Krushmas

After last month's tight contest rematching Krush and Kain, Krushco is releasing some of the wrestlers' earlier matches for download. The latest release features Krush in red and Kain in green, the colors of Christmas holly. The fighting is intense, escalating to viciousness (as Krush pulls out the dreaded black strap). Krush's control in the match is total. I had reviewed Krush and Kain's (I thought) first match in the winter of 2010 here. I parenthesize "I thought" because I'm never too sure of the chronology of most underground wrestling matches, usually shot weeks, months, or years in advance of their release dates, not necessarily in the order they were shot. In 2011, I mildly complained (here) that Kain had not lived up to his full roughneck potential, a situation rectified in last month's "grudge match." But even in this very early match, it's evident why I've been impressed with Kain--his look, his fight--from the beginning. And about Krush's grit and mat savvy, there is, of course, never a question.

Krushco specializes in tight, fleshy clenches. Physical intimacy like this makes wrestling "gay," and in the twenty-first century the contempt for wrestling as gay has led to big-show wrestling entertainment's marginalization of actual catch wrestling in favor of mic rants and acrobatic flips (in 2011 "WWE" became an official name, not "World Wrestling Entertainment"--not at all an insignificant name change) and a growing enthusiasm for "mixed martial arts" (face it: 80%-95% wrestling) among fans and athletes who (I assume) want some distance between themselves and the perceived gayness of wrestling, either the sport or the pageant.

Sometimes I chide myself for taking wrestling "too seriously"--reluctant to treat it as just a dumb thing guys sometimes do or an ordinary sporting competition like tennis or cycling. It's more complex than that, both a test of strength and endurance and an erotic force of immense psychological and cultural significance (don't even try to argue with me about that last point). There's a reason wrestling (along with sprinting) is one of mankind's earliest recorded activities (depicted in cave paintings 17,300 years ago). It's as fundamental to human psychology as sex and as fundamental to human history as civilization and myth-making--with which it's closely linked, perhaps as some kind of rite of passage: Jacob wrestling an angel, Gilgamesh wrestling Enkidu (in the earliest extant work of literature), the Greek palaestra (the wrestling school so important to ancient Greek culture), the prophet Muhammad wrestling Rukaanah Ibn 'Abd-Yazeed, and so on, not to mention its universality in all known cultures in one form or another, more often than not, treated with dignity and seriousness.

My point is that wrestling is not a joke, and I'm happy that Krush and Kain don't act like it is. Respect wrestling. Respect the kink. Respect yourself. Peace on earth.