Take That!










Allow me to quote myself:
He walks like John Wayne in Red River and talks like Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy. [...] His burly shoulders and confident swagger suggest an earlier era of pro wrestling, when young strapping bucks would grunt, groan and grind against hairy-chested hillbillies and barrel-chested sheiks.
The buck I'm talking about, of course, is Trent Blayze, Bard of neverland's latest pick as homoerotic wrestler of the month!

The passage above, excerpted from a catalog description I wrote about a month ago for BG East's new Muscle Madness 1, sums up my tastes in wrestlers. And it would have summed them up back in the late winter of 2011 when I first set eyes on Trent, back when Bard and I were just beginning to write BGE promos. Back then I wrote, "He carries a gut that begs for a stiff punch--or a dozen punches, as vicious as you can make them," alluding to my preference for a firm, fleshy belly you can bump against, as opposed to the cheese-grater abs most people prefer (for the record, I like both, but a solid round bulge is what predictably makes my fly start to stick*).

It's my opinion that neither Trent nor Darius, his opponent in MM1, has yet shown the world everything he is capable of. The potential is obvious; all he lacks is the perfect match, I think. But this contest shows the two wrestlers (both in their third appearance at BGE) in their best light yet.

They play off each other well. Their physiques and temperaments balance complementarily. Darius is all self-confidence and chewy sinew. He easily outshines Trent as the two initiate the competition with a friendly arm-wrestling contest. But Trent has a chip on his shoulder and a hair-trigger temper that a second loss sets off. Then he takes to petty cheap shots like ducks to water and priests to Gap Kids animal briefs.

Things take a turn for the worse after Darius submits Trent in a humiliating Boston crab hold. This fires up Blayze for Round 2, in which he corners Darius for a grimacing, sweat-soaked beatdown and then, a half-second away from a legit pinfall, he deliberately stops the count, preferring to break his man, instead of merely defeating him. It's all pure excitement from this point on--the moves and holds come as second nature to these guys, once they get warmed up.

Trent and Darius both can play babyface and heel equally well, a versatility I like immensely, but one that makes it hard to market them to gay wrestling aficionados, many of whom like their wrestlers to be either heels or jobbers, especially because they're shelling out hard-earned cash on downloads and disks without knowing for sure what they'll be getting. But Trent and Darius both are at their best in that shadow area between good and evil. And, for me personally, uncertainty and ambiguity make for good drama.

Personally, I'd like to see Trent more as a hero, a bit tarnished but still on the side of the angels, who, like 70s-era NWA good ole boys, is more than happy to mix it up with the badasses whenever the badasses have the balls to cross that line with him. I'm dreaming big, but I'd like to see him take Donnie Drake or Dick Rick down a notch or two, put the arrogant heel in his place, give him a good lickin' before marching him right out of town by the seat of his britches.


* As best as I can remember, my first pro wrestler crush was Jack Brisco, as he was in the very early 70s. I particularly liked his hairy belly, not flabby or wobbly, but unyielding as the grave, a sign of his toughness, not of the soft life. Then there was Ron Fuller, and then my friend Dave, football and basketball player who would wrestle me for fun. This was about the same time I was coming to terms with being attracted to men, unnerving because I already sensed it was more than the "phase" the teen-guidance books told me it probably was, because my parents had taught me a "homosexual" was a man who liked to wear dresses and wanted to marry a man (neither was true of me--my deepest wish was to live in military barracks without--somehow--joining the military), and because I was not attracted to the slim-hipped, giddy, depilated narcissists that typified "gay" in the popular imagination of the day (I had to wait two decades before I heard of bears and otters--or gay men with any sort of bulk and girth. At some point I learned about "gym bunnies" and "chubby chasers," but, sadly, these were not who I was either).

Comments

  1. You and Bard have excellent taste! In this case, you agree with me! :)

    You've probably seen the comments at neverland, so I won't repeat myself, but it looks like a good match.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Archive

Show more