Ringside at Skull Island

Magnetic

2012-02-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

Kid Karisma is riding a wave these days--he's fast, he's limber, he's tough, he's mean, and he's sexy as fuck. For me, his appeal became all the more obvious in Bard's insightful interview with him at the beginning of the year. Bard favors the man's ass, and who can argue with that? I can only add that, if you can force yourself to raise your gaze a couple of feet, you will see an astounding back and shoulders too. (Yeah, I'm a back and shoulders man--and thighs.) If I could die and come back as any current BG East wrestler, Kid K would top my metaphysical bucket list--for his wrestling ability, for his cocky attitude, for a punk and puckish face and body that I'm pretty sure could get me laid anytime, anywhere.

Karisma is so convincing as a heel--most recently in matches against new meats Jake Jenkins and Austin Cooper--it's easy to forget that the man is one of the best babyfaces in underground wrestling.

In The Great Outdoors, he's Hoyt Riley's plaything. Riley bends him like he's made of pipe cleaners, and Karisma's agonized whimpers send shivers through me. Literally. Nobody but nobody sells agony like Kid K. The panicked simian hyperventilations and look of raw torment in his contorted face supply their own brand of visceral energy to the match. Riley stretches Karisma's muscular legs out so wide you can imagine hearing the popping of tendons. Frantically and futilely Karisma clutches his nuts, defenseless and pinched in his tight white swimsuit. When his vocal chords dry up from incessant raspy groaning, the dumbshow of anguish that remains on his face would make any self-respecting sadist cum on the spot. It takes the man forever to submit, and once released, he rolls on the mat, bent double and pleading, making it impossible for Riley to deny himself the joy of kicking him again and again while he's down.

I haven't seen everything Kid Karisma has done at BG East--not yet--but I haven't seen him in anything or in any role where he was not riveting. He projects all kinds of hotness, and he never stops fighting: for all the intensity of his suffering, he never rolls over and plays dead. Not only is he photogenic, but every second of screen time shimmers with intensity and personality. I have only the faintest hint of what the man must be like in his everyday life, but when he fights, he not only draws my gaze but also half persuades me that I know him and that there's a real connection there--but, then, that's the way it always is with charisma, I guess.

Grits 'n' Grunts

2012-02-15T16:41:00.001-05:00

Stoney Hooker is rolled-in-batter-and-deep-fried Southern rasslin', with a smarty-pants smile as sweet as pecan pie and a nasty streak as sharp as ten-minute collards. Like Mawmaw's cookin', he may not be good for the heart, but I like the way he wraps his limbs around an opponent, like biscuit on a salty chunk of ham. Snug-like.

Blake Arledge's photos of Trans-South's February 4th show in Union, South Carolina, give us Stoney against "The Specialist" Jeff Connelly, but apparently the camera tells only part of the story. What was basically a straight-up scientific fight was supposed to end when Connelly pinned Hooker. But I hear that Hooker got riled up over the loss. After offering to shake the victor's hand, Stoney reheated the brawl so that the two men eventually had to be pulled off each other. Not too soon, I hope. Twice in the course of the brawl Hooker applied the Hardy brothers' "twist of fate" hold (a variation of the three-quarter facelock bulldog) and got fined $500. (The show was a fundraiser for Relay for Life, to fight cancer, so let's hope Hooker's half a grand does somebody a whole lot of good.)

Cupid Is a Heel

2012-02-14T05:53:00.000-05:00

Valentine's Day makes me feel nostalgic. Mostly I remember my pre-sexual celebrations in elementary school: decorated mailboxes (shoeboxes covered in glossy red and pink wrapping paper), homemade cards made out of construction paper, and those pink, heart-shaped mints with "Be Mine" written on them.

I also think (unsurprisingly) about wrestling--especially the faux-"innocent" posed wrestling shots ("wrestling" should probably be in quotes, as well) of cold-war-era erotica.

"Some Cupid kills with arrows," Shakespeare (the other Bard) wrote, in Much Ado About Nothing, "Some with traps." And some with inverted figure-four ankle locks.

Our Ring

2012-02-13T15:17:00.001-05:00

Jake Jenkins and Austin Cooper are great together as heels. It's instant boners at my house whenever these two sidle up to each other to take down a couple of good guys. In a touch of pure camp, Rock Hard underscores their entrance with sinister music of the sharks-lurking-in-the-ocean-deep variety, as the boyishly charming Ethan Andrews and Jason Kane naively practice leglocks in the ring.

Jenkins and Cooper push their way into the ring ("our ring," they say). Right off the bat, Jenkins lets it be known he does not like the fresh looks Andrews is throwing his way. The setup to the match summarizes as much exposition as we need in less than a minute. Without a lot of fanfare, we know that the bad guys in matching black are hungry for a fight and easily incensed. We know that Andrews and Kane are the innocent parties, two regular dudes in the wrong place at the wrong time: in short, goners. I wish all matches started this fast and sweet.

No time is wasted getting the party started either. Jake and Ethan lock up first, the two guys having immediately zeroed in on each other. Jake escalates the situation fast. It's going to be a beating. Austin stands at his corner and leers at Jason, taunting him over the heads of the two men in the ring, with "Hey, tough guy." Kane acts cool, but you have to figure he's a little rattled, the new kid and all. Cooper has the biggest smile in the world on his face, as he reminds the slim newcomer his turn is coming faster than he may like.

The economy of all this is remarkable. It has never occurred to me that the two untagged men should banter while their partners are busy beating shit out of each other. But seeing it here, it really seems like this is the only way to do these things. Jake is beating Ethan Andrews like a dusty blanket. Austin calls out the shots for Jake, and Jake obliges, like a short-order cook, "scattering," "smothering," "covering," "chunking," and "topping."

At first Cooper refuses to tag in, saving himself for his date with Kane. But Jenkins wants him to share in the fun of squashing Ethan like bubblewrap. Cooper flies in off the top rope, smashing Andrews across the chest. He adds a few bruises to the ones Jenkins made, and then, bored with his limp and panting prey, contemptuously boots him over to the corner to let Kane tag in. He works up a nice sweat over Kane, and it's looking like a replay of the first half of the round until Jason pulls a neat reversal in the midst of an Irish whip. Then things start getting even more interesting.

"Teen Sensation" Jason Kane debuted not long ago in a match against Ethan Andrews, here his partner. Kane proves to be surprisingly tough, with a short fuse and a mean streak of his own. (I can't wait to see what happens when he and Eli Black hop into the ring.) Andrews has come up with one hell of a fight face, fiercely displayed in the opening credits. He suffers a lot in this match, at the hands of both heels, but especially at the hands of Jake Jenkins, who appears to take pleasure in grinding the Midwestern hotshot to pulp.

What makes the team of Cooper and Jenkins so formidable? I wish I knew. It's chemistry. Both have the symmetrical faces of Botticelli angels, slightly buckled by their love of brawling, and hard, volcanic physiques, evenly tanned. Although they have got attitude to spare and genuinely relish breaking a man apart, it all mostly boils down (for me) to the combination of beauty and evil. The mix is lethal, for me it is anyway, who grew up on a steady diet of film noir, where dark and brutal killers in nattily cut suits skulk behind shadows, with gaunt cheeks and hungry eyes. I always had a hard-on for the villains, and when, on top of their wickedness, they're beautiful too, the impact is irresistible. I'm just perverted, I guess.

This is the third time Jake Jenkins and Austin Cooper have teamed up. These two are never better than when they are together in the ring, the very definition of synergy, and Rock Hard must recognize a winning formula when it sees one. Although this match does not reach the heights of their first (against Trent Novak and Cliff Johnson), it rises pretty damn close to it. Give me more. I can take it.

From A to A

2012-02-13T03:54:00.000-05:00

Look here for video of this Fight the World match from January 28th. Victoria Longtin's still shots capture flashes of the brilliance as Anthony Nese, 5'10", 213#, clashes with Adam Cole, 5'11", 190#.

Tenderloin

2012-02-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

Z-Man, that slippery devil, starts things off, ranting about his intent to nip newcomer Impact's auspicious debut in the bud. He sports an incipient goatee (a good move, if I may put in my two cents--the more devilish the styling, the better). If Zack represents the old guard at Thunder's Arena, he will not go down quietly. That much is sure. Nor should he. The old guard has never looked better.

As fast as I could (thank you, Mister Tax Return) I bought both of Impact's matches, as I promised I would. Not a patient man, I started with the more recent, Bodybuilder Battle 53, as it seemed the more promising. I'm happy to report that the big handsome lug is as cocky as I could hope for, promising to "kick some ass" and referring to Z-Man dismissively as the "little guy." Not wise. But I like the boy's balls.

In the still shots, you see his much-talked-about tousled hair, along with a wide, generous grin that shows just how pleased with himself he must be. I'm mostly impressed with his shoulders and biceps, the way he thrusts his stomach and pelvis out (guys don't do that nearly enough, to suit me), his sturdy thighs, and an iliac furrow a Greek god would be lucky to own. There's also the matter of that glimmer of fuzz over the waistband of his almost-not-there maroon trunks.

It's good news that in the video he looks just as good as the still shots show him to be, with the added benefit that he talks out the side of his mouth, like a 1930s movie gangster. I have to love a guy whose first words to his opponent are "I'm coming here to fuck you up, man," drawling out the words like John Wayne, even if, as I suspect, given his youth, he does not know who John Wayne is.

He is a little stiff, with a lumbering swagger as he moves in on Z for the lockup. Z-Man may be smaller, by about 40 pounds, by my estimate, but he's agile and more experienced. Sheer massiveness, though, makes Impact a difficult object to topple. Z gets the big guy in a bear hug, but Impact won't sell, merely looking quietly amused, like a big toddler playing horsey with a somewhat smaller adult. Even when Z-Man elevates the rookie in a surfboard stretch, Impact just chuckles. Apparently, he's had massages that were more excruciating.

"Little guy got nothin'," Impact gloats as he scoops Zack up over his left shoulder and ("speaking of 'impact'") smashes the fitness model's spine against his knee. A few slugs to the ribs, and then Impact mounts Z-Man for an old-fashioned schoolboy pin. Not waiting for a three-count, the luscious rookie straddles the man's chest and flourishes his pipe-bomb arms in a double-bicep pose, his chest and conspicuously hard abs looming over Z's stunned face.

Then Impact pulls Z-Man up into the air by his throat, the strain giving emphasis to his already well-pronounced V-shaped torso. He shows no respect for the man he gleefully toys with. It's just minutes into the match, and already Z looks like he may need a neck brace and a crutch to get home after the match. A few more minutes of this, and he may need prosthetic limbs.

