XXX

With some recent exceptions, the gay porn industry has not been successful in introducing wrestling into triple-X porn. I find this interesting because the present industry grew out of the work of Bob Mizer at the Athletic Model Guild and a few others in the early post-WW2 years, back when 8mm wrestling films were seized by the U.S. Postal Service for resembling sex too much. In the new era of sexual liberation, however, wrestling took a backseat, depicted, if depicted at all, as a gently ironic prologue to the XXX money shots. Somewhat later, erotic wrestling companies like Old Reliable (1970s) and BG Enterprise/BG East (1980s) emerged independently, largely unrelated to the general gay porn industry.

But in Submission (2017), Bromo (formerly JuicyBoys) blends bareback porn with wrestling/mma action and gets the recipe right. To be fair, in 2010, Naked Kombat started producing some genuinely good wrestling too (along with some dreck--unavoidable in any promotion). However, NK views wrestling as foreplay, a warmup act before penetrative sex, which occupies roughly half of each match, usually with no further reference to wrestling. Even underground wrestling with an erotic bent often ends with a sly wink towards the cameraman as the victor hauls the vanquished away, supposedly to bed, supposedly to the victor's long-awaited prize. In 2009-2010, Cocksure Men released Wrestle to Fuck, a mostly competent two-hour quartet of sex wrestling, the best of which are (in my opinion) Bo Dean vs John Magnum and John Magnum vs Tristan Baldwin.

Submission intermingles the cock-sucking and ass-plowing with big-bang wrestling--the opponents fight, get themselves hard and positioned for sex, fuck each other while maintaining their combat positions (hammerlocks, schoolboy pins, etc.), resume the fight, and fuck-fight-fuck to climax. The formula is not original to Submission, but the roughness level is notches above what's typical of wrestling erotica. Bromo taps into the way guys like me see wrestling, that is, as indistinguishably entangled with sex and not just as foreplay. (As I have pointed out before, the Greek word for "wrestling" was the ancient Greeks' slang for "fucking.")

All five players in Submission--Jaxton Wheeler, Brandon Evans, Brad Powers, Jordan Levine, and Scott Riley--are smokin' hot, representing smooth, hairy, inked, bearded masculine styles through four bouts, totaling 70 minutes. And they do a tolerable job of staging wrestling action as an integral part of seduction and the sex act itself. I especially like hairy-chested Jaxton in the first two bouts, first wrestling his way to top, then wrestling his way to bottom. That's another thing I like here: tops and bottoms alike are portrayed as winners--and the one is not exclusive of the other. Both get what they're after. And so, vicariously, do I.