Schooled

I like the high fliers, sure, okay.  I like "real" grappling and MMA fights.  I like drama.  I am even beginning to appreciate WWE and its flashy plasticity.  But, as many of you have noticed, right now my heart is into big, meaty, grunting, sweating men.  Call it nostalgia for the golden years of pro wrestling on TV.  Call it a kink for frottage.  It's all of that.  It is what it is, as the wise man says.

Here's the deal:  Here at Ringside, I've got two things I really like.  Beautiful men.  Unmistakable.  GQ looks, slim waists, teacup-smooth firm muscle.  I like the pretty twinks, and I like the bodybuilders with their veins popping.  I like the sweet and sensitive boys next door.  I like the emo kids bleeding their hearts into their Gibson guitars.  I like the jocks and the tattooed adolescent vampires.  I like the playboys and the bigmouths and the angelic ne'er-do-wells.   I adore almost all the kinds of beauty specific to grown men.

But even more than masculine beauty I like wrestling.  I like submission wrestling, and I like the male soap opera of pro wrestling.  I like fights.  I like them down and dirty.  I like them high-stakes sexy.  I've said it a dozen times or more--two opponents, heated up, intense, totally focused on hurting each other or beating each other or getting on top of each other, makes no difference if they are skinny or chubby, tall or short, young or old, gay or straight, male or female, if they are 100% committed to the fight, my heart is with them.

Of course, the ideal for me would be beautiful men who wrestle.  But the wrestling comes first.  Don't give me inept hunks just rolling around on a mat.  Please, you insult me.  Sure, they may look fantastic, but let them play nude tennis or give each other back rubs or, hell, just let them fuck, but do not defile the ancient and solemn contest of men's minds and bodies known as wrestling.  Undeniably, if they are pretty enough, I will try to ignore the fact that you are turning my passion into some kind of cheap clown show.  But I will hate you for it.  In the end, I will hate you for it.

This is not to say that for me personally, who knows next to nothing about wrestling moves and submission holds and whose physique is pretty much exactly what you'd expect a 57-year-old community-college English instructor's body to be, that there is no attraction to sloppy, untaught roughhouse horseplay, all arms and legs and grunts and giggles, with friends and lovers.  It's terrific.  Body contact, practically any kind, is fun.  But I would not pay a penny to watch videotape of me pretend-wrestling.

WWA4 is a pro wrestling school based in Atlanta.  These shots are taken from a video of a WWA4 exhibition in 2009, pairing Scott Steele and Mike Cannon against each other (via MikeCannonwrestler).  Steele is the well-built hero.  Cannon is the thick heel who likes to cut corners to win.  The drama is simple and satisfying.  The acrobatics is kept to a minimum.  There is no blood.  There are no ladders.  No challenges are issued.  No back story, no exposition at ringside.  Lots of pressing and twisting, bellowing and moaning.

What I like.