Leroy Blaze – Sidelineland

“No rush or anything, I’m just facing some bitch, Kirk.”

“Hey, we didn’t ask for a deep tissue massage, buddy,” Leroy Blaze complains when his masseur starts digging in a little deep. “You can lighten up. No rush, or anything. I’m just facing that bitch Kirk.” What Leroy doesn’t realize is that Kirk Donahue just showed up and silently interrupted his massage, paying off the masseur (fuck, $100 is the going bribe?!?), and taking over the job(ber) himself. Unbeknownst to the jobber, Kirk silently claws at Leroy’s hot, lean muscles. He digs his knuckles and his elbows into the muscle fibers, grinding and crushing in a way that probably isn’t all the “therapeutic,” really. Kirk suddenly hammerlock’s Leroy’s right arm behind his back and claws the fuck out of his shoulders. Pretense aside, Leroy looks up to realize he’s in a world of danger. Kirk wraps Leroy’s towel around the jobber’s throat and drags him through the facilities to deposit him in the ring.

It’s that fucking attitude of Leroy’s the just keeps getting him into trouble. He’s double-booked the start of his match with Kirk and his last 30 minutes of his massage. With astonishing contempt for his opponent (astonishing, considering the way Leroy’s been steamrolled thus far in his BG East career), he just keeps asking for it. And holy fuck, BG East heels see this jobber’s long, lean, ripped physique and tuck into him like he’s a Thanksgiving turkey. The rising champ of over-the-top snark, Leroy bitches about not having “paid for deep tissue massage” even as Kirk is carving into him. Oh, fuck yeah, he’s deserving every relentlessly vicious, crippling attack he gets. “You’re just mad you weren’t the one getting a massage,” Leroy snarks unwisely between getting stomped and trampled like the mudroom rug. Fuck. Would Kirk be the sadistic dick of a heel he is if Leroy wasn’t such a smart ass? Trust me. We’ll never know the answer to that question for sure (because Leroy is SUCH a fucking smart ass).

Maybe next time get that massage after the match?

I mean, fuck, yeah, Leroy looks tasty. Those shiny silver trunks accentuate his skinny-boy-perky-booty nicely. He’s an illustration from a college anatomy and physiology textbook, every fucking muscle in crystal clear relief as every long inch of him is being stretched out and tortured. Once again, he has that barefoot babyface vibe, a mix of equal parts ambition, earnestness, athleticism, and naivete. When he’s getting slammed inches into the ring again and again, you can see the bolts of agony arcing their way through the length of his long limbs. His legs twisting and writhing, kicking uselessly behind him as he’s tapping out to a chin lock and knee to the back, is a compellingly steamy vision of hot jock suffering.

This match is apparently the Kirk-as-heel side of “The Two Sides of Kirk,” and coming off of watching him get upset by sultry lightweight Mason Broder, I can’t help but read his bitterness toward Leroy as classic transference. I mean, sure, Leroy’s disrespectful double-booking deserves the heat. But it’s like Kirk is earning back self-respect from some deficit far deeper than just being left waiting in the ring while Leroy gets his shiatsu in. Next to Leroy (and Mason, for that matter), Kirk looks like the seriously beefy heel on the rampage. His (disputed… only by me) award-winning butt looks tasty even to me, squeezed into those lime green trunks. And he’s mean to the core. At one point, he offers to let Leroy submit as soon as the jobber taps the mat… and then locks Leroy’s arms behind his back not letting his digits anywhere near the mat. “Who gets a massage before a wrestling match,” he demands to know, rhetorically, because Leroy’s choking on the pain as Kirk’s boot crushes his spine. “You’re going to need physical therapy after this one!”

It’s pro-quality punishment dished out onto a punishment sponge, so there’s an organic feel to the pairing of these two. Kirk fights vicious and dirty in a way that seems in keeping with an indy pro veteran let loose on a jobber without a ref anywhere in sight. He yanks on Leroy’s hair. He chokes him in the ropes. He does everything and anything to royally fuck up Leroy’s back and destroy any good qi the jobber was storing up from his interrupted massage.

I enjoy seeing flashes of brilliant offense from Leroy when Kirk sinks a fraction too deep into his narcissistic self-worship. Leroy leapfrogs out of the corner he’s thrown into at one point, does a (ragged but respectable) cartwheel, and then catches the heel across the neck with a superhero-quality flying lariat. But then, of course, he loses every shred of humility he ought to have been saving up from the first 15 minutes of the match. Leroy gets cocky, strutting and snarking and gloating over every flinch and grunt from Kirk. Like the postmodern babyface he is, he chokes his opponent in the ropes and slaps him in the face just to add insult to injury. He flicks his sweat in Kirk’s face. He flies high, pushing the seasoned heel hard, taking a gloating, no-effort, foot-on-the-chest pinfall from the rocked indy pro stud. Holy FUCK he takes out such an impossibly huge line of credit, he’s going to be paying that back for the next 20 years.

Kirk puts a stop to that shit decisively and in an instant. There are countless high impact OTKs (hello, made to order for a certain blogger?!). Leroy’s anatomy chart body twisted and tortured in the ropes is stunning. The final 13 minutes of the match are just the first installment on Leroy’s payment plan to try to make a dent in the interest he’s already accrued on that line of credit he just took out gloating and strutting. Kirk uses every inch of the ring to catapult and pummel and pound the hot jobber. He twist-ties Leroy’s once relaxed back around the ring post. Will Leroy walk away from this beating a little wiser? Maybe a little more circumspect? A little less cocky? Will he take Kirk’s parting advice, “Next time, be ready!?” Will he throw fewer punch lines at a vicious heel’s expense? Watching him writhe and choke on his humiliation and anguish, my head tells me that surely Leroy’s learned his lesson. But my heart tells me that we haven’t seen the last of his long, lean, hardbodied smart assness.

