Tag: Scott Williams

Happy New Year – 2026

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2025 was a shit show. And, at the same time, it included some of the most fun and fulfilling things I’ve ever done. Whenever I mention anything even obliquely political, I know that it’s going to grind the gears of some readers. However, after 16 and a half years, it’s still my blog. So, I’m fine to start 2026 shedding some followers who can’t tolerate hearing me say that 2025 seemed to me to be a complete dumpster fire when it comes to free speech, human rights, and the rule of law. Of particular relevance to what I write and obsess about here, the pendulum swing toward sexual repression and desperate conformity aren’t just politically ominous. They’re already having a direct and damaging impact on what has always been at the heart of this blog, namely, the celebration of homoeroticism and, specifically, homoerotic wrestling. It’s chilling, that explicit social project to transport us into a romanticized, puritanical re-imagining of a Reagan/Thatcher/Brezhnev world order (but with internet and social media-supercharged globalization and without the lip-service to democratic idealism). But, then again, my homoerotic wrestling self came of age in 1980s. I’ve witnessed the ways that we endured under the pall of cultural repression, and I honestly don’t think there’s any way to stuff the genie back into the bottle, no matter how much a neo-Falwellian moral minority tries to crawl into bed with the incoming tide of a transparently lascivious cult of personality. The first time around was scary and dark, and we’ve probably got scary and dark times still ahead. But, I believe we’ll march out of this moment in history like we did the first time, chagrined and with a shameful reckoning ahead, but with hard earned victories against provincialism and the persecution of sexual and gender diversity and, let’s face it, sexuality itself.

But, like I said, 2025 had some of the most enjoyable and rewarding moments for me in recent years, as well. My mind is already on WrestleFest NYC again. I’ve got my room booked and bags packed already for next month, but holy hell, WrestleFest NYC 2025 was pretty unbelievably fantastic. I regularly have flashbacks to the kick-off party last year, walking around the bar and feeling like my homoerotic wrestling social media feed had magically materialized in 3D before me. I mean, even if I didn’t recognize dozens of the homoerotic wrestlers I regularly get off to from my Smaug’s treasure of wrestling videos, the eye candy alone at that party, with all of these gorgeous men in singlets (+/-) would’ve been haunting my wet dreams all year long. I might have mentioned before that I chatted with Dio Characi that night, which has got to be near, if not at, my top, brush with fame for 2025. I actually don’t believe I’ve mentioned before that, after we were done talking, Dio turned back to his friends nearby, and I swooned every time his truly magnificent ass incidentally bumped against me in the crowded press of hot horny men packed into that bar. Fuck, 2025 definitely wasn’t all bad.

The WrestleFest NYC Live event was another absolutely spectacular highlight of 2025 for me. It was hot drama, without any effort to disguise that this wrestling show was entirely for gay eyes. It was earnest and larger-than-life in a way that mainstream pro wrestling shows don’t come close to for me. If anything, it was that much better for the authenticity and all-in brilliance of bringing homoerotic wrestling drama into the ring and in front of a sold out crowd with absolutely everyone in attendance being on the page. Sitting in the front row that night was fucking special for me. Not just because it was fun and sexy, but because it was this beautiful crystalizing of a community of us who, I bet, all quietly got off to watching professional wrestling on TV at some point in our lives. I’ve got my ticket to the sold out 2026 show already in hand, and I’m hoping to have another sweaty, nearly naked wrestler/wrestlers fall into my lap again.

Speaking of brushes with fame, I profoundly enjoyed wrestling with Scott Williams again in 2025. I continue to marvel at my life each and every time I stand in front of the Thunder. Talk about homoerotic wrestling fantasies materializing before my eyes… fuck, Scott is literally the fantasy muscle man of my dreams, somehow, improbable yet true, standing in front of me and demanding that I show him just how much my infatuation and fanaticism translate into crushing him into perpetually shocked submission. He confessed to me the last time we scrapped that, a couple of years ago, when we wrestled for the first time, he approached that meet-up in a spirit of “charity,” indulging a fan fantasy just to be generous. He keeps coming back for more, though, which makes me think he’s either the most charitable muscle man on the planet, or he genuinely looks forward to trying to earn back that Thunder cred he spends down every time I wring a submission out of him.

Another truly gratifying adventure in 2025 was finally launching a creative collaboration between me and my best buddy, AR. We’ve been writing and creating homoerotic wrestling fiction together almost daily for years now, and we’ve been discussing the possibility of formally sharing some of the art we co-create with other homoerotic wrestling fans. The precise recipe of our written narrative and AR’s gorgeous graphic art bakes up something that feels both entirely novel and thoroughly familiar to a homoerotic wrestling sensibility. In May, we began taking subscriptions for our original homoerotic wrestling serial, Heels & Heroes, an erotic pro wrestling fantasy told in entirely original graphics and text. We launched a roughed-out version of our vision directly on Patreon, and then an amazingly talented and generous subscriber and friend, JoseSustanciaP, constructed a stand-alone site for us to have even more creative freedom to build the Heels & Heroes universe. It was something I was genuinely proud of, not only because I love the quality and integrity of the content, but because it reflected this wonderful synergy that I enjoy so much with AR.

Much less satisfying, and much more in keeping with the zeitgeist of 2025, was what happened next with Heels & Heroes. After posting weekly updates for more than six months, we were nearly at the climactic end of the initial story arc, encompassing seven chapters centered on a traveling big-time international professional wrestling fed putting on televised wrestling shows down the U.S. East Coast… when abruptly, Patreon deleted our account and confiscated the $1,000 we’d earned through subscriptions thus far. This was as completely unexpected and out of the blue as it sounds. In a truly Orwellian turn emblematic of 2025, Patreon publicly announced one day in November that they had revised their community standards, and a day later, our account was deleted and all evidence of having every existed scrubbed from their platform. I hope that subscribers were, in fact, reimbursed for all of the money that they invested in Heels & Heroes, as Patreon implied they would. AR and I are deciding how to finish the final chapter of Heels & Heroes for fans to enjoy, while we consider the realities of a world in which censorship and gaslighting are increasingly mobilized to pretend that homoeroticism does not, and never did, exist. And doesn’t that just sum up a whole lot about the end of 2025 for all of us?

I’m still way bitter about how things played out with Patreon, but almost two months later, I’m more philosophical about it. This whole debacle happened literally at the same time that Can-Am was announcing they were closing business because of the patchwork of U.S. states who have enacted laws trying to outlaw internet pornography. These anti-pornography laws have been buoyed by the political tide of a head of state famous for (among other things) asserting that men with enough celebrity star power are entitled to grab women by the genitalia. Companies like Patreon, as well as purveyors of homoerotic content like Can-Am that we take for granted, are cracking down as the end result of a concerted effort to protect the sensibilities of a moral minority that’s gunning for much more than just pornography. They’re out to construct a world in which sexual and gender minorities and the celebration of eroticism don’t exist, or, let’s be honest, they’ll exist only behind closed doors and mostly for the benefit of those with sociocultural capital to keep themselves and their desires hidden. As we come to the close of 2025, I finally get all the romanticism about “the way things were” and hearkening back to a pre-internet, pre-social media world dominated by a U.S. president who refused to acknowledge the existence of AIDS, much less truly mobilize resources to fight the epidemic, because it was (mis-)understood to be “just a gay disease.” Yeah, it’s no coincidence that the puritanically romanticized re-imagining of the world they want to drag us into was in its hey day right around 1984.

Oh, wait. Did I get political again? Honestly, if you don’t recognize that your life, your passion, your homoerotic wrestling kink, your sexuality, and your very existence are political, you should should probably wake up right about now. Wake up. Act up. Keep yourself safe, but recognize that this is a shit show. New players. New technology. But this is a shit show we’ve seen before. And, while far from everyone survived the 80’s the first time, yet, we endured. So, join me in making a commitment to celebrate homoerotic wrestling in 2026. Not because someone else has given you permission to, but because we are fierce and beautiful and defiant and passionate, and we will continue to endure.

Hypermasculinity

New blog post about masculinity, hypermasculinity, and, of course, Scott Williams.

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Scott Williams pointed out to me recently that, despite continuing to reign as my favorite wrestler, his name hasn’t appeared in the history of this blog as much as some others. I’ve been warned about overfeeding Scott’s ego, but honestly, his cocky attitude that soaks up praise like a sponge is just one of the many qualities that turns me on so hard about him. Of course, it’s also his gorgeous muscles, his handsome face, his relentless baritone bluster… apart from his wrestling, I’d fixate on him in a crowd of hot hunks every time. But of course, I fell in lust with Scott the first time I watched him wrestle. His full throttle aggression, with the cocky delight he takes in doling out precisely measured doses of meanness, made me start to refer to him as “the man of my dreams.” Seriously, I bought Ultra Fight 2 because, at the time, I was so completely infatuated with Brad Rochelle, but after watching about three minutes of it, I just couldn’t take my eyes off of Scott.

So finding myself face to face with Scott these many years later continues to feel surreal. While I extensively documented my first wrestling match with him, I haven’t detailed how often we’ve wrestled since. We were recently wrestling again, and we were both marveling how it’s just been about two years, and yet feels like we’ve known each other much longer than that. I mean, Scott’s been inhabiting my brain for 20 years, but it hasn’t been nearly that long since we first actually met in person. For quite a while, I was treasuring the running tally of how many times we wrestled, but I’ve lost track at this point because there’s been that many. And every encounter has been sensationally hot and enjoyable, and every time, I’m thinking to myself, “Holy shit, this is actually happening. I’m literally wrestling Scott Williams!”

