The headline read, “Porn star rivals in pro wrestling grudge match until one of them is stripped and left crushed in the ring.” Okay, so the “headline” of Rock Hard Wrestling’s newest match between Josh Steel and Luke Harrison didn’t actually read that way. Pretty much all those words are in the online match description, however, so it should come as little surprise to anyone that I was instantly sucked in. RHW has excelled at extremely high production quality professional wrestling between hardbodied young hotties, which is admittedly an excellent foundation for a homoerotic wrestling audience. However, they’ve steered clear of too much overt acknowledgement of the homoerotic aspect of their appeal. They have definitely always described their wrestlers in lustful terms, and the matches hit some major marks for implicit erotic domination and submission themes. But to see them play up a “porn star rivals” storyline and title the production “Stripped” seems like a promising and provocative turn that most certainly grabbed my attention and wallet. I’m not expecting Naked Kombat, though I’d go ape shit for RHW to indulge in rip-n-strip wrestling between hard-in-all-the-right-places wrestlers with a loser-gets-humiliated-and-fucked final round of action. Honestly, though, I’m not expecting the RHW we’ve grown to know over the past few years to veer quite that explicit. But naming the boys as rival porn stars and promising one of them will get stripped is definitely a huge step in the right direction, I’m thinking.
This is Luke Harrison’s debut with RHW, and as far as I know, his debut in wrestling for pay (please someone, correct me if I’m wrong). He’s extremely lean, and yes, I’ll even say it, he’s downright skinny, particularly once seen side by side with the bulging pecs of muscleboy Josh Steel. Luke is, however, not without a strong appeal, not in small part from the fact that he’s a dead ringer for Topher Grace’s little brother (not that I know whether Topher has a little brother… but if he did, I’d bet money he looks just like young Luke). Put Topher Grace in a singlet, straps down around his waist, and toss his fine ass into a professional wrestling ring, and I’m feasting for days. Luke strokes some of the same notes that Topher does for me, and he tweaks a certain skinny-kid retribution fantasy in me (in which a handsome adolescent boy gets bullied in school and then opens up a can of whoop ass on his bully’s ass once they’re of the age of majority), so I’m quite pleased with the graceful, lean young stud. Supporting my skinny-nerd-retribution fantasy is the high-pitched, nasally Southern twang Luke communicates with. This porn star was called a sissy back in the day, I’d bet money. Yeah, I’d love to see Luke crush a big, bad bully’s balls and slap his porn star cock in the stunned stud’s face!
Josh Steel on the other hand is a freak of nature! Damn, damn, damn the boy’s got insane proportions. The long, stunningly lean torso tapered into a wasp-thin waist, sitting so, so pretty atop a meaty, muscle-bubble butt and powerful legs is along the realm of fantasy-man wrestling. But those g-g-g-gorgeous pecs of his are clearly ripped straight off of a comic book superhero! The incredibly hot, bold, beautiful indigo tat on his right upper arm is so entirely up my alley, and the fact that he’s wearing lickably snug trunks that match his tat make me deeply intrigued with the picture perfect aesthetics he presents. In still frame, I fucking love this kid! Then he opens his mouth, wipes the shaggy mop of bangs off his brow, and slaps down some Southern-twangy narcissistic high-school-bully-turned-internet-wrestling-bully baritone trash talk, and I fucking HATE this kid! I mean, he’s a fantastic package, made that much more fantastic by the fact that he instantly raises within me hardcore contempt. Josh is instantly a most excellent pro wrestling character, grabbing my cock at the same time he grabs my infatuation with a compelling story. And what’s the compelling story he ignites with me the instant he curls his lip and rolls his eyes at little Luke? Good God, I want Josh’s glorious ass beat, spanked, and let’s put that Naked Kombat sex round in the mix to show him ridden like a donkey and fucked 9 ways to Sunday!