Jonny Firestorm has been clawing his way back into the hearts and fantasies of BG East fans recently, and I’m here for it. He’s got just a little salt and pepper in his full beard that’s fucking hot! Match by match, he’s honing his beefy body impressively. I’ve seen him on social media say that he’s roaring back into fighting trim after an injury, and, fuck, yeah, can someone forward me the name of his personal trainer? Because I’m still stepping up my own workouts in the hopes of getting a shot at making Scott Williams whimper this summer, and I could use even a tenth of whatever it is Jonny’s recent gains.

One of his newest releases is Jobberpaloozer 21, “breaking in” fresh faced new kid Leroy Blaze. When I say “kid,” I mean, fuck, dude looks young and still growing into himself. He’s 6’0 and 150 pounds, and frankly, sometimes, I strongly suspect numbers like those are exaggerations. But in Leroy’s case, I’m a believer. Super lean. When Jonny and Leroy do a little impromptu mini-pose off at the top of the match, no shit, Jonny’s upper arm is something like 3 times as thick as Leroy’s. Like, I’m seriously worried about this kid. Knowing Jonny’s repertoire like we all do, I’m genuinely concerned that he’s going literally break Leroy, probably in multiple places. Are you sure you know what you’re getting to, buddy?

“Hey, I think I know your name,” Leroy muses out loud once Jonny deigns to show up a few minutes late. “You’re that ‘legend,’ right?” Leroy puts air quotes around the word legend. Oh. Shit. “What was the name, oh… yeah,” he says with a smirk (like, fuck, literally a smirk!). “I think the name is Stormfire Jonny. You’ve kicked a lot of people’s asses.” It’s about 45 seconds into the match, and I’ve just done a complete 180. In that instant that Leroy pulls out the air quotes, I’m literally muttering at the screen, “Oh, fuck him up, Jonny!”

There’s something impressive about a jobber who can make me really, really, really want to see him get clobbered. And I really, really, really want to see Leroy take it hard. There’s something even more impressive about a jobber who makes sure that the legendary heel he’s facing knows just how much he deserves ever ounce of abuse that Jonny can serve up. I do give Leroy credit for doing his homework. He catches Jonny’s telegraphed attempt to sucker-clothesline him to start things and smoothly turns the tables. And by “turns the tables,” I mean he runs roughshod over Jonny for a good 6 minutes or so. Like, even I’m almost questioning if Leroy’s on to something when he implies that Jonny is over the hill, he’s stayed too long at the party, and he’s living off of former glory and diehard fans. At one point, as Jonny’s huffing like a steam engine, the ultra lightweight smirker tosses his ass through the ropes, and Jonny’s back hits the edge of the ring apron so hard it’s giving me a case of sciatica. When Leroy presses his advantage, leaping from the top turnbuckle to slam into the wounded legend on the floor below, Jonny gasps from underneath him, “Fuck you!” And holy fuck, 150 pound Leroy, making his BG East debut, snarls into Jonny’s face the prediction that he’s the one that’s going to do the fucking around here!

So, yeah, when Leroy presses is advantage once too often, attempting a flashy body splash off the top turnbuckle again, and Jonny impales him on his fist as he’s careening through the air, I think I speak for absolutely everyone in the homoerotic wrestling universe when I say that Leroy deserves everything he’s about to get. This is Jonny, after all. He can’t have stayed too long at the party because, let’s face it, it’s his fucking party! And holy shit, he pulverizes the new kid like a bug on a windshield. I mean, it takes about 20 minutes of unrelenting merciless punishment, almost entirely targeting those seriously impressive washboard abs on Leroy, but slowly ever so gradually, I come back around full circle to finally feel bad for the newbie all over again.

The punishment is 90% high impact and vintage Jonny nastiness. At one point, he suspends the skinny little fucker upside down from a ladder and proceeds to beat the living shit out of his wasted abs with fists, claws, a shoe, and a medicine ball. He rubs the smartassness right out of Leroy (and, let me just reiterate, there’s a lot of smartassness in this rookie!), until he finally forces Leroy to call him by name. “You’re Jonny Firestorm! You’re Jonny Firestorm!” Let’s face it, he deserved everything up to that point. But, again, let me just repeat the harsh truth that Leroy just pointed out to us: this is Jonny-fucking-Firestorm, so there’s an added gratuity of another 10-15 minutes of unhinged brutality. I feel confident Leroy’s still got a bald spot where Jonny kept peeling him up by off the mat by a handful of hair (and Leroy, let me just assure you that bald is beautiful). He slingshots the kid back and forth by the elastic in his trunks so much that I’m feeling strongly compelled to bring back my Trunk Pull Tuesday tradition.

Somehow, my journey from worry for Leroy, to aching to seem him get pulverized, to a return to sympathy for him, finally reaches perfect harmony around the time that Jonny hoists the unconconcious rookie across one shoulder and marches him out of the ring room, in order to help Jonny “clean up.” Like, fuck. Win-win-win, right? Will we see armor-cored Leroy again? If so, will he dare be even half as much a smartass next time? I have to disagree with Jonny’s announcement that “No one likes a quitter,” when he’s spitting in disgust as Leroy begs him to let him go. But I totally agree with Jonny’s prediction, “Jobbers never learn.”