So, like I said, I was recently wrestling Scott. I had him locked up tight in face-to-crotch headscissors. His handsome face was flushed purple with pain as he struggled to breathe with his mouth and nose buried against my balls, when I asked him what my next post about him (to increase his hit count/ego strokes on the blog) should be about. He did that adorable thing where he pretends he’s never going to submit, flipping me the middle finger as if he’s not starting to panic. Of course, that’s just the signal for me to pump on the accelerator and increase the pressure. Soon enough, he was tapping. By this point, I’ve learned to ignore Scott’s first tap. He doesn’t really mean that one, and if I let him go then, he’ll just immediately start a fresh onslaught of blustering trash talk. After the second tap, though, I finally let his head go, leaving him a gasping and wheezing. When his dizziness and disorientation had faded and he was back in command of his breathing, we had a fascinating chat about masculinity.

I made the observation that Scott’s brand is “hypermasculinity.” Adorably, he had to think about it a few seconds, because I think it comes so naturally to him that he isn’t even conscious of it. But finally, he agreed with my assessment that he brings a hypermasculine vibe to his wrestling, with his deep baritone voice that makes everything sound like a taunt. He maintains this astonishing level of physical fitness that showcases his classic, athletic build and proportions on his 6’1 frame. Seriously, I’m frequently referring to him as “hey, muscle man,” in a match (e.g. when he’s snarling and snapping helplessly in my leg nelson that he hates so much). But calling him a muscle man isn’t sarcastic in the least. He’s got those sensationally sexy, hairy pecs. And he’s got that super square jaw and that Cary Grant slightly dimpled chin that makes it pretty effortless to slot him into the “classically handsome masculine ideal” category (at least as far as I’m concerned).

But far beyond just Scott’s physicality, his wrestling persona also comes across like his engine is perpetually fueled by unusually high octane testosterone. He’s as aggressive and mean in defeat as he is in victory. He has that SW-patented pump move that makes my cock twitch whenever I’m watching him wrestle, when he applies a hold, and then ratchets up the pressure on it in rapid succession. Every inch of a match with Scott is a battle to conquer, to possess more territory, to build momentum, to bury or be buried. It’s entirely gilded in that construct of masculinity applied to every corner of modernity that argues that whatever you can take by force belongs to you. Honestly, I sort of despise that construct… and… fuck, it makes punishing Scott so fucking sensationally pleasurable.

So, we were mulling over the concept of hypermasculinity around the time I was threatening to knock him out with a figure-4 choke. And we agreed that while it definitely features for both of us in terms of a turn on, it’s just one flavor palette, rather than the substance of homoerotic wrestling. We shared the opinion that the wrestling community is much richer for the diversity of bodies and attitudes and gender expressions that are all part of the landscape. And the play between gender expressions and typologies of wrestling roles makes the combinations that much hotter (like the fey twink heel and the hypermasculine jock jobber).

And all this talk of gender expression and homoeroticism gave us an opportunity to confirm how important we both find it to keep our gay cis-gendered attention on stepping up to the plate and standing alongside and advocating for our transgender siblings today. Honestly, so many minority identities feel like they’re in the crosshairs these days, it could be easy to back away from those at the front of the line taking the brunt of reactionary bigotry and vitriol. As for me and the man of my wrestling dreams, at least, we’re in agreement that the courage of our convictions compels us to speak out, to vote, to show up and call out the swing of the pendulum so viciously working on erasing the diversity of gender identities.

If you’d told me 20 years ago I’d be repeatedly wrestling with Scott Williams and getting to know him at this level, I’d have never believed it. Can’t wait for next time, muscle man!

Bard’s World

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This is my periodical post reminding everyone who spends any time here on the blog that what you find here at Sidelineland is just my personal musings on what turns me on about homoerotic wrestling. I’m about to celebrate the 16th year of this curious little sideline of mind, and it has remained just my personal take on wrestling and wrestling-adjacent topics (which reminds me I ought to write more on current hot celebrities who I wish wrestled). From time to time, I have been treated to some free videos from producers to whet my appetite to write reviews, but no one sponsors what I write. No one endorses my opinions (other than Scott when I talk about how incredibly hot he is). This is just my 1,745th post sharing my personal opinions and tastes and often ill-informed takes on the fascinating and titillating world of wrestling for gay eyes.

Scott agrees with me every time I mention how hot he is.

I’m prompted to remind you of this fact, despite how obvious it seems to me, because sometimes new readers stumble across Sidelineland and misunderstand what they’ve found. This isn’t journalism. It often isn’t even particularly well written, though occasionally I string together prose that I’m a little proud of. I don’t speak with any particular authority, and I don’t claim that my insights reflect anything other than my personal biases and tastes. So, when someone criticizes my opinion or perspective, I think that’s totally fair game. In fact, I get a kick out of comparing notes with legitimate homoerotic wrestling fans who see things differently than I do from time to time. So you don’t get instantly hard at the sight of Dio or Mitch or Lon or Rusty or Scott? I find this fascinating, because I do SO fucking much. I have, on many occasions, had my gaze turned on someone who hasn’t pinged my radar, to discover something hot and new introduced to me through the avid fanaticism of another wrestling fan. I’ve also had fans do their best, but be unable to quite get me into the particular wrestler or sub/uber-fetish that they’re devoted to. Thus I’m just a traveler alongside of those of you who are so fanatical about gut punching or feet (you know you are).

Stop hurting Dio! …. [note: please do NOT stop hurting Dio]

Honestly, I love comments here on the blog, and on social media. Last February at Wrestlefest NYC, I just about wanted to cry every time someone walked up to me to tell me that they read the blog and appreciated it, because I honestly had no idea 16 years ago who might care about anything I had to say, much less agree with it, and even much, much less get engaged in the conversation to eagerly disagree with it. Just so fucking cool, honestly! I don’t take it for granted for a second.

I was shocked the first time I heard someone tell me they didn’t get off on Mitch!

There are just a few guardrails on that here at Sidelineland. Obviously, I can’t prevent anyone from wanting to a pick a fight (not talking about the good kind of fight that ends up naked in a wrestling ring). Trolls are going to troll. That hasn’t changed in 16 years. But here, on the pages of my own blog, there are a few low blows that aren’t tolerated. One category of comment that’ll get you banned is talking shit about homoerotic wrestlers. You don’t have to like the wrestlers I like, or the matches, or the producers I favor, but anything that smacks of personal attacks on the men who wrestle for the enjoyment of others will get your comments deleted and your opportunity to comment here shut down. Body shaming, personal insults, homophobic slurs, going out of your way to try to take a dump on a match… basically, if it feels like you’re just here to tear down, that’s not what Sidelineland is for. The other, rarer reason someone gets banned is a personal attack on me. I actually put up with a lot more shit trying to shame me for my opinions than I’ll put up with slams on the people putting themselves in front of a camera and wrestling for the entertainment of others. But I do have limits, particularly here in my house, on this platform I’ve been constructing one post-in-the-dark after another.

Despite my blatant lobbying and pandering to voters, Lon Dumont has never won a Bestie Award.

This does beg a thorny question, however. When is trash talk a personal attack? I mean, fuck, I’ve literally recorded a podcast episode paying homage to how hot trash talk can be in a wrestling match! One wrestler insulting another to get under his skin, to light his fuse, to assert psychological dominance is a treasured part of the pro wrestling canon, as far as I’m concerned. So, I sort of get it when fans start throwing around insults that feel akin to the snarling trash talk quite a few of us enjoy from super hot wrestlers doing their thing. However, if you aren’t actually wrestling or setting up a hot wrestling premise for a motivating grudge to fuel your next (literal) match, then you dumping on a wrestler who’s had the balls to wrestle in front of a camera for your entertainment doesn’t make you a heel. It just makes you a dick. And you have every right to be a dick. Just not in the comments on this blog.

Damien likely isn’t a nepobaby, but he is indisputably hot as fuck!

One last distinction I want to make is how much I love kayfabe. I love the pretense. I love it when wrestlers are all-in, selling not just the holds and the suffering, but the world-building of villains and heroes battling it out in the ring (or on a mat, or in a motel room, or literally absolutely anywhere else). If you’ve read anything I’ve written, you likely know how much I love storytelling, and in particular, I love the narrative of brutal, hot, intense wrestling drama. I also love pulling back the pretense and talking with wrestlers about their actual lived experience of being part of the world-building as a character in a homoerotic wrestling drama. And, fuck, it can get confusing. I have sometimes had extensive conversations with wrestlers before conducting an interview with them, as we both decide if this will be a shoot interview or in character. There are few wrestlers out there where the two overlap so much as to make the matter moot, but most of them are not the larger than life sadistic heels or virtuous babyface heroes or hapless and horrified jobbers that they may portray. Nine times out of ten here on the blog, when it’s just me sharing my thoughts, I’ll enjoy living in that world they’ve built, though. I’ll heap scorn on Damien Rush as a beefcake nepobaby (though I strongly suspect he did not, literally, grow up with a trust fund). I’ll complain about the brutality heaped upon the cherubic beauty of babyface hero Dio Characi. I enjoy playing into and playing with and amplifying the narrative as a way of respecting kayfabe and appreciating the hot wrestling drama it delivers us. I sincerely have nothing but slack-jawed awe and respect for all of the wrestlers I’ve featured here on the blog. And on just a couple of occasions, when I’ve had a wrestler take issue with something I’ve said, I’ve diligently amended what’s published here, because pissing off or insulting the hot hunks I crush on in wrestling is the opposite of my intention.

