Ties That Bind










Nick Diesel told me that he entered the world of erotic wrestling to win converts to bondage. Watching live the filming of his UCW-Wrestling match against wild man Quinn Harper [#290, released this past weekend] is already near the top of my "Best of 2013" list of personal experiences. I'm pretty sure my tongue was lolling out for most of the fight. I remember crossing and uncrossing my legs a lot too. (When the shoot was over, I excused myself to go to the john, and Bodyslam quietly asked if I needed some lube.)

I like this fight because Quinn and Nick are both heels, but polar opposites in attitude and style. Quinn foams at the mouth, eyes gleaming as he rips into an opponent and makes him scream. Nick is deadpan-sadistic, toying with a victim like a cat with its claw in the chest of a flailing mouse. (Nick similarly compares the erotic thrill of bondage to the cold awakening of a rat dropped into a python's glass tank.) Nevertheless, as cool and expressionless as Nick tends to be, Quinn knows tricks for making any opponent expressive, as you can see in some of the screen captures above.

I like this match also because it captures a moment of discovery for both heels. Quinn has fought some tough competition at UCW, but not anybody like Nick, who comes closest to matching his capacity for malevolence. At first, he was wary of the rope gimmick, but it didn't take him long to learn how to make the ropes work for him--and to use them fiercely and recklessly, as suits his amok character, in contrast to Nick's serene but insidious turpitude. (The contrast is a bit like putting a Mad Max villain in a cage with a James Bond villain, I think.) After the match, I asked Nick what he took away from the fight. Some ideas, he said. What kind of ideas? Forcing water down the throat of an opponent, using a chair, not just as a weapon, but as a tool for intensifying pain, two innovations he improvised in the middle of his battle with Quinn.

Do I recommend the video? Hell, yeah, I do. The close-up camerawork and occasional edits turn it into an even hairier ride than it was for me, having to sit quietly away from the mat. It's another new step for UCW, who has been stepping lively and daringly for the past year. Watching a company and its wrestlers evolving and rapidly coming into their own is exciting and crazy entertainment.

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