Tag: Kevin Von Erich

Pathways

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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

Another Blast from the Past

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Joe at Ringside at Skull Island got me obsessing about Kevin Von Erich again. It doesn’t take much to get me obsessing about Kevin. He’s starred in so many of my personal erotic wrestling fantasies. I remember watching him in a match, had to be late 80’s, where he was apparently fighting with one bad arm. As a result, the entire match was a series of drop kicks and body scissors in which Kevin proved that he could, indeed, beat his opponent with one hand tied behind his back.

This photo of Kevin in his youth, squeezing a sack of grain between his ripped thighs, takes my breath away. I’m not a wealthy man, but I’d put it all on the table to exchange places with that sack of grain for fifteen minutes. Kevin’s physical development was at least 10 years ahead of the rest of the pro-field, and even then, I’d take Kevin then over a room full of WWE roidheads today.

As far as I remember (someone will correct me, I’m sure), Kevin always played the the sincere farmboy white knight. He was always indignant at the presence of evil heels anywhere and everywhere. He battled to prove the superiority of skill and hard-earned muscle over the machinations of guile and underhandedness. He was always a little pissed off, never content, even with his arms raised and screaming fans pawing at him in desperately lustful adoration.
Kevin never had a classically handsome face, but who the hell would ever notice with a body like that? His legs, the eroticism of his bare feet, his ripped torso, massive pecs, thick shoulders and veiny, muscular arms… it was ostensibly all about the hard-honed warrior, but no one, not even the straightest Texas straightboy, could have missed that Kevin was an object of mindless, hormonal, sexual lust. His ass… my, oh my.. his ass… Every drop kick and scissor hold required him to flex and squeeze those muscled cheeks, and without fail I continue to be slack-jawed and 100% aroused at the sight of Kevin (particularly from behind).

I don’t think there’s ever been a pro-pro who’s done it for me quite like Kevin. These days, I simply have to turn to the pro-pornboys to capture the homoerotic text that Kevin dictated so commandingly 25 years ago. Like Joe, I long for the days when the pros actually battled, body to body, with long held, punishing holds squeezing the strength out of one another until one barefoot muscle adonis outlasted his opponent, leaving the poor loser helpless on his back, looking up at the fierce young musclegod having his arms raised to the shrieking approval of all of us desperate to touch, feel, and be captured by our hard hero.

If You Just Smile

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I’m in a mood. There’s too much bad news and too many scowling faces right now. I’m feeling sour and cynical and ready to snap at someone who probably doesn’t deserve it. I need a mood-lightener.
Gorgeous hunks who snarl and scowl while pounding on other gorgeous hunks invariably make me hard. When those same hunks, like beautifully beasty Mikey Vee, are captured in a moment of spontaneous happiness, it gives me a special kind of joy. Mikey is much more typically on camera in a perpetual state of being pissed off. So a full on near-laughter smile across his face is quite a treasure.
It’s probably urban legend, but I’ve heard it said that smiling actually has a physiological effect that alters our mood. To smile, regardless of how you feel, makes you happier (so I’ve heard). Jimmy Dean with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye on the shoot of his double team match with two poundable beauties makes me smile and, true enough, I feel my mood lighten (that’s just anecdotal evidence, though… results may vary).
Three of the Von Erichs side-by-side (well, if you count Lance), can always make my mouth water. But the juxtaposition of their overcompensatingly massive championship belts, their sweaty, sexy bodies, and the “can I take a photo?”-nearly- genuine smiles leave me breathing a little deeper and feeling a little more at peace.

Tyrell Tomsen invariably makes me breathe a little faster and my heart start to pound. The heft of that package he’s toting around is a little dizzying. But he has such a sweet smile that I can almost manage to tear my eyes away from his stunning musculature to get a little lost in his face.

A smile is more than the contortion of the lips. The cocky smile is a good example of what I mean. Josh Goodman here is smiling with his mouth. The corners of his lips are upturned and he’s flashing some teeth. But he isn’t smiling with the rest of his face. He’s displaying his truly incredible body, probably concentrating a little on maintaining that beautiful flex, and communicating cocky self-confidence, not happiness.
But catch Mr. Joshua’s cheerful smile on set in his battle with Troy Baker. Both Troy and Joshua are captured here in a moment of genuine light-heartedness. Not just their mouths are smiling, but also their eyes. The fact that moments later the match was likely rejoined and they were taunting and punishing each other makes this stolen moment of genuine happiness that much more of a mood-lifter for me today.

So perhaps it’s urban legend, but I’m already feeling a little lighter for having reflected on some smiling, gorgeous faces this morning. I realize that light-heartedness isn’t always necessarily socially appropriate, but I think I’ve established pretty conclusively that I am often outside the bounds of social appropriateness. When things are seeming particularly heavy, I’m a little happier thanks to the sight of beautiful men with hard bodies cracking a delighted, unguarded smile.

