Bad Blood

Hayes vs Tim 2 (Wrestle4aFee)

For a while now, Hayes has been a big draw at Wrestle4aFee, though he's new to me. Callum and Dimitri were all I knew of the site. Then I happened upon this video, which knocked me for a loop. The video consists of four discrete segments, each featuring Hayes and Tim, who fought in a fairly conventional W4aF video some years previously.  They look more grown-up in this release.

The first segment features Hayes and Tim fighting in street clothes. For me, this is the hottest segment of the video. It reminds me of kids fighting after school - or blokes in a barroom. There are no weapons, no blood - just a couple of hotheads punching, headbutting, and cracking knuckles in a dingy room with a purple floor, with fleeting glimpses of butt-crack and navel.

In the next segment, Hayes and Tim wear black jeans and T-shirts like MMA fighters or assassins in a Jason Bourne movie. The fighting is more focused and precise, in contrast to the messy amateurism of the first segment - eyes get gouged, chokeholds applied, fingers dislocated. It's all make-believe, of course, but they put their hearts into it, the way guys like Doug Brandon, Kid Karisma, Eli Black, and Austin Tyler generally prefer to fight. A certain level of dangerousness is part of their appeal.

The third segment finds Hayes and Tim stripped to the waist, like country boys duking it out behind the barn. The realness of the hyperbolic wrath and assaults is pitch perfect. It reminds me of Axel's friendly great-outdoors brawl with Erik the Viking in their classic 2018 dust-up. Only these fighters remain in the confines of the room, bright sunlight flooding through the windows. Like the first segment's street clothes, jeans and no shirts remind me of real fights I witnessed at school and on military bases in the 1960s.

The fourth segment is more like the usual underground wrestling setup. Hayes and Tim wear pro-wrestling-style trunks and engage in the showy antics of ring wrestling, though they're still in the dingy room with purple flooring. I like flesh as much as the next guy, but this segment strikes me as the least sexy. What's still great about it is what is great about all four segments - the naturalness of the fighters' physiques - neither bodybuilders nor fatsos, neither walking freak-shows nor Adonises. Hayes and Tim are good-looking, but the focus is on their brawling. Bad blood is just so much sexier than eight-pack abs. For me it is, anyway.

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