Rusty was another of my passionate fixations that someone wasn’t shared by everyone.

On a related note, just a heads up that I’m moderating all comments for a while (even those of you who are long-time commenters). Don’t take it personally, please. When the comment section cools off a bit, I’ll put it back to normal. But in the mean time, if it takes a beat longer than usual to see your comment post, be patient. And know that I love what you have to say (unless you never see your comment posted, in which case you’ve been banned).

Sidelineland Sounds – Episode 4

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Hey there, again, homoerotic wrestling fans. This is Bard, longtime homoerotic wrestling blogger. It’s been a few months since my last episode of Sidelineland Sounds, and, honestly, that’s just how it is. I find it great fun to watch wrestling, to write about wrestling, to review matches, to cobble together these audio episodes… and I just wish I had time to do more of it, and be more consistent. Early on in my nearly 16 years of blogging I used to beat myself up about having to take breaks from it every so often, but I’m older and wiser now, and I’m just enjoying the fun of broadcasting my passion for hot wrestling whenever I get the chance.

In case you haven’t listened to the first three episodes of Sidelineland Sounds, check them out. Listeners have given a lot of great feedback to my audio musings about the written word in the age of instant video gratification. In episode 2 I sampled some of the hot trash talk that spices up my favorite wrestling fare, and in episode 3, I shared some of my thoughts about what I find hot about the sounds of a wrestler suffering. For this fourth episode of Sidelineland Sounds, I’m taking a step back from the action itself, and reflecting instead on one of the unsung heroes of homoerotic wrestling video post-production, the musical soundtrack.

[Bell Ring – sound credit: BG East’s Three-Way Thrash 6]

I’ll forgive you if nothing comes to mind when I mention the musical soundtrack of homoerotic wrestling. It’s easy to miss. In fact, depending on the source of your wrestling videos, music may or may not even be there. But there are some examples of musical soundtracks in homoerotic wrestling that have seriously imprinted themselves deeply on me.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East Wrestlfest 1 trailer]

That was the soundtrack to BG East’s trailer for Wrestlefest 1, and it’s the same soundtrack for several other BG East trailers. And it’s fucking hot! And, depending on how old you are and what digital era you started watching BG East, you might have a similar Pavlovian response to mine, after repeatedly hearing that music paired with seeing super hot wrestling clips.

So, where does music show up in the homoerotic wrestling canon? To explain, I need to go back to my early days of discovering the exciting and salacious world of wrestling for gay eyes. My first foray into purchasing homoerotic wrestling videos happened just before DVDs really became the standard format for video recordings (yes, I’m that old). So, for the younglings out there, before streaming, before blu ray and before DVDs, there were VHS tapes. And frankly, VHS tapes were a pain in the ass because they were literally on a tape.  Rewinding or fast forwarding to a particular spot you wanted to savor was time consuming and an inexact science. Some of my earliest wrestling VHS tapes actually broke from me playing, rewinding, and playing the same spot in the recording so often the tape wore out… and I know that you know what I mean about those super sweet spots in a favorite match that you’ve just got to watch over and over again. But the inefficiency of a VHS tape had an extremely fortunate side effect. So if you had a standard 2-hour long VHS tape, producers like BG East and Can-Am would release these collections of 3 or 4 matches to approximately fill a tape with, each match being anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes long. And then there’d be that extra bit of tape still left over at the end. Sometimes just 2 or 3 minutes, sometimes 10 or 15 minutes of space. When I started ordering them, I discovered, to my delight, that BG East ingeniously cut trailers for other products to fill every last inch of available tape, padding the matches you ordered with, essentially, commercials at the end.

I’ve blogged about this before, but let me just say that I LOVED those fucking trailers. Honestly, some of the worn out spots in my VHS tapes were actually during the trailers at the end of the tape. They were these hot, sort of impressionistic short outtakes from full-length matches. Like, they’d have a five second clip of one sweat soaked muscle hunk cranking on a Boston crab, and then a quick cut to later in that same match when the tables had turned and the other hardbodied stud was pumping on headscissors. You couldn’t tell the plot or understand the momentum of match from these trailer, but the point was just to whet your appetite, to make you need to send in more cash and get another tape of matches. These trailers had no audio from the actual matches themselves. Instead, they had these super sexy electronic dance music scores with what can only be described as a distinct homoerotic wrestling sensibility to them.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s Submissions 6 trailer… “I submit, sir!”]

That’s the soundtrack to the trailer for BG East’s Submissions 6, and they used that music for other trailers. I think that one’s got to be one of the most on point musical accompaniments in history. Again, it has that intense, driving electronic bass beat in the background, with that plaintive, pleading high pitched voice-over begging to be allowed to submit. 

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s Submissions 6 trailer… “I submit, sir!”]

Fuck, that’s hot! Someone at Wrestlefest New York told me last year that he thought Kid Vicious was the actual musician behind these BG East trailer soundtracks, but Kid Vicious told me they were produced by a friend of BGE, but not him. I feel like whoever wrote and produced these has got to be in the club with us, right? I mean, I could be totally wrong, but they *feel* like the musical transcription of an erotic reaction to incredibly hot wrestling.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s X-Fights 20 trailer soundtrack… “Heavenly Bod”]

That was the soundtrack to the X-Fights trailers from BG East, with this upbeat attitude and the indulgent celebration of the heavenly bodies of sex gladiators. In case you didn’t catch the lyrics, the slow, sexy voice is singing, “I face you in a match, be prepared to try your best, you will struggle, you will fight, but you’ll give up like the rest. Meet your master, be my slave, I will whip you with my rod, you will surrender yourself, and you will worship my heavenly bod.” Like, fuck, yes! That’s the vibe of some of the sexiest homoerotic wrestling, right? The X-Fights genre lands squarely in that conquer-and-possess end of the wrestling pool, with an unflinching focus on the erotic attraction between the wrestlers. Some homoerotic wrestling is more explicit, not just in terms of nakedness and sex, but more explicit in terms of exploring how wrestling is turning on not just the audience watching, but the wrestlers themselves. Like the driving, upbeat soundtrack, they celebrate that edge of competition fueled by desire, where the passion to win is just the first wave of erotic passion you’re going to see in a wrestling match.

Not all of the BG East trailers were quite so in your face. Some soundtracks for these trailers were a little less literal than those first three examples. Though, those first three are my favorites. But there were others that were more tone-setting, with more instrumentals, more like the way a cinematic score is designed to signal to a viewer the intended emotional impact of a scene. Like the soundtrack to the Undagear 3 trailer…

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s Undagear 3 trailer]

These more straightforward, solely synthesizer soundtracks were more major chords, less cheeky, literally no lyrics, just a driving electronic dance beat to accompany clips of quick, hard action. I feel like my conditioned response to that Undagear soundtrack is all about eager anticipation of the relief of suspense. It scratches that itch that I often have for the drama and storytelling of hot, competitive wrestling, where two legitimate contenders walk in, both thinking they’re going to walk out of there the winner, and the back and forth of the action slowly wears away the pretense and leaves one of them with a seriously bruised ego.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s Undagear 3 trailer]

So I’m listening to this soundtrack to the Undagear 3 trailer and watching Brigham Bell, that ultra lean gorgeous boy absolutely taking it from muscle hunk Steve Corelli and, in turn dishing it right back. You’ve got no idea from the clips in the trailer who comes out on top, but you know for a fucking fact that the battle was nasty and intense!

I think the BG East trailers have been the most on point in translating a specific homoerotic wrestling vibe to music, but they haven’t been alone in bringing some professional polish to post-production with a soundtrack. Hunk Wrestling has this whole sexy world-building montage before Ivan Guerrero and Steve Mason step onto the mats, for example, that has this almost ethereal dance music with an alto voice musingly singing, “Look into my heart and see what, my love, you are to me.”

[Audio Clip – sound credit: Hunks Wrestling Ivan Guerrero vs Steve Mason]

I don’t know that it strikes the tone of the seriously mean mat scrap about to break out between Steve and Ivan, but the soundtrack accompanies this luxurious, slow look at each of them, separately, working out their hot bodies, perhaps speaking more to the viewer falling in lust with the two of them in the abstract, before our lust to see them work each other over finally breaks out. 

A lot of what I’ve seen in pairing music with homoerotic wrestling videos is less about the vibe of a particular match, and more conveying an ethos of a production house in general. In many cases, the music is just part of a visual and audio branded logo, speaking to the particular sensibility of the producer, overall. UCW, may it rest in peace, had that quick 80’s guitar riff to start off matches. 

[Audio Clip – sound credit: UCW College Boy Beatdown #4]

It’s very “80’s garage band” which was totally apropos of UCW’s cinder block walls and relatively low budget, high earnestness staging. Just to give credit where due, I sampled that last clip from my copy of UCW’s match between Marcus Ares and Quinn Harper entitled “College Boy Beatdown #4,” now for resale on Underground Wrestler.

