Meet Joey

Minimalist, daring, raunchy, and rude, UCW-Wrestling is all these things. If going slightly beyond the pale is your thing, if you have a moderately high threshold for ick, if you like feeling a little bit dirty, UCW is the joint for you. It's not porn, but it has porn's preoccupation with detail. There's no nudity: at its most explicit, a glimpse of crack now and then ... no blood, no overt eroticism ... an episode of Glee has three times the sexual innuendo. (But then how often do you get to see Kurt Hummel's balls in a vise?) You won't find dimple-chinned physique models here, with parlor tans and gym pecs, no polished production values either. There's no mistaking you're on tricky ground here.

All the men are presumably of legal age, but half of them are slim, rather haggard-looking working-class youth, pale, not so much heroin chic as asthma-ward chic. You won't see wholesome frolic in the bright golden sunlight at UCW. Things start out innocently enough, I suppose, but soon enough you detect an air of menace. It's dark. Dark-ish. Not quite David Hurles and Old Reliable dark. Let's just say it may not be what you want on your screen when Mom or your supervisor come knocking on your door. There is a certain ... unmistakable ... fas-ci-na-tion.  Its thrills are right on the fringe.

Joey Cantrell (in blue) is the new meat, so new UCW's website has not yet (as of this writing) posted his stats or a picture on its roster page. So far he's had run-ins with Aron (in yellow), another rookie, and, more recently, Axel (in silver), ex-champ, in numbers 181 and 183, respectively. He gets the usual brutal welcome, but he looks like he will probably fit in. All I've seen so far are the promos (from which I've taken these electrifying caps), and while, in his recent debut and its followup, young Joey trends more towards the tail end of these matches' give-and-take, he shows a real talent for giving. Badass tattoos and a hungry look suggest our new friend is not afraid to play rough. And I'd say he's come to the right playground.