What Z-Man needs to do is wear the big dude down. He wrenches the guy's arm, drives some sharp jabs to his kidneys, and throws everything he's got into some gut punches. He might as well be fighting a pylon. except that pylons don't come back at you with a Boston crab hold--but, in this video, you get a good idea of what one might look like if it did.

So given Impact's youthful stamina, it looks like the wearing-down scheme won't wash. Still, knowing Z-Man, there's got to be a Plan B ... and, if needed, even more letters of the alphabet (the man is not called "Z"-Man for nothing!). Plan B looks like it's going to be "let loose the beast." No more Mister Nice Guy. Z-Man stretches Impact's legs apart, torpedoes his lats with his elbow, stomps the back of his knee, and rakes his fingernails down the kid's spacious back. That, at least, is enough to wipe the gloating smile off the rookie's face. But, though clearly not as comfortable now as he was at the startup, Impact soaks in the pain. In fact, he seems to have a taste for it.

The promo stills alone convinced me that Impact may be the biggest coup for Thunder's Arena since Big Sexy--and, though the boy needs to learn to loosen up for the camera, this video (the only one of his I've seen so far) confirms his superstar potential. His physical presence alone is stunning, and he is ready and willing to play rough. The more he exerts himself, the more spectacularly defined his musculature becomes, an effect well set off by the dewy sheen of sweat on his unblemished skin. Z-Man, of course, is a superb foil for almost any new talent the Arena cares to introduce, and nobody is more unblemished than he. I like the guy ... even more with each successive battle. Impact may be too big for him, but he's taken a lot worse and come out on top, and he's one of the most resilient, resourceful, and, yeah, underhanded wrestlers on Thunder's roster.

You don't need a psychic to know that what I'm aching for is a showdown between Impact and Big Sexy, equals in body mass and ego. Sexy can teach this boy a few things. With luck, the solid-gold rookie will catch Big Sexy's eye in the next few weeks. I suspect that Sexy will tie the kid up in knots--and, yeah, I get a little weak in the knees just thinking about it. Then, if it's not too much for me to hope for, might the two then team up to battle Sledge and Dallas?

Who Wants to See This Kid Die?

2012-02-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

If you have never seen anything from the NewPro Wrestling series, you need to give it a look-see. Nothing overtly sado-erotic there, but some swell grunt-and-sweat rasslin' matches of the sort early cable TV used to broadcast late on Friday nights and early on Saturday mornings. Many of the NewPro guys are underused independents with heaps of heart, who give the proverbial 110% in the ring. I like the enthusiasm these guys bring to their fights. Plenty of wrestling talent out there seldom get the cameras' attention. NewPro does us all a favor by putting that wrong to right.

My favorite match of the company's latest release, NewPro 19, is the main event: Chris Jones, 5'8", 160#, versus BG East regular Kirby Stone, 5'10", 167#, former pals squaring off against each other. Both guys wear pink and black with their initials stitched to their asses. Stone wears his hair long in this bout (and in his previous NewPro gig as well). He sports a honey-colored tan and exhibits more fire than his languorous good looks would suggest he's capable of. Dark-haired, pasty-faced Jones looks like he's straight out of Central Casting for schoolyard bullies, and he's got a tight build and a flare for arrogance and sadism. Neither is fitness-model or GQ perfection, nothing airbrushed about either, but it's precisely because they look like regular neighborhood roughnecks that I find the fight so exciting. It may be a prejudice of mine, but I feel that nobody fights as tough as a regular guy who's fit.

Stone shows strong from the beginning. He subjects Jones to a series of painful armbars. Jones pleads, "I thought we were friends." "We were," Stone replies, without expression or emphasis. When Jones strikes back, he proves himself the meaner of the two, the one more likely to cut corners, the one more likely to savor the groans of his opponent and (now clearly "ex") friend. As the action heats up, Stone shouts to the audience, "Who wants to see this kid die?" and then, with unmistakable relish, he turns his attention to the task of dismantling the longhair.

Two friends settling a grudge mano a mano may actually be a bit hotter than two brothers wrestling. Jones and Stone know each other's moves like they know their own, and they work each other vigorously, anticipating what the other guy will try next and attempting to block it. There's a bit of the male catfight in this contest, too, as the two punks want to mess each other up ... and bad. Small handwork, such as hair-pulling and nose-wringing, add detail that's both vicious and intimate. Stone and Jones exhibit a lot of show-offy energy that's lacking in most televised pro wrestling today, where even new talent can appear to be phoning in their glittery performance. Amid the shrieks and moans, wholly believable, Stone and Jones look like they're having a hell of a good time, cutting loose on each other. It's a good time for the viewer, too, let me tell you.

10

2012-02-09T06:34:00.000-05:00

UK wrestler El Ligero, 27, 5'10", 167#, celebrates his tenth anniversary in pro wrestling today. On his Facebook page this morning he remembers wrestling "in front of crowds ranging from 11,000 to 7" and thanks "every single person who's helped me along the way, and [made] it possible for this tiny tiny man to make his parents proud and to live out his childhood dreams." Well said, Ligero, and thank you for the years of ring magic. Photo: Jca Servo

Fire and Rain

2012-02-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

The sound and the scent of rain are nostalgic for me. Maybe that's true for everyone. Kurosawa always put downpours to good effect in his samurai films, paeans to lost feudal Japan. Rain shows up in a lot of love songs, too, often enough to set the mood for idle, liquor-soaked lovemaking.

In BG East's Gazebo Grapplers 1, Lance Jeffers, with his genial Dixie grin, and tall and husky drink of water Brandon Aldrich walk through a sudden cloudburst to get to the gazebo. They wrestle in worn-out jeans and sleeveless undershirts at first, till they get good and hard. Then the shirts and the denims peel off, and the two men wrestle boner to boner, all the while the rain pattering steadily on the roof.

In a manner that predictably drives me to heights of horniness, Jeffers and Aldrich alternate roughhouse with serious face sucking, the short, hairy, and pugnacious Lance balanced against the tall, cornfed Brandon, whose thigh muscles alone drive me a little crazy. Here's about the only porn that's 100% guaranteed to work on me: two aggressive manly men who like to lick balls, bite nipples, and grind into each other, struggling for the right to top the other ... and it's only sweeter with the shower pushing the cool, loam-scented air over their bodies, two warrior-lovers with blood boiling, deep groans and ecstatic yelps mingling. Two regular guys' guys, with unusual drive and staying power. Naked wrestling in the fresh air would have been plenty, but add the rain, and it all seems like memories.

Rock On with Your Bad Self

2012-02-08T19:52:00.000-05:00

I love Rock Hard. It draws its share of carpers, I guess, but it's one of only a few wrestling promotions I consistently follow. It's worth dropping my money on, whenever I get some extra money to drop. I've got eclectic tastes--selective, but not as predictable as some of you might assume. Hell, it's hard for even me to predict what will turn my knob from one day to the next. I'm not religious about any of it, really, simply waiting for the next thrill, from whatever brings it.

With enough payback, I can put up with a few things that might ordinarily put me off, say, for instance, matches so tightly edited it's sometimes hard to get my bearings, spatially, or, say, music that sounds like the soundtrack of every History Channel documentary on ancient secrets of the coming apocalypse. I can live with this. The payback for me at Rock Hard is wrestlers like Zack Novak, Tyler Reeves, and Travis Storm. And I think we all owe RHW, too, for launching the underground wrestling careers of Eli Black, Austin Cooper, and Jake Jenkins.

So I spent part of my recent (all too paltry) 2011 tax return on stuff I like, including this recent Rock Hard disk, pitting dirty blond Travis Storm against skinhead Czech Tyler Reeves, followed by hot roughneck Trent Novak against Cliff Johnson, a youngster who impresses me more each time I see him. Both matches are sweaty grunt cantatas, for which RHW is a pretty reliable source. The first match features Reeves dragging Storm around the ring by his pretty haircut. I like Storm's beach boy looks, and he suffers nicely under Reeves' strong arm. For me Reeves' chesty Eastern European accent is the deal-clincher--along with his perfect buzzcut and his smooth torso's propensity to perspire almost on command. In the next bout, Novak is solid as usual. He's built solid, and his tack is reliably strong and unshakable. He shares heel and babyface qualities, and that's a combination that usually works for me. Here, he keeps Johnson moving and hurting, from ropes to mat to turnbuckle. Nice.

Perhaps lovers of storylines might not find Rock Hard's matches all that alluring. The guys don't set up each match with a lot of shit talk--and it's never really spelled out whom we should like and whom we should hate. Me, I'm a bit tone-deaf on narrative. It's a struggle for me to tell a story, or even recite a joke without mangling it. I'm not a regaler, needless to say. I like style, and my gift is for analysis and putting two and two together ... and embellishment. I'm good at pinpointing a colorful detail, sometimes.

So Rock Hard's lack of emphasis on character definition or running scenarios is actually a bit of a plus for me. I'll read Homer if I want a story. When I watch wrestling, I want skin grinding on skin and involuntary animal moans. These matches give me these qualities, along with the thunder of boots on a limber ring floor. The drama, for me, is 100% in the aggressive competition--and the joy of one man gradually taking control of another. I don't really need good guys and bad guys. I need good bad guys, and this Rock Hard provides.

Faux Phobe?

2012-02-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

As previously reported, Brandon Espinosa, 5'10", 190#, has been feuding with "out and proud" Paredyse since October at Ohio Valley Wrestling. In pro wrestling, the boundaries between reality and fantasy have always been a little blurred. Paredyse is a character played by a man who identifies himself as straight on MySpace, but he's become something of a touchstone for equal rights in the Louisville-area gay community. So if Paredyse is a faux gay, does that mean Espinosa's vehemently anti-gay slurs are kayfabe, too? It would appear so. Espinosa is playing the heel in this spat and generating a lot of heat off the kinds of remarks that only recently (i.e. last year) were regarded as innocuous, commonplace even (especially) for wrestling's "good" guys.

In mid-November Espinosa broke into Paredyse's dressing room and wrote "Go Home, Queen!" on the mirror. A week later Paredyse returned the favor, scrawling "I'm Here, I'm Queer, Get Used To It" on Espinosa's mirror. For several weeks Espinosa and Paredyse took turns as ringside commentators on each other's matches, during which time the two also confronted each other directly, and twice Paredyse planted a big wet kiss on Espinosa, infuriating the purported homophobe.