Check the RHW web description of this match for more of the steamy banter that these two hormone buckets dish out, because I’m happy to see their match descriptions focusing extensively on the dialogue you know I love so much. There’s plenty of withering assessments of each other’s wrestling and bodies. “You call this a bow and arrow?” Josh snarls at one point as Luke does an admirable job of displaying the cocky muscleboy in precisely that hold. “Bitch and arrow!” Josh snarls in contempt of the minimal damage Luke inflicts. And true enough, despite Luke owning the momentum through the majority of the first fall, he’s clearly not doing much damage. Putting on a clinic of pro wrestling holds, Luke then suddenly finds the powerpacked musclebody he’s been pounding on turning to offense on a dime (okay, a little too quickly for the sake of suspending disbelief, which is a frequent criticism of RHW I have). “You think you’re a wrestler!?” Josh laughs in precisely the rumbling tone of voice of a high school bully. “That’s so fucking funny!” And just like the high school bully, Josh delights in locking on a shoulder-wrenching hammerlock and tossing his skinny opponent around, force-feeding Luke the mat (to be fair, Luke did this first on his mop-top opponent, setting up the moment of sweet revenge). But it’s Luke’s “skinny” legs that Josh targets with most of his fury, pounding, stomping, twisting, grinding them. He’s set up his “porn star rival” quite adeptly by the time he delicately laces his sculpted, muscular legs around Luke’s in a figure-4 leglock, so it’s no wonder that the skinny kid taps out quickly, clearly in a panic. Fuck. That fucking muscle stud bully won the first fall. I HATE that kid (in a good way)!
Watching Josh’s smooth bulges turn red with effort and grow slick with sweat is undeniably arousing. I can forget for a while how much I have an instant lustful desire to watch his beautiful body get fucked up, because watching that body flex and stretch as he grunts and groans in the driver’s seat is just plain hot. “Like that!?” he laughs, grinding Luke’s skull between his sculpted arm and ribcage in a humiliating headlock. “Gonna walk with me like my dog!? Gonna heel?!” When he wraps his legs around Topher’s little brother’s midsection and starts pounding the crap out of the kid’s lean chest, I have to admit that I’m suddenly forgetting about my bully-revenge fantasy for a moment and wondering how I can sign up for that ride snuggled up so nice and tight against Josh’s crotch. “You can’t move that!” Josh crows as Luke tries to pry his legs off of him. “You can’t move steel!” So sure, I had an instant lustful fantasy to see narcissist muscleboy Josh get a dose of humbling domination from Luke, but despite myself, I’m getting totally turned on watching him own his rival, particularly as his mop-top grows heavier with sweat. “Come on, cry for me. Scream!” he says, and then laughs when he makes the skinny kid do just that.
But then when Luke rallies to scoop the flat-footed muscle boy up and parade him around the ring helplessly again, my bully-revenge fantasy kicks into overdrive once more. Luke’s a little raw, not able to finish executing a Boston crab attempt, looking a little at a loss for offense. I feel for the kid. A big, muscled beauty momentarily at your mercy… where to start!? Tenderizing all that beef with repeated stomps is a good place. Grinding Josh’s face into the mat with fistfuls of his shaggy, dishwater blond hair is an excellent development as well. “Did you ever wrestle?” high-pitched Southern skinny boy Luke asks, owning his bulging opponent. “Yeah,” smart ass Josh replies, “I wrestled your mom last night!” Note to self: don’t insult Luke Harrison’s mom. The kid goes ape shit all over Josh’s body until pretty much every one of his aesthetically perfected muscles is quivering and helpless. Then when he pounds the sculpted muscleboy’s lower back down across his knee in an OTK backbreaker, with Josh’s blue bulge quivering, his soaked mop top shaking, his carved pecs now bright red from the fists pounding into them, my bully-slayer gets the equalizer submission and drops the mountain of meat to the mat in disgust. “Are you okay?” Luke feigns concern. “Is you’re back okay?” he asks, a half a second before stomping his boot into the muscleboy’s lower back again. Hell. Yes.
