European Style
A bright, cloudy day in (I imagine) the South of France. This shakily photographed (an understatement) wrestling video arrives without details such as date and location. I'm guessing France, because the language I hear is French. I'm guessing Mediterranean because the crowd and the promoter have too much respect for youth and beauty to let the brutish Ragnar Rök's* pounding abuse of tall, handsome Lionel Turuani, 6'5", 225#, go unpunished. Valiant and charming Lionel wins the day. In North America (and perhaps in Puritan corners of Britain) the crowd would have cheered on Ragnar, 6'3", 265#, and he would have punished Lionel for his good looks and panache. But, ah, romance!
Not to say that Lionel does not suffer. Eighty percent of this match is a beatdown, bald Ragnar ascendant; however, every vicious corner punch becomes but another nail in Rök's coffin as the fans screech their outrage and plead for the hero to fight back. Almost on demand, the wrestlers hurl themselves through the ropes, and Ragnar parades a staggering Lionel up and down the barricades so the excited onlookers can snap closeup photos of the lithe warrior's battered torso. It is outside the ring, too, where Lionel rouses and brings the fight back to order and back into the squared circle.
Noting that I had given Turuani a glance in a 2011 posting, our pal Gary linked me to this apparently more recent match for (I am guessing) Fighters Revenge Pro Wrestling based in Aquitaine (on the Atlantic side of France, not the Mediterranean). Gary extolled Lionel's classic pulchritude: "One of the handsomest men I've ever seen, sporting the best packed pair of green wrestling trunks, ever. Whoever shot this video should be taken behind the woodshed, but in the same breath, God bless him for being there with a camera." And God bless Gary for bringing this discovery to my attention! Sure, the video looks like live footage of an assassination attempt during an 8.9 magnitude earthquake under gale-force winds, but the flashes of action we get are all the more highly prized for it.
* Ragnarök: if you're up on your Norse mythology, you know ragnarök is the term for the future twilight of the gods, the Armageddon-like cataclysm that destroys both gods and mankind and ends in a recycled world and epoch.
I certainly agree with Gary: they are probably the best packed pair of green wrestling trunks I've ever seen. A real treat.
ReplyDeleteSpectacular. I've never seen Lionel Turuani before, but he's incredible. Love the trunks and look. He's kind of like a Superman, with the height, muscled body, clean cut look, innocent face and dark hair. Thanks for sharing this stud.
ReplyDeleteThe description make me feel nostalgia for the days when the crowd usually supported the hero over the heel. In those more innocent times it was virtually unheard of for a heel to be popular. From time to time, they'd cheer for a heel, but mostly the mythos was good vs. evil and everyone knew who SHOULD win. I'm old-fashioned. I wish that we did that more often.
ReplyDeleteIf any of you guys want more Turuani, our friend Gerald helpfully sent this link to a video from last summer, a lumberjack match between Lionel Turuani and Marc Sebire: http://youtu.be/DIrNXhcThp4 (same green trunks, same long and sensuous waist)
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