On Christmas Eve, the city of Clarksville, Tennessee (just over the border from Kentucky) crowned Paredyse the King of Clarksville. Paredyse redubbed himself the "Queen" of Clarksville, leading Espinosa to butt in, complaining about the use of the feminine noun. The resulting altercation put both men in the ring for their first televised fight, which ended when Espinosa sneakily attacked Paredyse from behind.

Paredyse then challenged Espinosa to another match, and Espinosa accepted. On January 7th, as previously noted on this blog, fans of Paredyse and members of Louisville's gay community formed a cheering section, brandishing a sign that read, "Gay Is The Way, Paredyse." In what might appear a nod to the idea that homophobes tend to be severely repressed homosexuals, Espinosa entered the ring in pink zippered trunks emblazoned with a shiny heart, though apparently clueless about the nelliness of his gear. Paredyse won the match with a low blow and a neckbreaker submission to the fans' evident delight. After the bout, Espinosa attacked Paredyse from behind ... again.

At the beginning of February, Espinosa defeated "The Prime Cut" Nick Cutler in a dark match and then humiliated him by putting him in a dress and smearing his lips with lipstick. Later, in an interview, Espinosa explained his bizarre action by bluntly expressing his dislike of the gay community, calling it unnatural and weird, adding that he is sick of people like Paredyse.

WWE and Impact Wrestling also brought up the problem of bullying in its storylines last year, but more ambiguously without using the word "gay," to my knowledge. Of course, the effort is partly hindered by the fact that key players in these promotions, like John Cena, Triple H, and AJ Styles, have sometimes uttered homophobic slurs in the process of challenging the masculinity of their opponents. Impact's Bully Ray represents bullying in a negative light, revealing the insecurity and cowardice that lurk beneath the false show of masculine power, but neither WWE nor Impact has attempted anything as direct or startling as Espinosa's gimmick at OVW.

What happens next? I wonder. If Paredyse continues to gather fans (initially, two or three years ago, he played the typical gay gimmick, i.e. the flamboyant, corner-cutting heel), could he seriously upset seventy years of anti-gay stereotyping in wrestling? And could homophobia, so long a given in all US sports, even as glittery a one as pro wrestling, become nothing more than a pose to generate boos from the fans? I don't know. But that would be fabulous!

Black in White

2012-02-06T15:21:00.000-05:00

BG East's Gut Bash 9 smashes through the usual cliches of gut-punch videos. It's got drama, character, theme, and Eli Black's zero-body-fat eight-pack.

Some fans are satisfied just watching an endless loop of knuckles connecting with belly buttons. (I understand that. I could be happy watching two hot wrestlers locked in an hour-long dragon clutch.) And what's so bad about an endless loop? Repetition and tension are what wrestling's about. Pretty much every sport entails an action repeated ... senselessly and tediously, to the uninitiated eye. GB9 stints nothing in the fine art of repeated abdominal punishment, but it's oh so much more than that.

In his BGE debut, Black sports the merest hint of white trunks and a midsection that looks like it could stop a torpedo. He's got steel-cage experience in mixed martial arts and a chip the size of a redwood on his shoulder.

Morgan Cruise is a stocky, hairy-chested catch-as-catch-can wrestler--old-school variety--so refreshing to see young dudes upholding that grand tradition! And he has arms and thighs that might bring torpedos to mind.

So it's a battle between MMA savvy and catch-wrestling steam, between wiry and brawny, speed and stamina, smooth and hairy.

And Cruise and Black deliver for a full 45 minutes. That's roughly two Monday Night Raws, minus the promos, entrances, glowering, and commercials. And these two hellions ride the action, near total exhaustion and shimmering with perspiration, all the way to the finisher.

Denotation

2012-02-05T06:09:00.000-05:00

Impact: (action verb, transitive, from L. impactus: to "push into, dash against, thrust at") to drive or press closely or firmly into something [or somebody]; to pack in; to fill up [e.g., "impact a skimpy pair of trunks"]; to collide with; strike forcefully; to have an impact or effect on; influence; alter [e.g., "impact the course of wrestling at Thunder's Arena"]; see also "bang," "blow," "bounce," "bump," "crash," "crush," "hit," "jolt," "knock," "pound," "punch," "quiver," "rock," "strike," "wallop."

Van Hammer

2012-02-03T19:34:00.000-05:00

6-6, 280#. Van Hammer, in his anti-peace heel period, in 1999. These screen caps are from a WCW Monday Nitro match against Evan Karagias, who was in his cornrow period.

Hotter than a Three-Balled Tomcat

2012-02-02T20:38:00.000-05:00

I was a huge Austin Cooper fan before BG East released Wrestler Spotlight: Austin Cooper. Having now watched this match (in preview, a few weeks ago), I'm huger.

For almost a year now, Austin Cooper has been my ideal of stud-next-door male beauty, but never before has he been so quick on his feet and agile in his moves. In this, his first Spotlight release, he turns a corner in his career, achieving new heights of professional polish in three of the best choreographed bouts I have seen in underground wrestling. The matches with hot heel extraordinaire Jonny Firestorm and unorthodoxly sexy Lucky Loko confirm my interest in Jonny and spark it in Lucky. They stand on their own. But especially noteworthy is Cooper's battle against the dynamic Kid Karisma.

The ginger bombshell Kid K is revelatory here. Haughty and merciless when dominating luscious Austin, counterpoising his cringing subjection when being dominated. He really sells the action spectacularly, and for me it's a tossup between seeing him masterful, muscles flexing around his shiny black trunks, and seeing him scream like a baby as Cooper picks the meat off his bones.

The still pictures above (and on BG East's Arena) can only hint at the violence and artistry of this match. The wrestlers leap over each other, trade gut jabs, and tie themselves into braids of honey-tan and freckled brawn. The men really cut loose, holding nothing back, taking their aggressive instincts to the edge and beyond. Add two quarts of sweat, and consider me hopelessly mesmerized.

BG East proves itself in top form with this and other great stuff in the newly released Catalog 91, which includes, besides this jewel, Eli Black putting his perfect abs and MMA cred on the line against hairy-chested roughneck Morgan Cruise; Jake Jenkins getting hot and wet in the pool against Christian Taylor; the return of sexy newcomer and superstar-in-the-making Dylon Roberts; Joshua Goodman breaking in dark and handsome fitness trainer Gino Liotta; Charlie Panther, Dylan Drake, Mac Matthias, and Exavier showing us how pros do it in private; Jayden Mayne duking it out with Attila Dynasty; and Tyrell Tomsen in a doubleheader, against Z-Man (in top form) and Dev Michaels in a blistering grudge match.

Be glad you lived to see this day. I am. What's not to recommend? The norm is hit and miss, we all know that, but the new catalog looks like hit after hit after hit after hit. Karisma versus Cooper stretches the stratosphere, with the clout of an instant boner-generating classic. I imagine any fan of wrestling would eat this up.

Roode

2012-02-01T19:16:00.003-05:00

At Impact's January 26 show in Nottingham, James Storm, 6', 230#, won over Bobby Roode, 6', 240#, by DQ. The DQ--a low blow, delivered out of desperation by Roode--saved Roode's world heavyweight championship belt. Then Storm, with pals Hulk Hogan and Sting, beat Roode, Kurt Angle, and Bully Ray in a six-man tag match. Me, I like the champ ... and low blows. (Photos by John Searle)

John Fuckin Morrison

2012-01-31T17:51:00.001-05:00

I liked him best ten years ago as an earnest and reasonably modest hunk on Tough Enough, Season 3, but I could never bring myself to totally write him off as John Morrison, a larger-than-life caricature of rock-star glam on WWE. And if major cable-TV sports entertainment shies away from wrestling (you may recall that last spring Vince McMahon officially removed the word "wrestling" from WWE), Morrison, 6', 215#, found a workable second-best in parkour, the French art and science of moving rapidly, gracefully, and often astoundingly through, around, over, under, and in between obstacles. Known by many names over the last decade (Johnny Blaze/Nitro/Onyx/Spade/Superstar), Morrison exited WWE last month, but he is scheduled to headline the newly branded World Wrestling Fan Xperience this coming Saturday in Manila (lucky Bruno at Beefcakes of Wrestling!), reportedly under his birth name, John Hennigan, the name we first knew him by, in 2002.

The Book of Eli

2012-01-30T06:35:00.000-05:00

I watched Eli Black's sophomore match at Rock Hard Wrestling yesterday. At the startup, Black promises to put Alexi Ivanov's muscles to the test, and Ivanov dopily grins, under the impression apparently that three rounds with the mean-tempered Eli will be just another day in Gorky Park. For two or three seconds I was convinced that Black might go easy on the new guy, but in less than a minute the gangly Ivanov is stretched out on the mat, skin flushed and shiny with sweat, as Eli stands over him, glowering.

Eli has a thing about muscles, his muscles mainly, and maybe the Russian's nicely clipped pectorals are a provocation. He doesn't say. He assumes the attitude of master punisher, explaining key points in the art of dealing out hurt, profusely illustrated, as if he were going over questions in the back of the Florida Driver's Manual. Eli holds forth on his solid "core" as a trained professional MMA fighter, framing his tight abdominals between his two hands, illustratively--and then he slams into Alexi's midsection to prove that the tall rookie, nice as he is in other respects, does not have a solid core to speak of.

"I thought you were tougher than that," Eli states, matter of factly, not particularly disappointed because he has no qualms about trashing a guy who lies down and takes it. "Little girl," he badgers. "I don't know what the hell you came to the US for, man. Tell you what, though, while you're here, let's see how much pain you can endure." Black hangs Ivanov on the ropes like wet laundry. He grinds the man's adam's apple to the rope. Then he uses the new guy's kidney for a speed bag. "C'mon, scream!" Eli snaps at Alexi, irritated by the man's stoic air of imperturbability.

For my part I would like to see Ivanov put up more of a fight. He rouses now and then to deliver some payback to the hotshot American, but as you might expect, since this is Ivanov's debut match, we mostly get a squash job. Lovers of a one-sided match will lap this up, of course, and well they should. Not that there isn't plenty here for the rest of us to like, too--especially Black's constant stream of shit talking and his untiring effort to find a new part of his opponent to bruise. And Eli has a point--though he strikes me as the sort who could not give a rat's ass whether I see his point or not--that if Ivanov isn't going to put up a decent fight, the least he can do is scream his bloody lungs out.

Whether we're seeing a new talent being broken in or just plain broken remains to be seen. What is crystal clear is that Black--who played the punching bag for Jake Jenkins in his debut--is coming into his own as a star in his second showing at Rock Hard. He may be slim, but there's no "twink" in this tattooed roughneck. The man's a brute, twice the brute of three-quarters of the galoots in the major cable-TV promotions. Chalk that up to his MMA credentials or his nasty disposition, either way Eli's on a short track to superstardom. All it will take now is a racking head-to-head against somebody like Ethan Andrews, followed by a grudge-fueled rematch with Jenkins, win or lose, and Black's niche will be fixed in the pantheon of underground wrestling.