And speaking of Underground Wrestler, while I haven’t watched a lot from them, yet, I have caught the high gloss finish to their branded logo of a neon sign blazing to life, along with the Tron-esque audio of a live wire, followed by this ominous horror film minor chord chime fading into silence as the screen fades in on Nordic muscle god Chase Lundqvist stretching out in preparation for his $1,000 Challenge Match against Chasyn.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: Underground Wrestler $1,000 Challenge]

These audio brands don’t drill down quite so deep into the specific ethos of a particular type of match like the BG East trailer soundtracks, but I like the attention to detail, to establish a tone of a production house, if not of any one particular match. Which is probably why polished post-production really stands out, I find, when I come across it on Watchfighters. I mean, the genius of Watchfighters is that everyone from major underground operations to just a sole wrestling enthusiast with a camera phone can share what they produce and let wrestling fans vote with their credit cards for who’s making a move in the market. So, it’s probably no wonder there’s a lot, including a lot of hot wrestling, with little-to-no post production, sometimes no credits, no logos, and certainly no soundtracks. But, a couple I’ve seen deserve an honorable mention for bringing some forethought and creative style to bedazzle a relatively straightforward homemade wrestling video into something with self-conscious character.

A couple of Watchfighters matches I’ve reviewed on the blog stand out for me. The first I want to mention is the growing Uruguayan production house headed by Muscles77 (who wrestled for BG East a while back as Marcelo Muscle). The crew behind matches like Muscles77’s match against Rocky Big Guns opens with a slow motion survey of both hardbodied wrestling hunks in turn, posing, flexing, sneering with cocky confidence at the camera as this unhurried, electronic melody with (mabybe?) a South American sensibility provides the soundtrack to our eye fucking, giving us time to decide whose mouthering muscles we want to see on top.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: Muscles77’s Alpha vs Alpha: Big Muscle Domination]

My last shout out for self-produced wrestling content with a self-conscious, perhaps even cerebral post-production footprint goes to long-time friend of this blog, Mason Brooks. I reviewed his apartment match against Dio Characi after Dio told me it was one of the favorite matches he’s filmed by that point in his early career. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Mason has crafted super-stylized opening credits with a funky, quirky beat and an A-Ha-style life-to-storyboard visual effect.

[Audio Clip – sound credit: Mason Brooks’ Mason vs Dio Characi]

The music is high concept. Like, I’d expect to hear it on the floor of a gay dance club AND playing the elevator of a museum of modern art. Which, honestly, is a pitch perfect capture of exactly the way I think of Mason Brooks in general.

In summary, I confess that a hot musical soundtrack is, by no means, a requirement for me to get turned on by homoerotic wrestling… but it certainly doesn’t hurt. Honestly, I’m all about the blending and blurring of artistic media. I do it every day. Every morning, I wake up before the sunrises and write homoerotic wrestling fiction with my best wrestling buddy and graphic artist, AR. Getting turned on by the overlap of watching hot homoerotic wrestling with a conscientious musical soundtrack is why this infatuation I have with homoerotic wrestling feels like something more than just my taste in porn. It’s a sensibility that translates well beyond pushing play and watching wrestling on video. It’s a worldview that translates into literature and audio podcast and visual arts… and into music.

So, that’s about it for this much anticipated fourth edition of Sidelineland Sounds, my audio accompaniment to my longstanding blog Sidelineland. Email me at Wrestlebard@gmail.com, or message me at Wrestlebard on Instagram and BlueSky, and let me know what music speaks to your homoerotic wrestling sensibilities. It can’t promise when the next episode of Sidelineland Sounds will drop, but my plan for episode 5 is really inspired by the BG East track “I submit,” slowing down and taking a long, slow listen to the panicked pleading of once proud wrestlers begging not to get broken. Until then, keep enjoying homoerotic wrestling, and let me know what’s catching your eye and what’s turning you on hardest in the world of homoerotic wrestling, because you know, I’m going to keep telling you what’s turning me on about it. 

[Audio Clip – sound credit: BG East’s Submissions 6 trailer… “I submit, sir!”]

[Bell Ring – sound credit: BG East’s Three-Way Thrash 6]

Do NOT Touch the Beard!

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Tarz Lando sandwiched between Shane McCall and Scott Williams

At Wrestlefest NYC in February, I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting Tarz Lando at the Gay Wrestling History panel that I co-moderated. I’ve followed Tarz on social media for ages, technically before I even knew he was part of the wrestling community. He’s got this incredibly sexy handsome brute vibe on social media, with beefy muscles, a shaved head, and a luxuriously thick, full beard. There’s something cerebral about him that’s extra attractive to me, like he’s got the total package of muscle and brains to bring to a fight. And fuck, he’s even sexier in person! He shared some of his pics from the panel and gave me permission to post them here, so he’s also cool like that. That, in turn, sent me down the rabbit hole of checking out Tarz’ wrestling videos on WatchFighters, which led me to tucking in recently to enjoy his muscle bully beatdown of adorable Isaac Andrews.

There’s sweet dramatic tension from the start, and it hinges on Isaac’s flirtatious playfulness repeatedly running aground on Tarz’ serious-mindedness. Tarz is doing bench presses when Isaac keeps insisting on “spotting” him. “Spotting” him, in Isaac’s book, is straddling Tarz’ head and insisting on “helping” him count his warm up reps and “assist” with the bar unsolicited. It’s sort of cute, really, because Isaac is clearly just pulled into Tarz’ super sexy orbit and wants to admire the big man’s hot, hairy, huge muscles up close. Fair play. Looking at Tarz, I get that. But Tarz is attempting to have a serious workout. Isaac playfully pushes his luck too far (or, just right, really), and takes a sucker punch to the gut. Like Tarzan carrying Jane through the jungle flung over one shoulder, Tarz lugs the irritant indoors and dumps his hot ass down on some wrestling mats. “You wanted me, big boy? Well, now you got me,” the bearded beefcake growls, ripping off his shorts and getting down to business.

Tarz is a gorgeous beast. When I met him in February, I had to restrain myself from reaching out and palming his huge biceps straining the seams of his sexy tight t-shirt. The dude is just fucking solid and magnetic. So there’s something intensely ironic every time he calls Isaac “big boy.” This is WatchFighters, so I don’t have the ability to scratch all my itches, like looking up their respective stats. But, Isaac is solid and fit, with a sexy carpet of hair almost as on point as Tarz’ hairy muscles. But every time Tarz calls him “big boy,” it just keeps driving home the point that Isaac is way, way, WAY outgunned. The naughty spotter gets buried under an avalanche of muscle again and again, and it’s sexy as fuck. “Tell me, are you ever going to spot me again,” Tarz demands to know as he’s transitioning from a spine snapping Boston crab to a single-leg crab, so he can have one hand free to throttle Isaac’s balls. “Now,” the big man demands with cold command, “scream for me.” And fuck, Isaac does!

Isaac continues to be a naughty little punk, though. He literally bite’s Tarz’ finger when the big man latches fishhooks in to finish off a camel clutch. “I know you didn’t just bite me,” Tarz growls, and I swear you can see the heat rising off of his sexy shaved head. “I did just bite you,” Isaac sasses back, a little less impressive for having to mutter it through clenched teeth while trying not to get his skull ripped off his spine in that camel clutch. Isaac is flailing helplessly at one point, buttoned down in about 3 holds at once, and he reaches up to try to yank on Tarz’ sexy-as-fuck thick beard. “Do NOT touch the beard,” the big man barks so loud it makes Isaac flinch. The sexy unsolicited spotter even latches on a ball claw at one point and threatens to rip the beast’s balls off, and for a little while, Isaac has this irrepressibly proud grin on his face as he’s catching some riding time on the muscle man.

Isaac’s naughtiness just keeps adding to the long list that Tarz is keeping of reasons why the irritating punk deserves more torture. Tarz smothers the punk with his massive biceps, and I don’t believe the kid’s protests for a second (fuck, those ARMS!). Tarz yanks Isaac’s trunks halfway down to give this oppositional-defiant kid a severe swat on his lily white ass. Isaac just keeps deserving it, from start to finish, and it makes watching Tarz muscle bully him absolutely any way and every way he wants fucking satisfying. I think it’s Tarz’ leg nelson that makes me cheer hardest. I feel pretty sure that those tree trunks of his could easily snap Isaac’s arms out of their shoulder sockets if he really wanted hurt the kid.

But Tarz gives off more “stern coach” than diabolical heel. I mean, sure, I get the distinct impression Tarz is enjoying himself, planked overtop of Isaac and pounding his crotch into the punk’s face over and over again, but it’s the life lesson that’s really the point. “Now, think about what you done!”

Honestly, I’m not sure if Isaac learned his lesson, because interlaced among the screams and submissions, I’m pretty sure he was fucking enjoying being on the receiving end of this mauling. And I enjoyed watching it. I’m pretty agnostic in the whole smooth vs. hairy debate, but both of these sexy men serve up gorgeous fur and seriously attractive facial hair. And fuck, it’s a sexy, intimate, so supremely deserved beatdown!

