We Card Hard


Of course BG East's Catch-Weight 6 would grab my attention for its pitting together of strongly contrasting wrestlers: the street punk (Billy Lodi) versus the big strong daddy (Mitch Colby), the reckless brawler (Eli Black) versus the doe-eyed Adonis (Rio Garza), the hungry new guy (Ty Alexander) versus the veteran (Shane McCall). Steady fans of BGE product will recognize all six of these guys, each by now so loaded with the fans' collective yearning as to be a gay archetype in his own right. 

As emphasized on the cover of the DVD case, the video also deliberately mismatches the opponents in weight and size, with a minimum differential of 50 pounds, combos that interest me less since I usually like my fighters matched as closely pound for pound as possible. Now and then there's the David-and-Goliath match that intrigues me, but it's a rarity. That said, I find something to like in all three of these fights.



In a prologue shot on location at The Depot in Fort Lauderdale, the contestants in the first match arrange to meet later at Mitch's place to let Billy prove his manliness after the handsome bartender refuses him service for being underage. The details once understood--that Mitch carries 74 pounds over Billy (Mitch tells him that his pecs are bigger than the kid's ass), that Billy won't hesitate to go for a low blow, that the two want to fuck at least as much as they want to wrestle--the match is pretty much what you'd expect--and hope for. When I was seventeen, the prospect of a Mitch Colby type inviting me to his pad to wrestle would have filled me with shivers and lead. (No different than now, come to think of it.)



I was hoping all three matches would open at The Depot, as a narrative frame linking them together. But the second match shifts us to the pro ring. Rio, the bigger wrestler, enters the squared circle almost as an underdog against the tightly wound mad dog Eli, but opens strong. Rio capitalizes on his weight and height advantage, yet any fool knows that Eli not only has five moves to everybody else's one, but also has the fighting ferocity of a piranha with an MBA. It's no surprise then that Rio breaks into a full sweat while Eli is still dry as talcum powder, and the male model's fate seems to be sealed when Eli figures out a way to reframe the contest (in typical Eli-logic) as a grudge match.



The third and main event marks Shane McCall's return to BG East. We haven't seen Shane around since Catalog 56 (we're up to Catalog 105 now). He tells his opponent, Ty Alexander, who doesn't even know who the old-timer is, that he's been hired to beat some of his experience and talent into the spruce, wet-behind-the-ears youngster--"and apparently I've got my work cut out," he adds dismissively. Ty looks all bitch-you-did-not, which is the cherry on top of the spanking he's about to receive at the hands of the grappling legend. Happily, Shane has lost none of his bad-ass sass over the years and serves up chokes, scissors, piledrivers, corner beatdowns, bearhugs, and petty humiliations aplenty. Yeah, he literally spanks Ty-boy in the end.




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