Impact!

2012-01-29T01:30:00.000-05:00

I can't keep up with all that's going on at Thunder's Arena these days (my wallet's not that fat, especially in these famished days after the holidays), but the photos and trailers alone are intriguing enough for me ... for now, anyway.

I'm still hoping for a fat 2011 tax return to see the Arena's Christmas release, featuring Big Sexy and Dominic in domination mode, with new boys Tak and Octane tied up in knots and fairy-lights. Then earlier this month Tak brought along big brother, Impact, 6'1", 205#, exactly the kind of strapping man-boy that could make my knees go weak. And now Octane has his second bout in just weeks, this time against suave and cocky Z-Man in Bodybuilder Battle 53.

I can't keep up with all this!

Thunder's is launching what look like an exciting card and a refreshing new wave for 2012. Tak versus Octane and Impact versus Big Sexy strike me as logical (perhaps inevitable) next steps. And who knows what new match-ups and talent await in the wings!

Navel Gazing

2012-01-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

Dory Funk, Jr., born 1941, 6'2", 240#, said of Jack Brisco, born 1941, 6', 234#, that he had the "best armdrag in professional wrestling," and Funk's the guy about to feel his shoulders smash the mat in the picture above, taken at a memorable match in Tokyo 38 years ago today.

Before I'd heard of Kevin Von Erich or found the joys of BG East and Can-Am, there was Brisco. There was a time, way back when, when just the word "Brisco" was enough to perk me up. "Brisco" and "Funk" together could send shivers down my spine.

All that was a long time ago. As late as 1968, I hated pro wrestling, or thought I did. My uncle watched it, and I remember thinking it was pretty white-trash of him. Well, he was white trash, but it wasn't wrestling's fault. I was white trash too, but didn't know it then. Then sometime before I turned nineteen--I don't know when--I had a change of heart, mediated by a couple of friends who were high-school athletes who talked me into stripping down to my white cotton briefs and wrestling with them on a rug or mattress on the floor.

This lasted for about seven years. I still have a chipped tooth to remind me of those years. All three of us were good Christian boys back then; one was a preacher's son. This preacher once caught me in bed with the other guy (not his son), and nothing was said about it by any of us. We all acted like nothing had happened and nobody had seen anything. My two friends stuck with Christ and conservative politics; the one followed his father's footsteps into the ministry, and the other coached sports at a Christian school. The three-way friendship did not end well, but it ended. I haven't seen either one of them in 35 years.

They knew wrestling them excited me, the more so the more naked we got. We talked about it. I told them I wasn't gay, and they were fine with the hard-on. Wrestling helped them relax. A good cool-down activity after working out. They introduced me to free weights. I was their goto guy when they wanted to tussle--day or night, dorm room or motel room or, eventually, apartment.

My friends married a couple of appropriately docile young women, and shortly thereafter we fell out of each other's lives. The details are still a little painful--the usual, betrayal and lies, the awkward and ineffective attempt at rapprochement. Though, for a couple of years, I'd get letters from one of the wives, whom I didn't know well at all, in which she'd tell me what X was up to and mention how much I still meant to him and invite me to visit them soon. I never responded.

Jack Brisco died almost two years ago: February 1, 2010. He and his matches (against the likes of the Funks, Greg Valentine, Harley Race, and so on) are still the standard by which I judge pro wrestling.

So this is what I wanted to say. I'm not sure why. Maybe I was feeling nostalgic. It happens more than I like. Or maybe I thought it was time to recap my story, vis-a-vis the subject of this blog. More likely, it was the picture of Brisco flipping Funk, bringing memories of things past like Proust's madeleine.

Wrestling Is Not Pretty

2012-01-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

Simon Sermon and Tommy Too Much (The Exotic Ones) beat Jon and Trey Williams (The Washington Bullets) in Carrollton, Georgia, last Saturday in a heel-versus-heel match for Peachstate Wrestling Alliance. The Exotics sweated like pigs to get the job done and smeared their mascara in the process--but still smashed nuts and skulls to rise triumphant and fabulous at last.

Heel-versus-heel is pretty much how I like my pro wrestling: a nail-biter to the finish. Wrestlers who hit low, talk shit, and cop attitude, should have to face their equals now and then. I still think the styles should contrast, as here we get gay-club bad versus urban-street bad. But when bad goes up against bad, all bets are off, and the outcome is far from obvious.

Do I mind that the gay gimmick is always a heel gimmick? A little, I guess. I'd like to see a gay babyface, of course. I'd mind more if the gay gimmick were always a jobber gimmick. Simon and Tommy may dress like Malaysia Airlines stewardesses, but they're big and they hit hard.

What I would really like to see is a pro bout pitting gay villain against another gay villain. I've talked about male catfights elsewhere, and seriously it's something the pro world needs to pick up on. The Exotic Ones need a pair of spoiled, swishy twinks or gym bunnies to manhandle. Now that would be a show I would hate to miss!

(Photos by Harold Jay Taylor)

The Power of Pink

2012-01-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

Big Sexy

Bret Hart

Jesse Ventura

Lon Dumont

Pinkie Sanchez

Randy Savage

Ric Flair

Rick Martel

Beau Hopkins

Orlando Jordan

Poolside at Skull Island

2012-01-27T15:19:00.000-05:00

I remember the summer of 1970. I worked in the kitchen of a summer camp near Leesburg, Florida. I learned how to cook all the foods I hardly ever eat anymore, concoctions of lard, MSG, white flour, chicken, and yeast. It was a good summer job. After the campers and counselors were tucked into their cots, my pals Mike and Jimmy and I would hit the pool, lit only by surrounding light sources no closer than twenty feet away and spookily enveloped in Spanish moss. I remember Mike, the year before our senior year, his flashy teeth and absurdly square jaw, daring me to pull him into the water by the cord attached to the inner tube around his washboard abs. The distant light bounced dreamily off his wide shoulders. I pulled him into the water, and we'd wrestle, trying to all but drown each other in the process. Then Jimmy would dive in, and we'd roll in the water like Tarzan and a crocodile. Heaven.

By the way, Mike is one of my Facebook friends, unrecognizably chubby now, married and remarried, more faithful to Chik-Fil-A and Jesus than I have been. We never communicate--poke, share, comment, or like. I hate his politics, and he hates mine. Facebook allows that sort of distant connectedness to old buddies. The distance is probably for the best, all things considered.

BG East is set to release its sixth in the Wet & Wild series as part of Catalog 91, and it's pretty terrific. Anything with Jake Jenkins is bound to be a cut above the rest, but his costars Reese Wells, Len Harder, and Christian Taylor are impressive, too. Both matches start with a fabricated fuss--Jake's mad at Christian for not helping him show off his backflip, and Reese inexplicably gives Len the cold shoulder. Things quickly escalate until there's nothing left to do but wrestle in the pool. Christian uses his height advantage to pull Jake out to the deep end. Jake decides grappling is not enough for him and throws a punch, and in no time the guys are trying to choke each other to death. Similarly, Reese decides that Len needs to be taught a lesson in respect, and before it's over, he's bodyslamming the guy into the pool ... multiple times.

As exciting as water wrestling is, with rubbery gooseflesh smoothing over other gooseflesh in a near-frictionless water world, it's hard to capture the action (or frottage) on camera. It helps when the fighters climb up on the tiles to trap their opponents in half-submerged headscissors--or, like Jenkins, to fly off the pool edge and dropkick Taylor, up to his waist in fresh chlorinated water. Even better, the guys leave the pool area to wrestle on dry land and mats, their trunks still soaked and their hair still dribbling droplets to their shoulders.

Not a whole lot to complain about when you get to see Jake Jenkins' wet, translucent gold bikini creeping up his ass cheeks, or Reese Wells, body glistening like a twilit vampire, choking Harder with a twisted beach towel. These are good times--perfect fantasy scenarios for long winter's nights and encouragement to drop the pounds gained over the holidays before spring springs upon us. Poolside wrestling captures the fun, playful roughhouse of men together, and BG East's latest entry to a tradition as old (at least) as the Athletic Model Guild will definitely get you wet and more than likely drive you wild, too.

"I Have a Crazy Mind" (Exclusive Interview with RHW's Eli Black)

2012-01-26T10:30:00.000-05:00

Last fall, Eli Black made a big splash with his first Rock Hard Wrestling match, in fact his first experience ever in a wrestling ring. He faced Jake Jenkins, who has about fifteen pounds of muscle on the guy. Black got his expected initiatory whipping, with handsomely brutal Jake performing the honors. But even Jenkins' movie-star looks and crippling punishments could not eclipse Eli's star appeal for underground wrestling fans. His training in college wrestling and mixed martial arts experience in steel cages paid off, garnering notices for his debut on blogs and discussion boards. Not that he needs the attention, mind you. Eli keeps himself going on a steady diet of spunk and inflated ego. He's a force of nature, all right, like a cyclone, and you can sense that, just listening to him. Days before the release of his second Rock Hard match (versus Russian rookie Alexi Ivanov--out today), Black agreed to talk with me about his experiences at RHW and his goals. Black likes to speak his mind, all right, and if it generates a little heat, all the better for him.

Joe: First of all, thanks for agreeing to do this, and I wish you great success with this new release. So, tell me, what drew you to Rock Hard?

Eli: I was told by, um, an unnamed source that I should take my skill from MMA and college wrestling into the ring because there was some intense contenders in there, and if you know Eli Black, you know I love a challenge. I'll take anyone on. I do nothing but work at increasing my skills, and I felt Rock Hard best suited me. It has a great atmosphere. Great place to train.

Joe: What's it like being the new meat? Everybody treating you all right?

Eli: Everyone treats everyone the same. I don't care if I'm the new meat. Just means I'm fresh and ready to go and discard the old.

Joe: So, what's it like there?

Eli: Kinda every man for himself. ... Well, basically, everyone here is two-faced. You pal around backstage with someone. Your new best buddy trash-talks on another wrestler. Then he goes right to that wrestler and starts talking trash on the other wrestler he was just talking to. Not to mention any names, Jake Jenkins! [Laughs.] Douche bag. But the training facilities here are topnotch for me. They keep making my picture-perfect eight-pack abs and that amazing and stunning ass of mine tighter and harder for my next opponent. I work on my abs all day every day, doing sit-ups with a medicine ball to make them rock hard and tight. For my ass I just have to give props to God ... he blessed me with that pleaser.