WrestleFest – Watching

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I’ve described myself before as having a bit of a voyeur kink. I like watching. Specifically, I like watching hot wrestling. It hasn’t been that long since I took the plunge into meet-up wrestling, while on the other hand, I’ve been getting off on watching homoerotic wrestling for about 25 years, and some of the first igniting of my erotic interests were watching pro wrestling on television when I was growing up. An honest question I had for myself when I was anticipating my first meet-up wrestling matches was whether it would be the same turn-on as watching wrestling. For most of my life, my wrestling fantasies have projected me into hot match scenarios that I watch. So, I wasn’t just watching Tommy Zenk pumping on a side headlock, I was imagining that it was my face being crushed against Tommy’s flexing pec, trapped by his muscles and under his control. I wasn’t just watching Jeff Phoenix twisting Brad Rochelle’s spine in an over-the-knee backbreaker, I was imagining myself, with Brad’s scorching hot body at my mercy, laid out before me, suffering at my will and whim. I was certain that the experience of wrestling wouldn’t be the same as the experience of watching it, but I wondered how close the experience of wrestling would be to where my imagination takes me when I’m watching. The quick answer is that I experience them very differently. Both are an intense turn-on, but with very different stimuli and reactions.

From BG’s Battling Briefs 4

WrestleFest NYC last week presented me several opportunities to explore some of the nuances between what turns me on about watching wrestling and what turns me on wrestling. The first of these opportunities popped up unexpectedly during my first match of the fest. It was my first time meeting this particular hot, hunky opponent. As a veteran of several past fests, my opponent came prepared. He had a small suite with enough room to lay out wrestling mats he brought with him (mat wrestling is SUCH a different beast than making-do with a hotel mattress!). He was stocked with flats of bottled water and an impressive bar. And he had connected is laptop to the hotel TV, where he was playing classic, old school BG matches from back in the day (you know the ones, the blue mats, small room, mirrored wall). My host and I enjoyed talking wrestling a while before we actually wrestled (a way I work through my nerves with a first-time opponent), and I kept finding myself distracted by watching the screen where these beautiful, sweat-soaked twinks were stripping each other naked and grappling fiercely to settle who’s going to end up on top. Fuck. I kept getting sucked into the scene on the TV, turned on by how I imagine their hot bodies feel slapping and thumping and grinding into each other. When my opponent and I finally hit the mats, I was pretty primed by the on screen inspiration. But locking up and suddenly scrapping against his Brazilian jiu-jistu training and potently concentrated muscles, I tapped into something completely different. The scramble and flex and chess match of holds yanked me entirely out of my head and into my body. The hot video playing in the background disappeared, and there was just me and my opponent and the raw, fierce battle of strength and will and skill. And it was hot in an incomparable way to the hotness of watching the BG match moments earlier. The turn-on was related, but definitely not the same.

On Saturday evening, I had another fascinating opportunity to think and experience deeply what turns me on about watching wrestling in contrast to what turns me on about wrestling. That night, my friend Scooter produced WrestleFest Live, which was this cool scene for homoerotic wrestling in the round. I’ve been saying for years I want someone to save me a front row seat to watch some live hot homoerotic wrestling, and holy hell, that’s exactly what this was! I watched the first half of the card, featuring 3 intense matches starring incredibly sexy and talented wrestlers with extensive studio and self-produced wrestling resumes. I was one of about 20 audience members, with another 15 or so wrestlers and volunteers there with us in the New York loft a few blocks from the Empire State Building. Tickets were $30, and I sat next to my friend TxWresl, who I’d just wrestled earlier that day. Sitting right in front of me was my Gay Wrestling History panel co-moderator Bob Wood, and I made a new friend of the audience member sitting on the other side of me, as we all chatted before the matches began. Although I’ve been saying I want exactly this type of experience, I honestly didn’t know what to expect or how I’d react to being so up close to smoking hot wrestling while sitting alongside a few dozen other onlookers. Well, I’m happy to report it was intense and oddly intimate and sexy as fuck! Each of the three matches I watched (Sunny DeLeon vs. Jaxon Valliant, Gabe Steel vs. Tanner Ripley, and Bobby Carter vs. Seon Cruz) was a sensationally fought battle. The wrestlers seriously went for it. They had high impact blows, long held holds, and gorgeous, sweaty bodies working hard for domination. There were a few moments when I was a little worried Bob, sitting in the front row in front of me, was going to have a wrestler dumped in his lap, though I’m not exactly sure if Bob would have minded. It wasn’t like watching homoerotic wrestling in private on my screen. Rocky Sparks, the videographer, was spinning and scrambling across the mat in front of us, capturing the matches on camera to be uploaded to WatchFighters. The wrestlers worked up a sweat that was that much more immediate because not only could I see their muscles glistening, I could smell it and clearly hear the wet slap of their bodies in a more intense way than when watching a video.

Muscle hunk Bobby Carter rips Seon Cruz apart!

The corporate experience was really what took me by surprise, though. There were grunts and groans and shouts of encouragement and taunts from audience members as the intense action played out. My voice was just one of the chorus, admiring the beauty and power and compelling homoerotic drama playing out right in front of us. None of us whipped it out like we probably would have if we were watching the drama in private, but I for one was aroused and it was a curiously intense experience for that to be the case surrounded by other homoerotic wrestling fans and the objects of my lustful attention close enough for me to literally touch. I’ll review the matches in detail soon, but for now, I just want to reflect on my subject experience, which included walking away, chatting with TxWresl and JJ Allen and others coincidentally in the elevator with us about what we’d just seen and experienced. And the debrief, having watched together, was totally added value.

Scott gets caught early in SeattleFight’s rear naked choke

WrestleFest NYC 2024 presented me with one final opportunity to reflect deeply on where the Venn diagram of me getting off on watching wrestling and me getting off on wrestling overlaps. I honestly didn’t actually know that two of my past opponents that I’ve written extensively about had a genuine grudge brewing between them. Scott Williams, the long-time object of my homoerotic wrestling infatuation, and SeattleFight, with whom I experienced such an immediate and intense spark in Toronto last summer, had some sore feelings toward one another predating my meeting either of them in person. Apparently, my fawning descriptions of wrestling each of them only added fuel to the fire of their rivalry after I had the intense pleasure of wrestling both of them, repeatedly, since last summer. It was SeattleFight’s idea that they should settle their scores at WrestleFest NYC, and both he and Scott invited me to witness, first hand, what would happen when my wrestling crushes collide. It happened late on my last night in NYC. Scott and SeattleFight squared off on mats in the living room of SeattleFight’s suite. His roommate and I perched expectantly on the couch, inches away from these two smoking hot grapplers stripped down to briefs. And, holy fuck, right there close enough for me to touch, they went at it hot and fierce. It was like my own private WrestleFest Live session, but even more intimate and intense and immediate. It had that same corporate experience of watching, with SeattleFight’s roommate and I reacting together, grunting at the same time to a particularly hard thump of pecs getting punched, moaning in that mixture of empathic pain and erotic pleasure at a particularly hard-earned and humiliating submission. Probably because I’ve been so turned on by my experiences of wrestling both of these gorgeous hunks, I was instantly and persistently turned on, without actually having to “imagine” the feel of their bodies. I wasn’t literally on the mat, but I hardly needed to “project” myself into the intense battle playing out at my feet, because I’d been locked in my own battle with each of these sexy-as-fuck gladiators several times before, including earlier that weekend. It was as close as I’ve come in being turned on by watching wrestling being identical to that experience of being turned on by engaging in wrestling itself.

Scott takes some payback with a headlock and armbar on SeattleFight

Whatever the thin line that separates what turns me on about watching wrestling and what turns me on about engaging in wrestling suddenly and decisively disappeared. Having worked out their pent up frustrations on one another, one of these hot, sweaty hunks came out the undisputed victor in this stunningly fierce battle. Perched on top of a schoolboy pin, taunting and preening and demonstrating that the loser could do nothing else to defend himself, the winner turned his attention on me and invited me to join him. Fuckfuckfuck. I’m not sure if I’ve ever ripped off my street clothes that fast before, because it seemed like a fraction of a second later I was also straddling the demolished muscle hunk. Just like that, I crossed the line from watching to participating. And what aroused me about watching Scott and SeattleFight’s grudge match morphed into what was turning me on about literally becoming part of the action. I wasn’t just imagining or remembering the feel of their bodies and the power in their muscles, I was feeling it. The erotic pleasure that plays out in my head, when I’m watching, stepped seamlessly over the line into the pleasure that plays out in my body when I’m part of action itself. They are intimately related pleasures, essentially different from one another in my experience, but deeply connected to that same thing inside of me that has, for my entire life, been powerfully reactive to wrestling.

SeattleFight flexes… in final victory?

I continue to love this journey I’ve recently been on exploring who I am as a wrestler, but I also remain a passionate fan of watching homoerotic wrestling. Much of the history of this blog has been about my curious examination of what it is that turns me on about wrestling. But even at this point, quite a way along in my lifetime relationship with homoerotic wrestling, it’s a delight to discover new things about myself and new aspects of what turns me on, and how it turns me on. I occasionally bump into conversations about the lines that separate homoerotic wrestlers and homoerotic wrestling fans, and I get the impression that some folks are deeply invested in reifying the lines that divide the two. I’ve caught more than a hint of low key contempt from some wrestlers, for example, for “consumers” of wrestling, like one is real and the other is a weak approximation for the feint of heart. At least for me, I can report that they both reside within me, different expressions of one passionate connection I have to wrestling. And I love how much I continue to be turned on by watching homoerotic wresting, and I love how much I’m turned on by wrestling.