Ode to Legs

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Legs are fantastic tools of control and humiliation in wrestling. The alignment of gorgeous legs and homoerotic domination is hot, hot, hot. While my current obsession with sexy legs is at the forefront of my own thinking about the subject, clearly I’m not the only one appreciating the many excellent uses to which legs can be put in hot wrestling action.

Wrestling Arsenal has page after page of fantastic head scissors from every angle. He has one entire page marveling at the joys of Mr. Joshua’s crushing legs. As Wrestling Arsenal points out, Joshua Goodman likes to deploy his massively muscled legs not only to wear down his man, but to torture and humiliate him. In this shot, Joshua is looking down the length of his beautiful body to watch his opponent’s pained face squeezed beet red, just inches from Joshua’s notorious package.
Wrestling pornboy extraordainare Mark Wolff always had the thickness to make men squirm when trapped between his bodybuilder thighs. In Muscle Match 3, muscleboy Ken Daniels enjoyed turning those tables and eliciting a grunt of pain with Mark’s muscle-armored waist trapped between his knees.
It’s not just the homoerotic boys squeezing the breath out of their opponents in humiliating fashion. Paul Roma (well, okay, he’s got to be considered homoerotic!) frequently used those shiny, steel-trap legs to squeeze his opponent’s bodyparts tight and up close. This remarkable shot of Roma with Animal’s head trapped between his legs while hanging horizontally, propped up on the turnbuckle, is pure artistry.
Speaking of art, Kevin Von Erich was always the master of torturing his opponents with his legs… and what beautiful, beautiful devices of torture he had!
Still, I think the explicitly homoerotic boys get the most mileage from their legs-as-means-of-torture, better than the pros. Troy Baker could squeeze out a whimpering submission from sheer brute force, making it that much sweeter when the tables were turned on the doe-eyed muscleboy.
Standing scissors seem to me to be the most humiliating and dominating use of a wrestler’s legs. The complete, abject vulnerability of the victim in contrast with the upright, almost unconcerned affect of the squeezer tells the story I love to hear: bodies dominating bodies, possessing and taming them, controlling and claiming them.

Barefoot Warriors

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I saw “Conan” Chris Walker wrestling in the Southeast briefly almost 20 years ago. He stands out in my memory both for his obviously stunning body, but also because he wrestled barefoot. Barefoot wrestling in a pro-ring is so incredibly sexy, I think. It’s not that I’m into feet all that much (though feet can certainly be sexy in their own right), but there’s something vulnerable, cocky, perhaps primal about wrestling barefoot. That was Walker’s schtick for a while: the primitive barbarian warrior (around the time of Arnold’s Conan movies)

Of course Kevin Von Erich was the prototypical barefoot hunk in the ring. Kevin’s incredibly muscular legs and bare feet made him look both more graceful and menacing, I think. His bare feet accentuated his stunning legs, and I have to believe they enhanced his moves of walking the ropes, scissoring his opponents, and launching himself into the stratosphere to deliver standing drop kicks. Wrestling Arsenal, who seems to be a bit contemptuous of the Von Erichs, suggests that bare feet make jobbers look more vulnerable and ripe for a beating. But I think Kevin always looked fiercer and cockier, not to mention sexier, when wrestling barefoot.
I once found a Von Erich family website with loads of photos from their various wrestling careers and youth. There was one B&W photo of a teenage Kevin lying on his side on the ground, already ripped to shreds. He was shirtless, and he wore athletic shorts with the legs pulled up to show off his flexed thighs. His bare feet were laced together, and between his knees was a crushed watermelon. I’m SO bummed that I didn’t save that pic. I also don’t have a food fetish, but between the bare feet, the crushed watermelon, and young Kevin’s rocking bod, I could just about reach an ecstatic state just thinking about it. Most of the matches in my wrestling fiction are fought barefoot both due to the fact that I don’t find complicated gear sexy at all, but also because bare feet in the wrestling ring are a major turn on. If anyone still has that photo of Kevin and the watermelon, I’d shed a tear of joy to get a copy.

Blast from the Past

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I realize this is quite a look backward, but when I think about beautiful men and hot wrestling, Kevin Von Erich is high on my list. His body was stunning, and those legs were so sexy! I don’t know how he feels about his gay fans, but I know I’m not alone in finding his body in motion incredibly erotic. The “official Von Erich website” has a few photos, but it looks like it’s primarily a vehicle for the Heroes of Wrestling movie. You can find a few of Kevin’s matches on YouTube, some of better quality than others.