Joe: Your debut match against Jenkins was killer. Very exciting. And you proved yourself a tough and durable fighter. Looking back at that match, what stands out for you?

Eli: I'm not talking about it. I tune it out. He caught me off guard and got lucky. End of story!

Joe: [Laughs.] Okay. So let's talk about your background. Were you always into sports?

Eli: I've wrestled my whole life. I was a state champion and college All-American and Junior Olympian. Then I trained in MMA, where I turned professional and had an amazing career there as well.

Joe: Tell me a little bit about your martial arts experience.

Eli: Well, like my wrestling, I've been doing it for a very long time with training in BJJ [Brazilian jujitsu] and boxing with pros! Pushing myself every day to perfect my skills so I will be the best, no matter what I do. And I'll destroy anyone in my path! If, by some magic, I do lose, it's not a big deal. Actually, in that case it's worse for you because I make my weaknesses my strengths ... from you. And I will be back for revenge in the most painful way I can imagine ... and I have a crazy mind. [Laughs.]

Joe: What's your favorite gear?

Eli: Def my trunks, the tighter the better, basically, a pair that shows off my perfect ass!

Joe: Do you have a signature hold or finisher?

Eli: Yes, I have two that are very special ... "The Shutdown" and "The Eli Black Special," as you've seen in my stellar match with Jake. You know, that little girl who got lucky in our match? The Shutdown was when I lifted him from his feet and flipped him over my head onto his back at the same time as I spun to a full mount to get strong control. The Eli Black Special is my finisher. It usually follows the Shutdown. After I full-mount the opponent, I'll ride high up to his face and rap my leg around his head and position the opponent's ... Jake Jenkins' ... face nice and deep into my record-breaking dick! Then I lock that mount into a reverse triangle, and they are forced to submit or face my cock being the last thing they see before they pass out from the strength of my thighs.

Joe: Is there anybody you model yourself after?

Eli: I am the best. End of story.

Joe: So is there anybody at Rock Hard you're itching to battle--or battle again?

Eli: Do you need to ask? Jake Jenkins! That pussy got lucky once. That shit's not happening again. Next fucking question! Stupid fucking question, Joe! ... Oh, and that new kid, Travis or whatever. I don't give a fuck. They're all pussies. I'll take em all. Why? Because I'm the best. Dumb ass!

Joe: Easy now, Eli.

Eli: Next question!

Joe: Okay. Let's go the other way on this. Is there anybody at Rock Hard you hope never to have to face in the ring?

Eli: [Laughs.] Don't make me throw you down in the ring! ... Honestly, myself. I tremble a little at my own amazing self! So, if it were possible, myself. Next question.

Joe: So just name a celebrity whose ass you think needs kicking?

Eli: I don't care. I'll kick anyone's ass. Next question!

Joe: Let's talk WWE, then. Who's your favorite wrestling superstar?

Eli: Me, when I get there! Role model from the past ... Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Joe: If Rock Hard widened its range to include some other styles of combat, what kinds would most interest you?

Eli: I'll beat anyone's ass in anything it is I do. If it's checkers or Chutes and Ladders, I'll crush you.

Joe: Earlier this month, you set your resolution for 2012 to become "King of Rock Hard Wrestling"? What's that going to take to achieve?

Eli: Destroying any and all threats and leaving no doubt I am the fucking champ!

Joe: Would you like to see Rock Hard put a championship title up for grabs?

Eli: Yes. But, again, if you ask me, they already have a champion ... and a trophy: Me! [Laughs.] If that ever does happen, though, I promise I will not REST until I hold that championship title. I'm not joking. It will be MINE!

Joe: Where do you see yourself and Rock Hard Wrestling being in 2017?

Eli: Owner. Running shit.

Joe: What's one thing an opponent does or says that will make you see red? Guaranteed.

Eli: Pulling my goddamned hair!

Joe: Do fans ever proposition you?

Eli: "Proposition"? What the hell does that mean? This ain't no English test. Don't use these big words, you smart ass! Don't make me whip your ass!

Joe: Come on, Eli, don't be a dick.

Eli: I'm outta here! I'll see you all in the fucking ring. It's just a matter of time. Run if you can, but I will get you in the ring. I will break you and sink you deep into the Eli Black Special! If you wanna be the best, you have to beat the best! Me!

Nighty-Night

2012-01-25T18:15:00.003-05:00

"That was sick, but it felt good," the guy says, a pretty good description of almost everything that feels good to me. I remember doing this sort of thing at summer camp in Oklahoma. I guess that's true of a lot of you, too, except, perhaps, for the Oklahoma part. Risky, I was later told, but as kids we didn't know any better. And we wouldn't have done anything different even if we had been told. The allure of the rear naked choke (or sleeper) is, besides the words "naked" and "rear," the charge of holding someone under your absolute sway--or vice versa. Plus, as the guy confirms, going out like a light is a bit trippy. You can watch the full 50-second clip here.

Doppelganger

2012-01-24T14:38:00.001-05:00

To the anonymous commenter last Thursday who recommended Adrian Severe, 6', 230#, thank you! Even though I prefer action over promos, Severe can sit on my chest, sneer, and speak German all day long! He's got a lot in common with ROH's Roderick Strong--in looks and attitude--and I'd love to see a doppelganger match between the two, even though Severe is bigger. He's on the roster of Alex Wright's NEW European Championship Wrestling. If you'd like to hear Adrian sprechen and watch him move from one emphatic hand gesture to another, look here.

Bitches Cut Loose

2012-01-23T21:51:00.001-05:00

One of the intriguing wrinkles in my erotic interest in wrestling is the appeal women's pro wrestling has for me. It's the only situation involving women that has ever aroused me. I have no explanation why that might be so. Unlike male wrestlers, I tend not to distinguish women wrestlers individually--that is, I do not find myself particularly wanting to know any of them in person, nor am I the least bit interested in posed (i.e. non-wrestling) pinup pictures of them. It's solely the fight aspect, isolated from individual personalities, that excites me.

As I have noted elsewhere, women's fearlessness in a fight exhilarates me, be it in a ring or a Walmart parking lot on Black Friday. They have no qualms like those of some male fighters about body contact. And they are vicious--pulling hair, scratching, kicking the twat--and vocal--screaming, cursing, squealing, hissing. Their fights are, typically, stereotypically, more laden with emotion than those of their more stoic male counterparts. Some even weep openly as they fight, and that emotionalism excites me, too, perhaps because of its abject vulnerability. I don't know.

Rob Brazier's typically Caravaggesque shots above, capture for us a tag-team bout pitting Britani Knight (in leatherette two-piece) and Sweet Sarayi (Britani's mother, in fishnets) against Allison Danger (in black and red) and Liberty (in gray two-piece) in a World Association of Wrestling show last fall.

Winter Wars

2012-01-22T01:12:00.002-05:00

Keeping my new year's resolution into the third week of 2012, I supported local pro wrestling by attending GOUGE's Winter Wars show last night in Roxboro, North Carolina, about 30 miles north of where I live. I was expecting to see Stoney Hooker and Alex Avgerinos again (they were named on the poster), but they were no-shows. Still, the show that showed up was awesome--I maintained a nearly continuous state of elation. My friend, who begs for anonymity in these pages and doesn't quite "get" my obsession with wrestling, even had a good time, if only in laughing at me as I screamed at the ref and bemoaned the many injustices that play out in the squared circle ... and perhaps as I crossed and uncrossed my legs too frequently when ripped and longhair wrestler Mike West challenged North Carolina champ Damien Wayne.

The standout matches for me came late in the evening, as more experienced wrestlers dished up the grunt-and-groan action I love. Raleigh heavyweight champion Otto Schwanz, a Teutonic escapee from the loony bin, had an early comic fight against baffled babyface Curtis Mack. Schwanz and his Middle Eastern manager Admir Al Akbar (nod to Star Wars fans) communicated in gibberish that went kind of like "m'huk la mushim al kohlrabi." I dug the silliness, but big hairy Schwanz, with his enormous thighs, is what held my eye. Longhair body-beautiful Mike West was ostensibly the good guy up against heel champion Damien Wayne, but the crowd was clearly stoked for the sight of the Sarasota muscle boy broken and humiliated--and they got what they wanted ... even though it was Wayne who pulled hair, insulted the city of Roxboro, and snatched a metal chair two seats away from me to brain the handsome challenger. For my part I was simply appreciative that West felt at ease showing off his ultra-tan body. In the main event, Jimmy Jack Funk Jr, whose name pays homage to at least three great Southern wrestlers of the '70s, fought Italian brickhouse Mickey Gambino in what was the most intense and dramatically satisfying bout of the evening. Funk (seen also above with comic nerd wrestler Seymour Snott) was a crowd favorite, and, while certainly no Mike West, he exuded sexy self-confidence and was well matched with Mickey Gambino, a Jersey Shore gimmick packed with muscle and arrogance. Gambino kept the crowd hissing in a remarkable show of heel charisma.

At least this time I remembered to charge my camera battery before going to the show. What I did not do is get up from my seat, so I wound up with shots of ring ropes and the turnbuckle, partly out of a desire to stick by my friend (decidedly a fish out of water here, whose original suggestion was that we visit an art gallery) and partly out of shyness and inadequate assertiveness training. Will I keep going to these shows for the duration of the year? Well, that's the plan, and the two live shows I've seen so far have whetted my appetite for more.

Otto Schwanz climbs the ropes

Schwanz takes a bite out of Curtis Mack

Mike West makes an impressive entrance

West tosses Damien Wayne

West dying out on the cold concrete

Wayne and West duke it out in the ring

Jimmy Jack Funk Jr makes his entrance, cowbell and bullrope in hand

Mickey Gambino pulls Funk into the ring

Gambino stomps on Funk

Neo-Classic

2012-01-21T00:00:00.000-05:00

My favorite match of Jonny Firestorm's early heel era is Ultra Fight 7, in which he takes on fellow bad boy Frankie Flave. Flave, 5'4", 175#, and Firestorm, 5'5", 145#, were well matched in what I always took to be a heel-vs-heel bout, with Firestorm ultimately proving to be the nastier and the mightier of the two--surprise, surprise--and, by battle's end, by a pretty hefty margin. (I find it hard to believe Flave is 30 pounds heavier than Firestorm here, but those are the roster stats, and you know how scientifically exact they tend to be.)