WrestleFest – Historic

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There’s just so fucking much to reflect on when it comes to wrapping my head around my experiences at WrestleFest NYC 2024! As I mentioned last week, a major item on my schedule for WrestleFest was moderating a panel discussion and question & answer session centered on the History of Gay Wrestling. It started off as this cool idea that I’d fit in on top of wrestling and socializing at the fest. Then it grew and morphed into this spectacular and historic opportunity to gather together an unprecedented collection of wrestlers, in-front-of and behind the camera talent at BG East, and around 100 fans to reflect on how far we’ve come as a community. As it took shape, it had a special focus on the homoerotic wrestling video production industry as it relates to meet-up wrestling, wrestling clubs, BJJ training facilities, and other fascinating branches of the diversity of who we have been and who we are as the gay wrestling community today. In the weeks leading up to the event, I somehow went from being a talking head moderator for the event to chairing the planning committee. Lest “chairing” sound more self-important than it really was, let me clarify that it was largely devoted to trying to channel an ever growing number of creative, innovative, talented wrestling hunks into arriving at the same place, at the same time, in order to (roughly) accomplish the same task. No mean feat, trust me. By the time last weekend rolled around, I was showing up to WrestleFest to take care of panel business, and hopefully squeeze a little wrestling and socializing in on the side.

In the very early days of thinking the panel through, a few of us honestly didn’t know how this type of event might resonate with the rest of the WrestleFest vibe. We arranged to book a room at the community center that could seat 60 people, taking it on faith that we’d manage to raise the funds to pay the rental. By the time we showed up this past Sunday afternoon, we’d had to upgrade the room rental to accommodate the more than 100 people planning on showing up, and had secured pledges to cover the cost of the larger space and equipment. Watching people start to stream in when the doors opened was sort of surreal, to be honest. Guys looked curious and excited as they kept filing in, browsing the tables of memorabilia that panelists brought as well as silent auction items available. I was a bit of a nervous mess, frankly. The nerves were firing on several levels, including this being my first “public” appearance for me, after almost 15 years of relatively anonymously blogging here. I was also just nervous about speaking in front of 100 friends and strangers. And, sure, I was nervous about whether our planning was sufficient to wrangle the egos and anecdotes and honors necessary to pay proper respect to the shoulders on which an event like WrestleFest NYC 2024 rests. I had more than a few sleepless nights in the previous week imagining 1,001 things that could go catastrophically wrong. And, to my continued amazement, it went beautifully from start to finish!

The BG East crew video recorded the panels, and I don’t know what their plans may be for the recording. But the panel discussion in the first hour turned into a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of gay wrestling from the perspective of 6 wrestlers who haven’t just lived it, but have actively shaped it. No one had sufficient time for us to really get their full stories. We knew all along the time constraints were going to leave us all a little less than satisfied at any one step along the way. But the collegiality and camaraderie of all of the featured panelists wove its way into this fun, funny, inspiring narrative about guys just making it up and figuring it out along the way, and slowly and surely, what they were making up and figuring out became the geography of gay wrestling community we take for granted today. Like the evolution of finding wrestling opponents in personal ads in the Advocate, to regional wrestling club newsletters, to AOL chatrooms and Global Fight and MeetFighters. They talked about how wrestling with gay sensibilities have charted a path through freestyle wrestling clubs and jiu-jitsu training gyms still today. And there was this fascinating interplay between meet-up wrestling culture and the evolution of the homoerotic wrestling video production industry, with even pre-BGE roots in companies like AMG and Old Reliable, and then us largely focusing on the role of BG East, and the dozen or more other wrestling companies that have come and gone, modeled on BG East’s eye for the art, athleticism, and dramatic production behind their wrestling videos. Fuck. It was seriously deep and layered and flew by just way too fast! But it was exactly what it needed to be in that moment and for that occasion.

The panelists were the cream of the crop, starting with our featured speaker, Kid Leopard, himself. One of the early New York Wrestling Club contributors, Bill Erland talked about his journey from pro wrestling fan to wrestler. Shane McCall shared a glimpse of his transformation from a quiet, relatively nonathletic gay kid into the LEGEND Shane McCall, babyface battler and rookie of the year turned dangerously badass erotic warrior. Scott “the Man of my Dreams” Williams took the podium to talk about his journey from solidly accomplished submission wrestler in his BG East filming days to finding his way into a BJJ gym, where he’s been training and accepted as a gay man in the often hypermasculine world of MMA. Kid Leopard reflected on his storied career as a performer, a pro wrestler, an on-camera wrestler for BG, and then his entrepreneurial genius in building BG East into the pillar of the gay wrestling community it has been for the past 45 years. And Kid Vicious reflected on embodying both one of the most notorious sex fight characters in gay wrestling iconography, while also transitioning to behind the camera, directorial, and management responsibilities, helping to navigate BG East through the increasingly turbulent and uncertain waters of technological revolutions and the gig economy of self-produced wrestling fare. Fuck, how did we get through that much depth and breadth!!!?

Scott Williams and Shane McCall seemed to enjoy themselves

Despite how wound tight my nerves were to start with, the event turned quite emotional for me, as I’ve heard it did for several other folks who were present. I was already getting chills just listening to Shane talk about the liberation of letting his inner gay wrestling badass out. When Scott was bearing witness to just how accepting and affirming his jiu-jitsu training gym was, I was seriously torn between having my heart warmed and my cock hard, because… Scott. The heartstrings really took a tug, though, when Kid Leopard started his remarks off by awarding a trophy, in absentia, to Jonny Firestorm, who at the last minute wasn’t able to join us at WrestleFest. And then, Kid Leopard delivered another surprise award to my co-moderator and legendary ring announcer, Bob Wood (watch BGE’s Wrestlefest 1, Live at Metro, or Live at Campus for a taste of what Bob brings to hot gay pro wrestling drama).

Ricky Roma and Gabe Steel were in the house

Kid Vicious and I had a little surprise planned of our own, though. I think we genuinely caught Kid Leopard off guard by handing him an award in honor and gratitude for his lifetime contributions to promote and elevate gay wrestling. He got two spontaneous standing ovations from a room full of passionately grateful fans and colleagues. I think it may be the first time I’ve ever seen Kid Leopard at a loss for words, and it was sweet and powerful and brought a tear to my eye. Of course, Kid Leopard’s speechlessness only lasted about a minute, but, fuck, yeah. I think the weight of a ton of gratitude and respect landed just right.

Shane McCall and Scott Williams feeling the love from fan and friend Tarz Lando

We switched up the panel for the second half of the event, populating the front table with 8 or so BG East wrestlers, which honestly was a little random, because there were at least that many more of them still in the audience. Here’s where I got to ask questions I gathered from the live audience assembled that day for the event, as well as from blog readers and social media followers. So, for example, I did deliver the question that Alex posed in the comments here last week, asking Kid Vicious “who coached/trained him originally to be so amazing at erotic wrestling, and how did he get into it?” The answer can be boiled down to Kid Leopard, and he sought out Kid Leopard. But it was this spontaneous and funny answer where, I kid you not, Kid Vicious looked almost a little embarrassed by the praise! Again, I’m not going to do the answer justice, so I’m hoping folks may have an opportunity to watch the recording sometime soon. I was expecting the wrestler Q&A to be mostly fun and cheesy, maybe with a mix of kayfabe and BTS glimpses. And it was totally that, but holy hell, it was also astonishingly moving, too! One audience member anonymously wrote a question, asking for advice for an aspiring jobber looking to finally follow his gay wrestling dreams, now that he’s in recovery from addiction. Woah. WOAH. I got chills just reading the question, and I honestly had no idea who among the wrestlers might answer or how they’d respond. And they lined up to share their words of encouragement and concrete, serious as fuck gems of advice (e.g., make sure you negotiate ahead of time and trust who you’re wrestling so you stay injury-free, and sell your heels!!!). Another question from the audience asked about the desire to see more wrestlers of color and trans men in gay wrestling, and, again, I didn’t know where that was going to take us. And it took us into some real talk about the BG East audience, profits, and the marginal return on investment when the studio recruits and tapes wrestlers of color knowing that their existing customer base doesn’t respond the same way as to white wrestlers. It wasn’t the sad truth and the realities of racism and transphobia in the market that gave me chills, but the earnest opportunity this audience member was taking to talk to the powers that be and have that real conversation, and then the willingness of the wrestlers and the wrestler-producers on the panel to wade into those waters and respond with an authenticity that doesn’t solve the problem, but respected it and named it. Where in the FUCK else do we have those conversations so spontaneously and respectfully like that!?!?

Early BG East wrestling hunks back in the day

There was also this subtle moment in the Q&A that snuck up on me in terms of how powerful it turned out to be. I asked a question my buddy AR had suggested that I ask, inquiring of the BG East wrestlers who they wish they could have wrestled, but who had already left the scene before they arrived at BG East. The instant I asked the question, Mason Brooks’ hand shot up like Hermione Granger in charms class. With eager earnestness, Mason said, “Brad Rochelle!” That started this popcorn of earnest answers from the panelists, and then the BGE wrestlers in the audience, and then anyone and everyone else, naming their favorite BG East wrestlers who’ve starred in our personal fantasies. Alexi Adamov, Mike Columbo, Blaze, J-Rock, Aryx Quinn, Dark Rogers, Nick Archer, Justin Pierce … answers kept coming, and with each name, there were spontaneous corporate sighs and grunts of agreement rising up from the entire room. It felt like we were tapping into some collective unconscious, naming out loud our lustful objects of fantasy and discovering 100 others were right there with us. I honestly got chills as the names and sighs and collective moans kept coming, not only because it was just cool to witness BG East stars tapping into their own inner fanboys, but because it felt like this visceral manifestation of the way in which wrestling videos have helped to weave each of us, independently watching our own screens in privacy, into a community of shared passions and common experiences.

