here are a few hot and sexy hair pulls to help drag you over the weekly hump.

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Joshua Goodman (that’s Mr. Joshua to you!) dragged outmatched Christian Taylor about by his leading man locks in Demolition 27. As I recently mentioned, I theorize that every act of Mr. J’s punishment and degradation transformed naive, innocent babyface Christian into the erotic wrestling institution Christian has become as BG East.

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Royce Perry works to impress his new tag team partner, Jonny Firestorm, by adding insult to injury to total humiliation all over double-teamed Calvin Haynes in Tag Team Torture 20.

There’s something extra sexy about a dominant pro heel hunk who calmly demonstrates his mastery with a hair pull. Kelly King holding a sagging Lane Hartley up by his follicles in Pros in Private 13 give me that burst of adrenaline I could use to get over the hump.

Jonny Firestorm absolutely throws everything, including the kitchen sink, at Jake Jenkins in Jobberpaloozer 12: The Works. For my tastes, the hottest moves are paired with Jonny wrapping his fingers through the muscle cherub’s curly locks and prying him apart sadistically.

I’m sure I’ve featured this shot of Dom the Dominator nearly ripping Brad Rochelle’s head off of his neck in Demolition 3. But it’s worth a lingering, repeat look. Sure, a chin lock might have been fractionally more functional to accomplish the same purpose, but the savagery of using Brad’s hair as a handle here is delicious!

Hang in there, my friends! When it comes to surviving this week, it’s all down hill from here!

Trunk Pull Tuesday

May 19, 2020May 18, 2020 wrestlebard6 Comments

When I decided to resurrect the blog here, I thought about what I enjoyed most about the exercise. I’m planning on leaning into the pleasure, in the interest of maintaining a healthy, long-term relationship with the task of putting my homoerotic wrestling thoughts into text. As a result, you can count on seeing more wrestling fiction, more guessing games, and, yes, I strongly suspect you’ll find me obsessing about hot news boys. One of the countless little value added elements to homoerotic wrestling for me is a hearty yank on an opponent’s trunks, and thus the tradition of Trunk Pull Tuesday.

0223_lg — In BGE’s Hunkbash 5, Dante gave Brad’s a tug

I’d go so far as to suggest that trunk pulls were one of the first subtle elements in professional wrestling to ignite my homoerotic imagination. Ostensibly, a wrestler grabs his opponent’s trunks for leverage. With next to nothing else adorning the wrestling body, a wrestler uses the trunks as a handle to snap that snap mare, to drag him into motion in order to pound him that much harder with a fist, or a knee, or a clothesline.

scraptrunkpull — Dax Carter tries to rip Scrappy McNair apart at the seams for Muscleboy Wrestling.

Of course, that’s not the only thing I saw, as a kid growing up watching hot bodied hunks wrestling on television. I saw alluring glimpses of skin and tan lines normally discretely covered by modest patches of fabric. There was a fleeting view of a little more ass cheek, a tantalizing flash of lower abdomen, implicitly drawing attention away from the wrestling text and toward the erotic subtext just beneath the surface.

bruno — Bruno the Beast is feeling what I’m feeling yanking on Steve Tanner’s for Muscleboy Wrestling.

It remains a particularly titillating element in homoerotic wrestling, as far as I’m concerned, when, wrestling for gay eyes, a grappler yanks on his opponent’s trunks. Even when it isn’t prelude to stripping gear off entirely, it automatically bridges the narrative of combat and the story of sexual arousal. There’s still a third layer of eroticism for me when I can tell the puller gets it, that he knows how sexy this is, that he is, like I am, turned on not just by the competition for falls, not just the pleasure of spoiling a ripped opponent’s modesty, but that he feels the gravitational pull of the whole thing drawing him, and his opponent, and his audience into an explicit story of sexual attraction with the turbo boost of wrestling for erotic position.

gabriel — Gabriel Cross cannot wait to unwrap Ian Levine forMuscleboy Wrestling.

The driving momentum of all those homoerotic wrestling punches and headlocks and spladles and scissors is heading toward a story centered on what happens in the geography underneath the trunks. There are endless recipes involving various quantities of aggression, narcissism, brutality, contempt, competition, ego, and lust, but the trunk pull is a tried and true ingredient for turning up the erotic heat, at least for the gay wrestling fan, if not for the combatants themselves.