Jimmy Snuka – Sidelineland

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

Usually we see the very enjoyable overlap of bodybuilders and wrestlers with the bodybuilders showing up in the ring. These clips from YouTube go the other direction (the classic wrestlers posing as bodybuilders on stage). Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, and Tony Atlas were regular objects of my lust as a kid. Seeing them oiled up and on stage is absolutely stunning.

Ricky’s body was a work of (erotic) art. In this bodybuilding competition, his post-victory embrace of the also rans (including Jimmy Snuka 06:04) is a little tender, though I think the way he clutches the second-placer against his chest is a nice little moment of domination (at 06:10 I can almost here him command, “lick my tit!”). My memories of Ricky are mostly him as a jobber getting used, but he was so sincere and enthusiastic. I always wanted to see him win, but I always thought it was sooooooo hot seeing that musclebod manhandled and defeated!

Jimmy Snuka had to grow on me. He doesn’t have the “pretty” body of a Ricky or a Tony, but he was still so stunningly muscled. My memories of Jimmy were from when he was more of a heel, sort of playing the (racist-stereotype of the) savage islander whose brute force would break his opponents in half.

Tony Atlas, bless his heart (as my mother would say), was a brickhouse with no lights on. I remember the first time I saw him in the ring. I had no idea such a massive bodybuilder (despite the skinny calves) ever found his way into a pro-ring. He was usually jobbing, with his opponents using guile and, well frankly a little intelligence, to overcome Tony’s inevitable physical dominance. Tony’s interviews confirmed the fact that he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the lamp. Then he’d walk away, and that gorgeous muscle-butt in those tight, skimpy speedos would remind me that brains aren’t everything!