They’ve been cracking each other up for decades!

My head is still buzzing from just how incredible I felt the panel turned out. It was about history, and it was fucking historic. Things were said there that needed to said. Appreciation long overdue. Praise that’s never quite been articulated in that way before. I had this powerful impression that there was a lot less dividing the panelists up front from the 100 or so audience members watching than I’d imagined there to be before the event started. I’m left with this profound appreciation for the way that gay wrestling pioneers before us blazed a trail that was never a sure thing, but yet has led us to a place where we can celebrate homoerotic wrestling in more ways than ever before. And I’m left with this sense of awe at the way that homoerotic wrestling videos have shaped not just my tastes, but my sense of myself. And clearly I’m not alone in that. Seeing a diversity of wrestlers celebrating homoerotic wrestling, making themselves vulnerable on camera, and lending their voices and bodies and creativity to giving form to what we find most erotic leaves us feeling a little more seen and heard and respected. I may not be the LEGEND Shane McCall or Scott THUNDER Williams. I’m definitely not the legendary erotic warrior Kid Vicious, or the godfather of gorgeously sadistic heels Kid Leopard. But thanks to them, I feel more powerful and attractive and interesting and empowered. I feel like I’ve got a place in the world that seems like it was just handed to me, but in reality, was hard-earned from thousands of acts of courage and innovation. My sincere thanks to all of the panelists and the wrestlers who showed up and treated your fans with such authentic and spontaneous respect and love.

Classic wrestling hunks paving the way

At the risk of forgetting someone, I just want to personally thank BG East’s Kid Leopard, Kid Vicious, Sailor Rob, Shane McCall, Bob Wood, Bill Erland, Mason Brooks, Drake Marcos, Ricky Roma, Ben Monaco, Mickey Knoxx, Ollie Watts, Seon Cruz, Randy Roberts, Matt Carleton, Ethan Andrews, Kayden Keller, Brian Powers, Gabe Steel, and… fuck… I’m sure I’m missing some more. Chime in and remind me!

Classic wrestling hunks loving what they do and the community they’re part of

And deep gratitude for photo permissions from Ricky Roma and Tarz Lando, and, as always, BG East!

My Thing

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.

Stunning Scott

wrestlebard5 Comments

Wrestlefest 1, and specifically, Scott Williams’ barn burner match against Bryan, has come up in two different conversations for me recently. I took that as a sign that I need to go back and enjoy the match again and finally get around to writing a review of it.

This was catalog 17 (just for context, notice that BG East just released catalog 172). The copyright dates on the images are 2009/2010, but I’m pretty sure Wrestlefest 1 was recorded and released around 10 years earlier than that, based on other clues. These were the days when BG East match descriptions were 4 sentences long (obviously predating my long-winded contributions), but the brief marketing teaser for this match introduces Scott as a “tough ‘n talented newcomer,’ describing him as “tall, ripped, hairy-chested Scott, a nasty private fighter.” Wow. So, on the one hand, not a lot has changed AT ALL!

Bryan was a absolute fixture in those days. Kid Leopard is literally awarding Bryan the first ever “BG East Lifetime Achievement Award” just before his match with Scott. Bryan is so fucking adorable, accepting the honor with a blush and stuttering, ah-shucks gratitude. “‘I’m thankful to be a part of the brotherhood of BG East wrestling,” he says. “It’s really been an important thing in my life.” I know I’m the biggest mark, but damn it, I swear he and Kid Leopard are having a little moment there. A little less gimmick than you might expect. A good deal more sincere respect.

Newcomer Scott, on the other hand, isn’t so respectful. Bob Wood, the ring announcer, calls the 6’2, 195 pound “nasty private fighter” “Stunning Scott Williams.” So, again, yeah… not a lot has changed since then. He looks fucking stunning, to say the least, in his sensationally tight grey square cut trunks and black boots. The announcer’s introduction suggests Scott is just a few inches taller than Bryan, but he seems to tower over the muscle-packed pro pretty boy. Maybe he just looks taller, when he’s attacking Bryan from behind before the award-winner can take off his ring jacket. His debut match, and Scott is playing it mean and dirty. Yep, yep. Again, not a lot has changed.

By this point in his career, I’m pretty sure that Bryan has legitimately put in a-couple-careers’-worth of blood, sweat and tears as an internationally prolific pro wrestler. He looks SO much like my Stretch Armstrong that I had (and lusted over) as a kid… solid fucking muscles, beautiful proportions, but more like a heavy lifter than the aesthetics of a bodybuilder. On paper, this match ought to have been an absolute romp. Bryan almost surely had more tricks in his back pocket that Scott had visible abs (which is to say, A LOT). I can’t imagine Scott had had much ring experience before this match (note: this is the only published match with Scott in the ring ever). Just playing the odds, a betting man would surely have put money down on this being a super lopsided squash of the newbie at the seasoned, powerful hands of the lifetime award winner. But, guess again!

I love the dynamics of a match like this so fucking much. It’s fucking aggressive and non-stop (again… nothing’s changed for Scott from then to now, I can attest). It’s smooth and calculating, but simultaneously feels authentic and spontaneous. I love being surprised with a match, and watching Scott fucking steamroll the blond beefcake babyface veteran is such a delightful surprise! In the opening minutes of the best-out-of-three falls competition, I keep expecting the early flurry of nasty offense from the hairy-chested muscle hunk to give way to the experience and expertise of the headliner. But Scott is fucking relentless! He catapults Bryan, still in his jacket, corner to corner, and nearly decapitates the seasoned pro with a clothesline when he comes bouncing back. Another corner-to-corner slingshot, and Scott has the gasping beefcake scooped up in his long, powerful arms, suspended there for days, and then slammed down so hard that it even makes Scott bounce a half a foot off the mat. I keep thinking that the veteran’s just about to deliver a rude awakening, but no fucking chance, with Scott driving elbow drops from 6-and-a-half feet in the air, drilling into the stunned pro’s chest. Whoever put money on the long shot odds that Scott would be in charge, dominating and relentlessly owning Bryan for at least 65% of this match would’ve raked in a boatload of cash!

As a fellow follically-challenged individual, I have to say it’s value-added watching Scott yank Bryan around by his thick blond locks. Like, sure… let’s see an opponent try a tit-for-tat hair pull on Scott. Showing a flair for heeling that’s honestly inspired, I’m also getting OFF on him violently ripping the silk ring jacket off of Bryan and using it to choke the seriously rocked veteran pro. And then he yanks Bryan up to his feet and legitimately snap mares the gasping, flailing beefcake over his shoulder by the jacket wrapped around his throat. Woah. WOAH! He repeatedly rakes the pro across the eyes and claws him in the balls. Private wrestlers, even “nasty” ones, just aren’t supposed to have this much aggression, skill, and relentlessness in their first time stepping into the ring. I mean, sure, sure. They’re supposed to look like that… ripped muscled hunks, cocky, stunning to look at, maybe even putting up a good fight. But Scott is having his WAY with Bryan through the majority of this bout, and it’s gorgeous and surprising in all the right ways.

I’ve described a few times before why Wrestlefest matches are some of my favorites, so I won’t belabor the point too much here. I will say, however, the crowd reactions in this match are sort of sending me. The crowd is almost entirely pulling for the babyface beefcake award winner Bryan from the start (okay, so maybe I’m not the only mark). At the beginning of the match, the applause is raucous and rowdy for him. When Stunning Scott climbs through the ropes, however, there are literally boos and hisses for the sexy newcomer. Of course, Scott waves off the haters with a sneer, but he’s sailing into the wind when it comes to winning over this crowd. The crowd reactions to every hold, every move, every cocky sneer and taunt inject adrenaline straight into my heart as I’m watching this match. And the crowd is bitterly chastising the man-of-my-dreams for all of his dirty tricks and devastating brutality as the minutes roll by with Bryan rocked so hard he can barely defend himself. But there’s this one, lone voice in the crowd cheering Scott on. I swear it sounds like Shane McCall (who does wrestle in the next match for Wrestlefest 1), which would be sort of funny if it is Shane. I mean, I know that Scott and Shane go way back, but then again, it was Shane who said, “I just threw up in my mouth” when I referred to Scott as the-man-of-my-dreams in my interview with Shane in 2014. Whoever the lone Scott booster is in the crowd, he’s calling out helpful advice, like when Scott is fucking up the veteran’s knees with an Indian leglock, and his fan from outside the ring recommends that he add a chin lock to really fuck up Bryan’s spine. Of course, Bryan’s fans go fucking WILD when the veteran finally hits his groove and starts to battle back against the relentlessly nasty newcomer’s offense. When Bryan is crushing Scott’s skull in headscissors (and we all know how Scott feels about headscissors!), there’s a particularly mean-sounding fan from the crowd who shouts, “Squeeze that little bald head! Trash his ass!” The ringside fans stay off camera, but the cheers and applause and roars dial up the intensity and immediacy and intimacy of this match so sensationally!