The final fall (or “round” in RHW terms) has a bit of sweet drama about it. “I must’ve underestimated you,” Josh grudgingly admits as they start the final and decisive fall. When he gets the upperhand and unleashes a flurry of boot strikes on an already down Luke, the skinny kid sneers up at him having already achieved a minor victory. “Somebody’s mad!” he chuckles, celebrating on behalf of all of us who’ve been bullied by bigger, meaner, stronger, supremely condescending bad asses who would hate to admit that their prey managed to get under their skin. When he’s worked up a head of steam, Josh’s mouthwatering pecs heave and swell hypnotically. His body, particularly his back, shines with sweat. He watches Luke grovel, struggling to peel his face off the mat where he’s been slammed brutally. “I like it when you wheeze when you hit the mat!” Josh laughs like the fantastically gorgeous sadistic bastard he is. The final fall teeters back and forth as the young ‘uns do their best to sell us on classic pro wrestling suspense. My muscle-bully-retribution fantasy evaporates when Luke finally can’t peel himself back up off the mat. He’s crushed, wasted. He’s rung some satisfying concessions out of steel-cored Josh, but between Josh’s deeper reservoir of ring experience and his significant advantage in size and strength, Luke cannot pull it off. Far from some behind the dumpsters in the back of the high school squash, though, he’s done my bully-bashing fantasy proud. He’s not just earned respect, he’s rung it with both hands out of the tantalizingly tasty fantasy body of his rival. Josh “wins,” but the skinny, Southern sissy boy forced a different story out of him than the old throw-the-helpless-skinny-nerd-in-the-dumpster nightmare.
I have to quibble about a few things, as is my self-appointed prerogative as consumer and critic. First of all, and most obviously, if you’re planning on purchasing this in order to see either “porn star” wrestler stripped naked, stop right there. The stripping that happens is when exhausted Luke gets his singlet (and according to Josh, his “dignity”) stripped off of his legs, leaving Luke sprawled out in the middle of the ring IN HIS CALVIN KLEIN BRIEFS. Now, the act of stripping is, itself, hot, even when not down to bare skin, but I would caution anyone who buys what I think is arguably an oversell that by the end of this match you’ll see a porn star naked in the ring. Doesn’t happen, and I feel just a little toyed with, I have to say.
My second knock against this match is the wrestling itself. The trade off for an RHW match between painfully young pretty boys can often be some woodenness, telegraphed action, weak sell, and lack of wrestling creativity. In this case, in particular I find fault with the pacing (both boys sell suffering nicely, but then instantly stand up straight when it’s their “turn” on offense and suddenly are fresh as daisies), and with several moments of Luke’s newbie paralysis. Played a little differently, his blown Boston crab and anxious struggle to figure out what to do next when he’s got Josh on his heels could be a sweet little point in the drama. But it comes across here as mostly a rook who forgets his lines. My most vehement criticism is the fact that despite schoolboy pinning his comic book character opponent and owning him for considerable riding time, not once does he sink his claws into those bouncing baby pecs of Josh. Not once does he trap the sculpted stud in the ropes and wail on all those muscles. Finally, while I love the tempting tidbit that these guys could be porn star rivals, other than an initial “don’t I know you” banter when Josh first arrives at ringside, there’s nothing in the drama itself to play up the erotic content that these two do porn. Josh pulls a “I had your momma” insult, but if RHW is interested in talking directly to their homoerotic wrestling fans, let’s see the porn stars acknowledge “You didn’t squirm this much when my monster cock was up that bubble butt last month!”
Just increasing the erotic content of the drama would make me feel a little less used as a result of my knee jerk reaction to seeing the phrase “porn star rivals” in the match description. Of course, if RHW ever decides to tape an actual strip stakes match, if they ever present us with a naked pony ride around the RHW ring and one porn star force fed the jack hammer of the stud who bested him, then I’m buying a lifetime subscription!
…unconscious. Perennially dangerous and with inexhaustible tenacity, many opponents have been simply stunned by the energizer-bunny quality of Jake. Even when you’ve got him down, just try counting him out. With the muscle and the body awareness he’s got, he’ll slip out of your fingers 9 times out of 10. What’s an opponent to do to once and for all not just put, but keep him down? An elite few know you very well may have to make Jake unconscious!
…zealous. Jake embodies many different characters. At Rock Hard Wrestling he started as a brutal heel. At BG East, he’s been a beautiful babyface, a stern initiator and a stunned jobber in various combinations. There’s something achingly hot, though, about Jake as a valiant jock, as certain in the virtue of hard work as he is in the scales of justice tilting his way in bringing victory as reward for his earnestness. On just a couple of occasions, JJ has flashed that wide-eyed, broad smile, wrapped himself in patriotism, and flung himself face first into harm’s way trusting in the rightness of his convictions to weather the storms of dirty tricks and dastardly deviousness hurled back at him. That earnestness is misplaced, of course. This is professional wrestling we’re talking about. But there’s something deeply evocative when a certain gear choice, or a particular partner, or specific opponent manages to make Jake zealous.
Sidelineland 