To this day this BG East neo-classic hits a number of my hot buttons: hair pulling, scissors, intricate and knotty holds that lock two hardy bodies together, headlocks, corner-rope roughhouse, low blows, schoolboy pins, thigh punishment, and strangulation, to name but a few. Flave's shiny, bulge-enhancing trunks and curly, meticulous haircut struck me as feminizing marks (oddly enough, given the bulge) that contrasted sexily with Firestorm's comparatively more butch gear and crewcut. They were complementary in appearance, the neighborhood bully versus the conceited club kid, and both liked keeping the action on the tough side.

It's vigorous and invigorating, and the guys work up quite a nice sweat by the end. You may like it, too.

Championship Heart

2012-01-20T06:53:00.002-05:00

Johnny Gargano wrestled and submitted Ricochet last Saturday at Evolve 10, despite a two-week-old injury. He collapsed at the end of the match, and temporarily (only temporarily, I hope) is out of commission in wrestling. He describes the situation in detail in this letter to his fans, published on Facebook:

On January 1st I wrestled a show in WV... I sorta tweaked my back/pelvis in that match ... It hurt ... but I figured it'd be alright. It nagged at me for a bit, but I figured it was something I could work through. No big deal. On Saturday ... I don't know ... something just felt weird. My whole body was cramping up. I drank a ton of water, and thought I was just dehydrated. My lower back/abdomen started to swell. Every time I'd stretch or bend forward, a sharp twinge would go down both my legs. Needless to say ... I was scared out of my mind. I KNEW how big the match was, and what I needed to do. I just wasn't sure if my body would cooperate. I briefed Chuck Taylor on the situation and even had him bring out some water to the ring, just in case. It was probably the most nervous/dread I'd ever felt before a match. Not due to the situation ... but due to the uncertainty of my body. I don't remember much of the match, honestly. I remember that within the first 2 minutes, my legs stopped working. I couldn't feel them. Just walking became a chore. I couldn't raise my legs, or even bend down. The pain was indescribable ... but I knew I couldn't stop. We went 25 more minutes ... and I took A LOT of stupid bumps. Was that a dumb decision? Maybe ... but it's not in my DNA to just give up. The match had a lot of hype, and being put in that spot meant the world to me. My mind was willing, but my body just wasn't capable, sadly. As soon as the match ended, and the bit of adrenaline I had wore off ... All of my strength was gone. No more walking, no more moving ... just pain. They told me to stay in the ring and wait for medical attention, and I remember saying, "No! Get me out, there's one more segment. The shows not over, get me out so they can do it." They carried me to the back, and as soon as I went through the curtain, I collapsed. A lot of thoughts were running through my head. Was I paralyzed? Am I going to wrestle again? I honestly didn't know. I hate hospitals, and needles, but the pain was unbearable. The ambulance came and took me to the hospital (first time I'd ever been in an ambulance, by the way). They put an IV in me (another first) ... and filled me up with pain meds, etc. This is where I start to get groggy. Gabe stopped by, but I was already unconscious. They gave me a CAT scan which turned out okay. I randomly started throwing up. Needless to say, not one of my better nights. I had a flight to catch back home at 9 AM. We decided I should try bear through to make that flight. So I was released, and taken to the airport. A wheelchair met me out front, and wheeled me through security, and to my gate, and onto the plane. That flight ... SUCKED. I can't tell you how much pain I was actually in during that flight. They then met me with another wheelchair, and wheeled me out front where my Dad picked me up and took me home. Where I've been in my bed for 2 days ... and looks to be the case for a while longer. I'm going to make an appointment with a specialist to try to get this sorted out, and see what it is. I'm still in a ton of pain, and walking is still very difficult. I'd like to Thank EVERYONE for the kind texts, messages, and comments. I'm sorry I haven't replied yet, but I will. EVERYONE in the back that night that stayed by my side, checked on me, and did all they could to help me out. I'm truly blessed to have so many people care about me. I apologize to anyone that was let down by the match. I really wanted it to be special. Trust me ... no one is more disappointed then I am. I really tried to give you all I had.. unfortunately it wasn't much that night. You deserved better. I'm really sorry.

If you are a fan, send the man your best wishes, if you have not already done so. The photos are by Scott Finkelstein.

Dutch Treat

2012-01-19T16:06:00.000-05:00

Johnny B-Wire battles Rico Bushido (great name) at shows in Nanterre, Paris, and Lourdes, earlier this month.

Billy Jack Has Done It All

2012-01-18T17:30:00.000-05:00

Billy Jack's 1983 debut on World Class Championship Wrestling sees the Oregon lumberjack with the Adrienne Barbeau do go up against Mighty Joe Turner, whom he finishes with a full nelson. (Has anyone else noticed how I've taken a shine to the phrase "go up against"?) Jack, 6'3", 245#, became Billy Jack Haynes only after Tom Laughlin (of the Billy Jack movies) threatened to sue him. He was a face for the majority of his career in the 1980s, eventually turning heel. He spoke out early (1992) against Vince McMahon and the WWF. Later, he got into some trouble as a cocaine mule (though he believed, he says, he was transporting only marijuana), running foul of the big guys for skimming off their profits and getting himself pretty badly busted up as a result.

Worked Up

2012-01-18T05:26:00.001-05:00

Seth Rollins, 6'1", 205#, gets worked. Then he gets worked up. Rollins rises from adversity to beat Jinder Mahal, 6'4", 229#, in this Florida Championship Wrestling match from last Sunday (here on YouTube). Still my favorite moment of the match is Rollins standing on the corner middle ropes and peeling off his shirt. Shallow of me, I know.

FCW is beefing Rollins up to get him WWE-ready. I don't see signs of improvement. At this point I'm thankful there are still signs of the wrestler Rollins used to be and still can be. It's interesting that on the fan-uploaded YouTube video of this bout, we still get a parenthesized "Tyler Black," now over a year after the name change. Rollins' fans are first and foremost Black fans.

I want the guy to get the big WWE bucks as much as he does--but right now I'm a little concerned that five years from now I'll mainly want to watch his old Ring of Honor and Cyberfights stuff. I'm glad much of the old stuff was shot well and still exists.

Mahal is a great adversary for Rollins. Rollins needs good men to fight. He was a god against men like Marek Brave, Jimmy Jacobs, Davey Richards, Roderick Strong, and Eddie Edwards. He's not at his best clowning around on promos. The man was built to feud ... in the ring.

I hate demonizing WWE, and I don't like being a hater of any form of wrestling or any wrestler. Honestly, I just do not care for the product. Even if I still had a TV cable connection, I would not follow the WWE shows. I didn't before. I would watch FCW, however, mainly because of Rollins, secondarily out of nostalgia for the old Gordon Solie years at the beginning of my fandom.

If WWE were to use Rollins well, I'd be willing to follow their programs, on DVD and YouTube, if not via cable. And they seriously ought to consider re-branding him "Tyler Black," a recognized and highly respected name ..."Tyler Black Classic," if they want to take a cue from '80s Coca-Cola.

Cheers

2012-01-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

Three cheers to All Pro Wrestling for giving California audiences 30-minute matches and a UK-rules three-rounder from time to time. And cheers, too, for having an old-school rasslin' roster that excites me, including hard-hitting D-list stars Dylan Drake, Dave Dutra, and Derek Sanders. And, more than anything, cheers for Timothy Thatcher--hot and badass, two of my favorite flavors of men. The pictures above show the "British Messiah" in a March 2011 match against Jody Kristofferson that gives me flashbacks to the wrestling shows I remember from the seventies--only better.

Best of the Net

2012-01-15T00:00:00.000-05:00

Check out Lutte-Wrestling by Gilles from Paris. If you have not let yourself get lost in Gilles's maze-like accumulation of wrestling imagery, you have not yet begun to explore the erotic iconography of combat. His site has inspired this blog in too many ways to count. The images above are taken from his Gallery 230 (Best of the Net), uploaded in February 2011. No photo credits and only occasional identification of the wrestlers, but mystery and synchronicity are partly what make the site's store of old and new shots of international grappling so mesmerizing for me. (If you can identify any of these wrestlers or photographers, please leave a comment.)

Choked and Crushed Again

2012-01-14T14:40:00.000-05:00

Without doing the counting and comparing, I think it's a reasonably safe bet that Krush and Lucien at Krushco have the longest lived feud in underground wrestling. Their latest confrontation involves a whole lot of choking and asphyxiation, with Krush repeatedly wringing out the longhair hipster but good, in a match that also has something for fans of hair pulling (guess whose?) and gut punching.

Lovers of underground wrestling often divide their loyalties between pro-style ring action on the one hand and freestyle and submission mat action on the other. Typically the former emphasizes beautiful bodies in illustrative poses and dramatic angles with colorful characterization. And the latter, aggression and sweaty body contact, usually stripped down to one-on-one mano-a-mano competition--no gimmicks, no storyline.

Preferences may vary, but I suspect there's a pretty large number of fans like me who enjoy both (a lot!) and still leave room in their hearts for variants like oil wrestling, cage matches, backyard roughhouse, and all-out porn with strong sadoerotic themes. Not to mention the hybrids showcasing two or more or all of the above.

Those who do not care for submission wrestling sometimes complain that it is long, some matches lasting a half of forever (no problem at all for its fans); repetitious, with many matches looking virtually indistinguishable from each other (still no problem--steaks done rare are pretty much the same wherever you get them, a fact that you never hear steak lovers complaining about); and too often devoid of pretty fitness-magazine cover boys we all (or most of us) love (still no problem for diehard fans who enjoy a wrestler's grit, aggression, knowledge of holds, and will to dominate at least as much as his beauty and physique).

I always perk up at the announcement of a new Krush-versus-Lucien contest, even though they seldom are anything but one-sided--a drawback only for someone like me, with no particular affection for squash jobs--though I would argue that Lucien's agility and feist nicely complement Krush's mass and mat savvy. And though it's fairly clear that Krush's aggressive assaults require little if any "selling," per se, Lucien, a feral and street-smart beauty, suffers exquisitely at the hands of the brash and merciless Krush.

In their most recent match I especially enjoyed a fairly long strangle session involving a garroting by black strap and, to add insult to injury, a fierce yanking of hair. Also, periodically throughout the bout, Krush glares menacingly into the camera lens, no doubt largely to check the monitor of the stationary camera, but also, so I like to think, to warn off us viewers, as if to say, "Don't even think about interfering! This one is mine!"

Extremely Elite

2012-01-13T15:02:00.000-05:00

ECCW is now Elite Canadian Championship Wrestling (formerly "Extreme"), still sporting one of the meanest and sexiest rosters of any mainstream wrestling promotion I can think of. Star wrestler Scotty Mac and owner Michael Sweetser made the announcement last Saturday, also revealing a new logo and a redesigned championship belt. Mac then went on to muss up Jordie Taylor a bit. To judge by Mary Diaz's photos of the evening, the show was as energetic and exciting as we have come to expect of ECCW, by any name.