Scott spends a whole lot on credit at the start of this match, bullying and taunting and clearly enjoying humiliating the veteran pro in front of his frustrated fans. So, it’s extra ripe and delicious when Bryan muscles his way on top and starts making the hairy-chested newcomer start to pay back his debt. While Scott is banking riding time about 65% of the match, Bryan’s relatively concise offense is fucking expert and potent. Scott’s deep, resonate baritone rises a half an octave in agony, like a panicked echo of all of those gloating taunts earlier. Time-wise, Scott has controlled the pace, but the sudden and violent reversal of fortune is so fucking hot when Bryan snags an ankle lock and quickly spins his opponent into a gorgeously vicious single leg crab. Time on top is almost 2-to-1 for Scott, but total pain inflicted is a lot closer to 50/50.

Again, I love suspenseful, competitive matches like this. I love it when Bryan is working Scott hard, whips him into the ropes and launches himself into the atmosphere for a drop kick to knock Scott’s block off, BUT Scott clings to the ropes, refusing to bounce back, and leaving Bryan crashing to the earth HARD. Scott looks genuinely stunning when he hops into the saddle of a super sweet camel clutch, those two sets of gorgeous muscle glutes grinding together. He fucking WORKS the camel, but Bryan battles back, pushing his shoulders off the mat and upending the tenacious newbie. A few moments later, it’s Scott paying up in Bryan’s nasty chin lock, sitting on his back, that square chin of his wrapped up tight in the pro’s fingers and his head about to get screwed off the top of his neck.

In Scott’s four published BG East matches, he decisively loses two and wins two. I’ll let you guess if this is a victory or a loss for the man-of-my-dreams, until you’ve watched the match for yourself. The video is a total of only about 20 minutes, with only about 16 of those being these two studs locked in combat, so it’s super concise. But there’s more action, more moves, more drama and intensity in those 16 minutes than some other matches manage to pack into 30. Bryan shows why he deserves his Lifetime Achievement Award, and Scott absolutely tells this story in a way that a muscle hunk newbie shouldn’t be able to. He’s sexy as fuck, all taunts and contempt and daring this fucking charging-bull-of-a-veteran to try to make him shut up.

Again, some things never change.

Crush

wrestlebard10 Comments

If you’ve read ANY posts prior to this one, it will come as no surprise when I say that I’m prone to crushes. In no small way, the past 1,683 posts document in excessive detail (I admit) hundreds of moments of my infatuation. They all rotate around the gravitational pull of erotic wrestling for me, of course. Whether I’m crushing on erotic wrestlers, pro wrestlers, or amateur wrestlers, or imagining erotic wrestling between hot actors, models, bodybuilders, or people I spy in my everyday life, my crushes are varied and, simultaneously, singular. I’ve been asked several times recently about my original motivation and approach to starting this blog. Honestly, it took a while for me to spiral in on the heart of what it has become, but at this point, I think of that heart as being about the wrestling crushes that linger, that I feel compelled to explore here. It’s the reason why when, occasionally, someone critiques or complains about what I’ve written about, that it sort of takes me by surprise. This is me, reflecting “out loud” on where my lustful eye lands. I’m thrilled when my reflections intersect with or provoke reflections in others, but honestly, it’s all about me. I swear, I don’t walk through my life prattling on and on about what/who turns me on, but here… yeah. If you’re looking for other content, I’m sure you can find it elsewhere.

The Adonis, Mitch Colby

Most of what I write about has been wrestling-for-gay-eyes. It’s not always “gay wrestling,” and definitely not always erotic wrestling, but most of my attention settles on the industry that has grown up marketing to guys like me. For about half of the life of the blog, I was maintaining running tallies of my current favorite homoerotic wrestlers, picking out my lasting crushes and my instant infatuations among the new releases from the likes of BG East, Can-Am, Naked Kombat, and the half a dozen more companies that have sprouted from the fertile soil of the early innovators and entrepreneurs. Starting the “discipline” of keeping track of who my favorite wrestler was at any one time, and combing through the new releases each month to highlight one hunk who grabbed me by the balls hardest, probably deserves a lot of the credit for the overall vibe of what I think I’m using this blog for. Like, when I picked Mitch Colby in May of 2009 to be my inaugural reigning favorite homoerotic wrestler, it’s not that I expected him to be everyone’s favorite. I wasn’t proscribing Mitch as somehow independently verifiable as superior to anyone else by any metric other than for being the stunning, 6’2, 200 pound marble statue of Adonis that I couldn’t get my mind off of at the time. When, over the years, commenters have quibble about a choice I’ve made for my reigning favorite homoerotic wrestler, I would always delight in comparing notes, but… no, the choice was never “wrong,” because it was always about who turned me on (and, yeah, I’m THE expert in that, if nothing else!).

Me wrestling TxWresl at Wrestlefest Canada

As I’ve documented here, over the past few months I’ve enjoyed exploring meet-up wrestling for the first time. It’s been an interesting evolution from long-time homoerotic wrestling fanatic to rookie homoerotic wrestler. Well, it’s not like I’ve evolved out of being a fanatic. I continue to nurse my infatuations over the wrestlers that show up regularly on my screens in new releases and classic favorites. I’m both a seasoned, long-time aficionado and a very fresh and untested rookie at the same time. But both in the (over)abundance of what I’ve learned about the pleasure I get from watching homoerotic wrestling, and in my nascent understanding of what I enjoy about participating in homoerotic wrestling myself, my natural inclinations remain the same. The holds and the heat, the range of bodies and builds, the necessary chemistry and vibe are close to the same in turning me on watching or wrestling.

Scott introducing me to a camel clutch

I’ve enjoyed all of my wrestling experiences so far, and I know that I shouldn’t take that for granted. Friends have shared with me stories of meet-ups that have not gone well, or just been downright bad. I haven’t had a match that I regret, or a bad experience with any of my opponents. And, to one extent or another, I develop mini-infatuations on all of them. What is intense and hot and enjoyable is both varied, and singular, as it has been with what I enjoy about watching good homoerotic wrestling. My most recent two matches definitely linger. In my downtime, I find myself wandering to them repeatedly, crushing on a hold, a look, a feel. Maybe these last two matches continue to linger because, well, they’re my most recent two. Or, maybe, it’s because they were both rematches, of a sort. Maybe the heat lingers because, a second (or more) time around with a wrestler, the intensity is jump started by familiarity? Of course, one of the two is Scott Williams, who has been entirely successfully translated from my homoerotic wrestling-watching crush into a homoerotic wrestling opponent crush. This surprises me not in the least, although it still tickles me that Scott is apparently having enough fun with his #1 fan to stubbornly keep coming back for more. He’s been starring in the masturbation reel in my mind for years, and he continues to be hot as hell. So, of course, my mind wanders back to our last match a couple of weeks ago, giving me a little uncomfortable pressure in my pants at inopportune times (no complaints from me, though).

SeattleFight making me wonder whose camel clutch is most punishing, Scott’s or his

The other intrusive, pleasurable memories that my mind’s eye keeps settling on feature the last opponent I wrestled in Toronto three weeks ago. I wrote then about the instant, magnetic impact SeattleFight had on me over and over at WrestleFest. Again, there are some obvious elements that go a long way to explaining why I experienced an instant crush on SeattleFight. He’s handsome and armored in gorgeous (and super functional) muscle. He’s unselfconsciously intense as fuck when he’s wrestling. Maybe less obvious, I also keep returning to my memories of him catching my eye, in groups, at the bar, in a random encounter in a shop on Church Street, and repeatedly experiencing this electric spark. When we’ve exchanged messages since, my heart skips just a little with excitement to see something from him. Yep, that’s me crushing.

When I’ve blogged about my favorite wrestlers featured in homoerotic wrestling products, I’ve routinely pitted contending crushes against one another, if only in my imagination. In my imagination, I’m doing it all the fucking time, picturing what would a match look like between two stunning hunks that, separately, I can’t get my mind off of. For example, in 2010, I was vacillating back and forth, almost month by month, between Mitch Colby and Rusty Stevens as my reigning favorite homoerotic wrestler. Both of them in their best shape, selling each of their distinctive attitudes and styles, classic babyface and pitch-perfect heel, gave me whiplash turning back and forth between their new releases, trying to decide which of them gets the penthouse suite living rent free in my head. I mused on the pages of this blog that what I really needed to see was the two of them settling the question by wrestling against each other. My faith in the existence of the homoerotic gods was cemented when less than a year later, BG East released their one and only match featuring Rusty… taking on Mitch. Fuuuck. I still manage to both melt and get hard at the same time just thinking about it.

I’m HERE for this rematch!!!!

When it comes to my lingering wrestling crushes on Scott and SeattleFight, it turns out they have wrestled each other in the past. Fuck, to be a fly on that wall! I haven’t heard too many details about their encounter. I realize not everyone has their inner monologue on public broadcast at all times quite like I do, so I’m not sure how polite it is for me to ask for details. But, fuck. I think seeing them, firsthand, square off against one another would make that divine moment of watching Mitch and Rusty wrestle in The Breaking Point pale by homoerotic comparison. One thing I’ve learned in my early experiences with meet-up wrestling is that just getting two interested wrestlers in the same place at the same time is more than half the challenge. So, I can’t imagine the luck and coordinated effort it would require to get all three of us in the same place. But, if Scott and SeattleFight ever have the rematch that the homoerotic wrestling gods WANT to happen (no, no, I’m not projecting…), and I’m within a days drive, holy FUCK I’d better get a front row seat! Hell, I’ll buy refs stripes and a whistle and be closer than the front row. Fuck, I’ll wear trunks underneath, just in case.

And now… that’s the image that’s going to live rent free in the penthouse apartment in my head.