Mastering the Art of Man Mastering (Reviews)

In 2002-2003, Julie Powell took on the momentous task of working her way through all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook and chronicling the effort on her Salon.com blog.  Just recently, the head guy  over at Greccogear suggested that I make a similar trek through the (mere) 41 (so far) downloadable videos in his Underground Wrestling series, beginning with the most recent and working back to number one, dating back to some six years ago.

It is far from an odious task, mostly because I have a strong yen for golden-boy Lucien.  Lucien's appeal is somewhere in the middle of that of a punk-rock vampire, a feral jungle boy, and that bartender you always wanted to fuck.

More importantly, Lucien is an excellent grappler who, like all good wrestlers, enjoys the challenge of taking on bigger opponents, which he does in approximately half the videos in the series.

So here, to start things off, are my impressions of numbers 41, 40, and 39 in that series—sort of a drive-thru version of aperitif, entrée, and salad—each of them involving luscious Lucien.

In #41,  Lucien takes on the bigger, burlier Bo, who shows up with Captain America trunks and a sense of entitlement to the top position.

Bo has a low center of gravity, making it nearly impossible for Lucien to take him down when both are on their feet—but, amazingly, the scrappy punk gains the first fall—technically, since it’s he who is in control when the two of them hit the mat together. 

Fans of strangulation will have much to love in UW 41.  It’s a slow-moving fight, punctuated with brisk, savage punches, but a thread that holds the action together is the struggle for a black strap that both wrestlers, at various points, wrap tightly around their opponent’s neck. 

Bo starts the drama when he uses a combination of the strap and his leg bone to choke Lucien, but learns fast that the wiry punk is hard to control.  When Lucien escapes, he snatches the strap away and takes his vengeance out in kind.

Bo concentrates on using his thick, powerful muscles to deliver a line of vicious elbow jabs to the back of the smaller guy’s neck and to squeeze Lucien’s slender (though solid) body in a series of exhausting bear hugs.  I say “exhausting,” but here (as in other matches) Lucien is close to indefatigable as a fighter.  He works through a long menu of punishing submission holds, including one of the sexiest holds known to mankind: the camel clutch, the “boned duck” of homoerotic combat.

In UW 40, Lucien faces off against Krush.  The matches between these two comprise the larger share of the site’s treasure trove of mano-a-mano mayhem, so it’s familiar territory here for the two combatants.  These matches, however, were purportedly caught on hidden camera and initially were intended as only private entertainment.  But then they changed their minds.

The bouts begin as Lucien and Krush struggle over possession of a flat leather strap that they trade off slapping each other with.  I’m not a particular fan of weapons myself, preferring fights that use fit bodies as bait, armor, ordnance, and ultimately prize, so I was pleased that the men eventually toss the prop.

Lucien gets some tight legholds on Krush’s waist and neck.  Krush grinds himself against the smaller fighter.  I like that here (and in a lot of matches) Krush aims for maximum body coverage—specifically pushing for (man after my own heart) lots of heaving, chest to chest, belly to belly, and … well, you get it.

The effect of the hidden camera is to capture a good bit more talk than is usual between these fighters.  The unusually loquacious Lucien comments (or, rather, “commentates”) throughout the first match, mostly taunting and deriding his opponent for the futility of his moves … in a tone, despite his being straight-identified, that conveys the cajoling intimacy of a trusted companion.

About midway in UW 40 there’s a pretty exciting bit of drama, with Krush’s legs splayed to the camera and Lucien’s sharp elbow nudging at a bulge in the big guy’s singlet that appears to grow as the elbow torments it.

Lucien follows up with a camel clutch that Krush ultimately breaks by grabbing a fistful of the punk’s long hair.  Lucien regains control with a rear naked choke, but not for long.  Krush gets a sleeper on the man, from which, in a matter of seconds, he has maneuvered his groin to the back of Lucien’s skull, smashing his face into the mat.  You half-expect Krush’s cock to crack through the bone and protrude from the longhaired punk’s eye socket—or you might half-expect such a thing if you’re a sick fuck like me with a taste for feisty foreplay and a cartoonist’s sense of the pornographic and the macabre.

One more thing—the groans in this video sound just like a slowed down soundtrack of human groans—imagine Miles O’Keeffe jumping the Ivory King at the climax of 1981’s Tarzan the Ape ManThat sort of sound.

Lucien and Krush wrestle some more in UW 39, which starts off with a stretch showing off Lucien’s taut, slender torso.

The matches here show off some of the two fighters’ strong points.  One of my favorite moves that Krush employs (and apparently one of his favorite too, given how often he uses it) is to lock up his man’s neck and head, bear down on him face to face, and drive his hips into the hips of his victim, taking cock-fighting one notch up to cock-pummeling.

Lucien has a fantastic look on his face in these collisions with (the well-named) Krush, I’ve noticed.  It’s determined and yet rather detached from his predicament, almost as if he’s a fox caught up in a python’s deadly coils, but a fox with a mathematician’s mind for coolly working through a complicated problem.  It’s concentration that reads loudest on his face, not panic or anger or even suffering.

In fight after fight, Lucien and Krush work through nearly every variation of the drama of big fleshy brawn battling wiry agility. A bit past the halfway point in this match-up, as Lucien locks Krush’s head in his armpit while Krush works a leghold on Lucien’s left thigh, we get another really nice look at Lucien’s physique, with the camera close enough to pick up the sensual details.  It’s moments like these that sell the fights for me.

I can’t promise you that I will actually succeed in reviewing every one of the matches available for download, but I will certainly try ... and try with a big goofy grin on my face, too.  There’s a certain repetitiousness, of course, inevitable when so many of the fights are between the same two fighters, which is fine in and of itself, but a huge challenge for a writer trying to describe it.

But then it couldn't have been easy to follow Julia Child’s lead in flipping crepe after crepe after crepe either.

Comments

  1. I'm a HUGE fan of KRUSH, I can't get enough of his videos. They're like a work of art. I'm a subscriber to GRECCOGEAR and watch this stuff practically every day, it's the only thing that gets me off. I never grow tired of the mat battles between him and Lucien. Thanks for reviewing these, they add a whole new dimension to the fights for me. I look forward to reading more, your take on these matches is spot on.

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  2. Great project, Joe! I'm not very familiar with Greccogear, so you're doing a great public service, if you ask me. Lucien and Krush look fantastic! I'll be giving UW a second look.

    But which part will Meryl Streep play in the film adaptation?

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  3. Nice, nice, nice stuff here Joe. These videos are top notch. They're all I ever watch. You can keep all the others, just let me watch krush go at it against all of those hot boys he fights and I'm all good to go.

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  4. Keep the reviews coming please.

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  5. I confess to having a serious crush on Krush for several years now, ever since I first saw him selling his used singlets on ebay and guys were paying hundreds of dollars for them. This is a great entry about the videos Joe, thank you.

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  6. Very f*%$#@ing hot! I never saw this stuff before.

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  7. I've wrestled for BGEast and Can-Am, but I agree that these videos are by far the hottest wrestling videos I've ever seen. My favorite Krush v. Lucien match is no. 9. KRUSH is definitely the master of submission wrestling!

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