Gay Is the Way

2012-01-12T15:28:00.000-05:00

James Long, who plays gimmicky gay wrestler Paredyse on Ohio Valley Wrestling, identifies himself as straight on his MySpace page. Little do his fans seem to care. Preceding last Saturday's match against professed homophobe Brandon Espinosa, who purportedly agreed to wrestle Paredyse only reluctantly, fans created a Facebook page called "Support Our Gay Wrestler Paredyse," in which they urged fellow fans and members of the Louisville gay community to show up in force and "ward off all the bullying that has transpired the last few weeks ... COME IN FULL RAINBOW WEAR [...] we need to teach these people that you can be gay and do anything without bullying."

The vocal fan support for Paredyse, formerly the Kamikaze Kid, caught the attention even of Pro Wrestling Insider, whose reporter Trent Van Drisse commented, "Wow. Never have seen that before, pro Gay signs at a southern pro 'rasslin show." And Van Drisse caught the irony that Espinosa, who may have now invented the "homophobe gimmick," entered the ring "in pink trunks, that had a heart on it with shiny silver beads around it," not to mention a zipper over his crotch. Could this be a deliberate wink to the fact that it's often sexually confused (and confusing) self-professed straights who most vocally oppose GLBTQ rights?

Maybe I'm reading this all wrong, but the impact of Paredyse, who started as a more or less conventional gay-gimmick heel a couple of years ago, is worth paying some attention to. Writing for ROHbot Report, James Bullock might have raised a prophetic question in late 2010 when he noted that "Paredyse is a great, flamboyant character influenced by all the hated gay wrestlers from the past. Come to think of it, has there ever been a gay babyface?"

After Espinosa attacked Paredyse prematurely "before he was finished with his elaborate entrance" (Van Drisse), he crucified the sissyboy on the tree of woe, twice, but Paredyse clawed his junk ("groinular region": sic, Van Drisse) and then finished Espinosa with the spinning neckbreaker. Post match, Espinosa acted the sore loser (sore, undoubtedly) and threw a tantrum until Paredyse reentered the ring to scare him away, more than likely setting up an eventual rematch between the two. (And if Espinosa at last "comes out," eventually together as tag partners?)

Perhaps the OVW fans have got the right idea. Show up at the next wrestling show in town dressed up as gay as Christmas and cheer for the gay heel. Bring your friends and build a wall of support that can turn the detested gay heel into a fan favorite. First, you may want to read this giddy, but slightly panicked report from last May on OVW's own site, and decide for yourself whether the gay gimmick can ever be a force for good in the wrestling world. And then read the blurb for Paredyse on the web site's roster: "Fabulously flamboyant and fiercely tap-dancing on the edge of reality, he fights for truth, justice, and low-priced, yet high-value lip-gloss for all ... especially his Paresytes!" Or you check out the wrestler's personal website here.

(Photos: Pamela Barnett)

Photograph

2012-01-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

After the rest of his team did not show, Jason Wayne brought in two friends, Johnny Spade and Shiloh Jonze, to help him beat the so-called Mascagni Family: Marcus Anthony, Jessie Godderz, and Rudy Switchblade in a six-man tag match. Charles Parrish supplies beauteous images of Sunday's Ohio Valley Wrestling match from start to finish (which I have not yet seen in motion), but, sorry, right now my eyes are too dazzled by Godderz, 5'9", 193#, to see anything but.

I have a feeling Godderz is somebody I'm not supposed to like--reality TV star and all that--and, honestly, I don't know for sure that I do like him. I have not seen the man in motion much, and one thing that I have learned from porn and wrestling is that how a man moves is 90% of whether a man moves me. I have seen many a pretty boy who caught my eye in the ads be totally upstaged by some unphotogenic skinny, bucktooth nobody who has the charisma, attitude, fight, and moves that the pretty boy does not. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but with the right smirk, the right swagger, and a figure-four leg lock, who the fuck needs words or pictures?

Coming to a Head

2012-01-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

As I see it now, "a rivalry" is to pro wrestling as "going steady" is to high school. The rivalry between "The Boss" Derek Sanders, 5'11", 209#, in pink trunks and mega-butch-boy Dylan Drake, 6'2", 223#, came to a head in the summer of 2010 at All Pro Wrestling. It's a bout that reminds me of what I love about pro wrestling--not that I often need reminding, obviously. But the cogent points here are, let's see, a champ who flees the ring and has to be bodily tossed back in to finish the fight, a very big man in very tiny trunks, specifically pink trunks with "The Boss" emblazoned on the seat, hair pulling (of course), a corner mount (naturally), a suspenseful two count (you're getting ahead of me now), and a couple of fighters who know how to work a bear hug for all that it's worth. I've written about this match before (fresh new screen caps, though), but it's something well worth coming back to once in a while. (Watch the whole match here and here.)

Crude Oil

2012-01-11T06:00:00.000-05:00

I suppose oil wrestling has its downsides. I can think of a few. Oil in the eyes can sting, denying you the pleasure of watching your opponent squirm in your killer scissors hold. On the other hand, wrestling blind might intensify the sense of touch, and that's a silver lining, right there--or a silvery one. Then again, oil reduces friction, making it hard to hold on to an opponent. I recently read that Turkish oil wrestlers meet this challenge by reaching down each other's leather pants to grab a fold, much as contestants in judo clutch each other's lapels. If the fingers can't hook on a fold, some wrestlers make a fist inside the opponent's pants, thereby lodging their forearms deep inside and facilitating command over the opponent. Problem solved. I imagine that would feel nice, actually, but I could be underestimating the discomfort--sort of like imagining sex in the shower or on a sandy beach as more fun than it really is.

I don't have many regrets, but one of them is not having a go at oil wrestling back when I was young, strong, and lithe enough for it. It seems like a sensuous experience. I like oil wrestling because a gleaming body looks better than a dry one. A bit of shimmer improves even not especially chiseled bodies. The slickness invites touching. And unlike a pro-style ring, an oil pit keeps two bodies continuously up close and in tight. The reduced friction, overcoming the laws of physics, has got to make the experience only a notch or two below wrestling weightlessly in space. Or so I imagine. I enjoyed wrestling underwater in my teens, which would have been almost perfect, wet all over and nearly weightless, but for having to hold my breath for fifteen minutes or else lug around a cumbersome oxygen tank. Mud wrestling looks like kinky, sleazy fun, too, so long as the mud is pudding smooth and not gritty. But oil is more elegant. It carries the cachet of Olympian athletics. It makes the whole body, from head to toe, look like a lubricated cock, ready to erupt. Not everybody's idea of fun, and possibly a mere fantasy, but there you are.

(The pictures are from Can-Am's Canadian Musclehunk Oil Wrestling 7, Match 1: Paul Perris versus Cliff Conlin.)

Ravishing versus Flyin'

2012-01-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

Twenty years ago I would have named "Ravishing" Rick Rude, 6'3", 251#, and "Flyin'" Brian Pillman, 6', 227#, among my top five favorite wrestlers on TV. I favored Rude because he was better built, cocky, and bad, and perhaps too he got some bonus points from the English teacher in me for leaving the "g" at the end of a present participle. I liked Pillman because he was energetic, focused, and versatile, and he was one of the most expressive sufferers in pro wrestling. Twenty years ago this very month in Gainesville, Georgia, Rude and Pillman contended for the World Championship Wrestling belt, which then belonged to Rude, and the collision of these two dynamos would have kept me glued to the TV set even if the match had sucked. That it was in fact fantastic is why I am writing about it today. (You can watch the full match here.)

First, if it was a squash job, it didn't feel like one. Pillman, 29, posed no serious threat to Rude, in his prime at age 33. Pillman was a perfect foil for Rude, blond and boyish to Rude's dark and rugged handsomeness, and Pillman sold Rude's ruthless moves with his whole body, head to toe, with grand gestures and dramatic contortions readable from the back row of the arena. His hot-headed unpredictability offset the heel's methodical cunning and ensured that the match had a reasonable chance of ending in an upset. However one-sided the fight was in most ways, Pillman's spurts of ire and moxie made his eventual beating seem less inevitable, providing drama and suspense to the proceedings, and making Rude's successful title defense all the more impressive.

Pillman's assaults on Rude's upper thigh muscles and, especially, a spectacular corner mount at the climax of the bout were compelling in and of themselves. Stomping the big cock-of-the-walk close to his groin, Brian made it clear he aimed to carry away the man's manhood, along with the championship belt. Busting an opponent's nuts up on the corner post in order to bang his thigh or knee against the ring post is one of those pro-wrestling moves that still seize me with simultaneous dread and exhilaration. Even dragging a man by his leg to the corner is, all by itself, an act brimming with (for me) obvious phallic symbolism. That Pillman chose the moment right as he posted Rude's leg to make hard eye contact with Rude's slippery manager, Paul E. Dangerously, made it look as if the assault was, vicariously, directed against Dangerously too. Corner-mount drubbings are likewise reliably thrilling, erotic and savage, and the combination of these well-deserved assaults on Rude showed that Pillman was no mere luck-of-the-draw jobber, but a serious contender and potential threat to the champion's position at the top.

Credit goes to Rick Rude, too, for making it look like Pillman had a chance of winning. The subtlety of Rude's salesmanship here and in other matches testifies to his acting talent. Conveying the sense of a bruised ego while not once relaxing his urbane contempt for his opponent must have been a difficult balance to strike. And Rude did not automatically rebound from Brian's repeated assaults on his leg. Rude limped with enough conviction that you might have thought he had been seriously hurt, and, in the man's typically complicated performance style, he made the limp as sexy as most men's swaggers. Last, but definitely not least, you have to love Rude's arrogance, from the way he peels off his spangled robe to the smug side glances he throws Brian's way before the start of the match, from his smarmy show of sportsmanship by extending his hand to a skeptical challenger to his kneeling double bicep pose over the man's gasping, prostrate body. The suddenness of his finisher--the "Rude Awakening" neckbreaker--ended the match with almost shocking abruptness. It was almost as if Rude were saying, "I'm done with messing around with this punk," but even then shiny perspiration and forced breathing managed to convey that the ordeal had been a scarily close call for him and his ravishing ego.

The only improvement I can think of would be that Rude should have been in hairy-chest mode when this fight occurred. Other than that one deficiency, the match strikes awfully close to my idea of perfection.

The Crying Wrestler

2012-01-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

This video of a young beautiful wrestler crying after he loses a match suggests how hard failure is when you are young and haven't experienced much of life and its disappointments. In 2009, New Orleans-based artist Skylar Fein exhibited it as part of his show on youth culture at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Fein combines the found imagery with the sentimental Nino Rota score for the 1968 film Romeo and Juliet. Artist and photographer Slava Mogutin posted it on his Facebook page earlier this evening, which is where I first saw it.

Steven

2012-01-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

Of all the current wrestlers I can think of, the one who most typifies the kind of Southern rassler that I like is Steven Walters, 6', 208#, of the great state of North Carolina. He looks like "good people," as the expression goes down here south of the Mason-Dixon, but with a short enough fuse to keep things interesting. Built solidly, Walters can take a punch and fire one right back that would make you think twice about getting on this man's bad side. You can watch Walters in motion in his first match of the new year (against John Skyler) here.

Victor/Victorious

2012-01-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

I captured these shots originally from the extras disk of the two-disk release of Victor Rook's remarkable documentary Stronghold: In the Grip of Wrestling (2009). This match, shot outdoors at a men's wrestling camp and available in its entirety in Stronghold's special features, is one of my favorite extra features on the DVD, and I grew considerable bone just cropping these bad boys on iPhoto. The hairy bull-muscled wrestler in blue trunks is a clean scientific wrestler who dominates the man in black for a good two-thirds of the match, but the goateed heel fights dirty and ignores the ref, thus gaining the ultimate pinfall, in the end the only thing that counts.

Wrestling documentarian Rook's empire covers film, books, and Internet, as well as, not least of all, wrestling mats--Victor's strong thighs have spelled death to many a challenger. He is not, however, one of the brawlers shown above. Perhaps his biggest legacy to date is WrestleMen, the popular social networking site for wrestlers and lovers of wrestling, up and running for fifteen years now. But it's more than just a meet-meat site, though on that point its directory lists over 10,000 men just waiting to take a tumble with you on the mat or in a ring or just in your mutual imagination in cyberspace. The site also features streaming videos, stories (true and fictional), and a store stocked with DVDs of regular guys in hot wrestling action and other wrestling-related products, including a full array of Rook's fine documentaries and books.

WrestleMen's YouTuber page, a fairly new addition, which is not restricted to members only, searches the popular video site for the best in freestyle, underground, and pro-style wrestling and makes it easy to replay matches divided into separate posts consecutively, as a whole. The site also has a mobile-ready feature for smart phones I have not yet tried out. Most recently, Rook added an online game room featuring slide and jigsaw puzzles that let you reassemble photos of wrestlers in action and a trivia game to test your knowledge of wrestling ... and, hm, geography (I got 16 out of 20 right--nothing to shout about, but something--I don't know if he was teasing me, but a little later Vic let me know that he knew the score I had made and helpfully informed me that it is possible to back out of the game and look up some answers before hitting Send).

Loaded for Bear

2012-01-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

Thunder's Arena celebrates the new year with a compilation of its best bear hugs of 2011 on Thunder TV. My personal favorite is Eric Fury, 5'7", 190#, versus Sledge, 5'8", 210# (pictured). These two don't take the bear hug as an excuse to bring the action to a paralyzed halt (as is too often the case) but keep the heated battle going, fierce as ever. Fury sweatily writhes, thrusts, and punches even while Sledge's powerful arms suspend him off the mat and grind him against his torso.

Still, an awfully close second to this match for me is Big Sexy versus Pee Wee (which I wrote about in the fall here), when Pee Wee (rather winsomely, I thought) says he wants Sexy to bear-hug him chest to chest. Mr Mike, who was behind the camera at the time, later said the exchange was entirely improvised and surprised him too. Contrary to what I might have expected, the bear hug can be no less captivating and strenuous a hold for being submitted to voluntarily.

If we shoot past the obvious thrill of tight and sustained body contact (no small thing for me, mind you), part of the mystique of the bear hug is its allusion to Hercules wrestling Antaeus, the mighty demigod who could not be out-grappled unless heaved clean off the ground. His mother (the earth goddess Gaia) would give him supernatural strength every time his foot touched soil, so he was virtually unbeatable. In the well-known myth Hercules manages to pull Antaeus free from the earth and crushes him to death through the sheer power of his bare arms.

The appeal of the bear hug has many facets: entrapment, domination, one-upmanship, pain, proximity, concentration, resilience, stamina, and tenacity. It's one of the most popular holds among wrestling fetishists because of its mimicry of lovemaking. As I suggested above, when the effect on the victim is paralysis, I find the bear hug a bit less interesting. Instead, I want to see squirming--and lots of it, reinforced with groans and sweat. And it's all the better, as far as I'm concerned, when the victim, like Eric Fury, still has a lot of fight left in him

PSA

2012-01-06T18:00:00.000-05:00

You don't want to miss Bard's interview with BG East's sexy roughneck Kid Karisma, "Kicking Ass and Taking Names," which appeared on Neverland this past Wednesday. Karisma, whose ass should be enshrined in the Louvre, or at least insured by Lloyd's, explains how he keeps his opponents humble, points out a few of his less celebrated body parts, argues that he deserves all the adoration the fans can lavish on him, and insinuates that an as-yet unreleased fight was for reals, against an opponent driven by genuine, unaffected hate. That last teaser should keep the discussion boards lit up for the next several years!

Scalps

2012-01-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

Whichever way you cut it, Rock Hard's battle between Tyler Reeves, 6'1", 175#, and Max Powers, 6'1", 190#, is primo aggro fun. Both fighters show up ready to roar in black trunks and identical skinhead mode, same clipper setting and same guard attachment, it looks like ... all set to cut loose on each other for almost twenty minutes. I think it's safe to say that what follows is grand-style whoopass from start to finish--perhaps an instant classic for those, like me, who savor the sight of two big well-matched men gradually wearing each other down with a volley of punches, headlocks, and clutches, along with some strategically aimed boot heels.

In three rounds, we see the advantage switch a dozen times. Predictably, but still nice, Reeves and Powers each win one of the first two rounds. That raises the drama-quotient for the final round, and by then the two of them are good and stoked for taking things to the limit. They look great, and, beyond that, both men are determined to make their marks with this bout as genuine die-hard brawlers, and, as the action heats up, they seem to want nothing more than to gain victory through extorting the greatest possible pain from the other. Tyler's savvy perfectly balances against Max's brawn. These two heavy hitters sweat buckets as they exhaust themselves on each other. When one of them barely coughs out his ultimate submission, the victor slaps his limp palm and tells him, "Good boy!"

Do I recommend this video? Oh hell yeah, my brothers.

For Rasslin' Fans

2012-01-05T06:00:00.000-05:00

Usually I don't go to the online Urban Dictionary to educate myself on word meanings. Since it is open source (a la Wikipedia), the definitions often give more insight to their authors' personalities than to the ways the words are used in ordinary conversation, for instance, this 2005 definition of "cock": "the best goddamn thing in the world. If I could, I would ride one all day long" (as in the sentence "Cocks feel so great in my pussy"). The other definitions on the site can be jokey, snide, or sometimes indecipherable.

But every now and then it hits its target. The 2009 definition of "rasslin'" is, I think, worth paying attention to:

a southern style of professional wrestling which emphasizes kayfabe and stiffness, with fewer squash matches and generally longer feuds. It was synonymous with the NWA-affiliated promotions. Rasslin' included TV tapings at smaller venues, as compared to the larger and more well-known arenas utilized by northern U.S. promotions such as the AWA and WWF. The term is derived from a phonetic spelling of how the word "wrestling" sounds when spoken with a heavy Southern accent [emphases mine].

"Kayfabe," as I think everyone knows, is pro wrestling's pretense that it is "real," as well as, in the last twenty years or so, fans' willingness to suspend disbelief and enter into the spirit of the show, without over-analyzing its realism or authenticity. Perhaps Southerners' general eagerness to oppose fact-based reasoning--"God said it I believe it That settles it"--makes us especially willing to pretend to believe wrestling's fakery and illusions. We appreciate a good yarn and have a high tolerance for bullshit as long as it's colorful.

"Stiffness" refers to the use of excessive force in a wrestling match. It's when wrestlers deliberately (or inadvertently) injure themselves and their opponents by pushing past the kayfabe to make the pain real. Mainly associated with bloody hardcore wrestling now, less extreme forms of stiffness were a part of the American roughhouse I grew up with--slapping, punching, choking, pinching--on military bases and in my later adolescence in South Florida ... rowdy, sometimes drunken fun, where some real "ouch" could cut through the monotony of everyday life and a black eye could serve as a badge of successful male bonding.

What struck me most about the Urban Dictionary definition was the phrase "with fewer squash matches." It had not occurred to me before that, since I grew up in the days of regional wrestling promotions on local television, I might prefer evenly matched, toe-to-toe fights (as opposed to other kinksters who prefer that some victim get a thorough and one-sided bashing) because my principal imprint growing up came from NWA wrestling shows in Florida and Georgia--that, and the aforementioned roughhousing at school and in bedrooms and backyards, where the evenness in size and skill of the two opponents could ensure that our fun lasted longer. It might have something to do with the old antebellum notion of chivalry and fair fighting too. I don't know.

I would add to this definition that, for me, "rasslin'" also strongly implies maximal body contact, shiny with sweat, usually against the ropes or on the mat, as opposed to high-flying acrobatics and quick, don't-blink glances of skin on skin. But I wrote about my attraction to body contact, especially when it's aggressive, just last month.

The screen captures above feature Kevin Von Erich versus Chris Adams in a bright outdoor match in 1984 in Dallas, Texas. You can watch the match here. Almost as if to illustrate the stiff aspect of pro wrestling, after Von Erich won the match, Adams attacked him with a folding chair, purportedly giving Kevin a concussion. The caps below (from this video) show us Kevin fighting Thor, in a bout climaxing with the kayfabe spectacle of Kevin's slow, studied, and up-close application of the "iron claw." Mighty nice, yall.

Resolution 2012 (Procrastinators Edition, Part Two)

2012-01-04T18:00:00.000-05:00

"Do a 'clean' match with BodySlam and get his respect; I just don't think I can do clean."--Joker at UCW

"グリーンカードを取得へ (To get a green card!)"--Black Dragon at UCW

"To dominate everyone in theUCW!"--Santos at UCW

"Win a rematch with Crash."--Donovan at UCW

"To stick Joker's damn shoe up his ass."--Crash at UCW

"To get my hands on Aron'sface and ugly it up a bit."--JStyles at UCW

"To get James 'thealways scared kid' to face me in a match! He just won't sign. Scared?"--Angel Estrada at UCW