Great Scott

Scott Summers vs Jamie Stroud, Hollywood Erotic Pro Wrestling 2 (Can-Am)

I am late to the Scott Summers wrestling party. This fall of 2015 match was apparently his debut at Can-Am. He made several more Can-Am videos between then and early 2017. This was a time when I was paying little attention to Can-Am - just eight posts during that period, all of them looking backwards to the 1990s. To his credit, Alex Miller blogged on this very match just weeks after its release. 

Alex admired Summers's physique but felt "some of the action is too slow and unconvincing." It's a point worth repeating, a heads-up to fans mainly drawn to the speed and intensity of other underground wrestling brands. Alex singles out the claw holds as unconvincing, especially when applied to Scott's well-muscled midsection. I have no objections to either of these criticisms, but for me all claw holds look phony, even though Kevin Von Erich's never fail to titillate* - and as a rule  I like my wrestling action slow - or rather I like holds to last a full minute or two as the antagonists huff and writhe and moan and sweat.

By the way, Summers is the wrestler in tattoos and blue trunks. He jeers at his smaller opponent, causes him endless agony, and sweats like a horse. Immediately after watching this match, my palms needed a Brazilian wax. Jamie Stroud, who joined Can-Am the previous year, carries his end of the match admirably - as Scott's whipping boy for the first 16 minutes (of 46) before turning the tables on the handsome heel.

Summers's appeal rests on the fact that, besides being strongly built, he has the voice, hubris, tattoos, and raven-black hair of a born heel. His sneer can cut glass, I'm sure of it; it's the part of him that most sticks in my memory, even more than those swoon-worthy shoulders and pecs. There's something Presleyesque about him, not as much his physical appearance as his slow-burn cockiness. His facial gestures remind me a little of Scrappy's - and Jeremy Renner's. There's no disguising his passion for hurting people, which is husband-material in my world.

I should add that I'm almost as crazy over Stroud, who, at some angles, reminds me a little of my favorite UK underground wrestler, Mike Martin. He lacks the bulk and strength of Summers, but he's a crafty youngster, lacking none of Summers's sadistic tendencies even though he cloaks them in sweetness and light.

*I suspect and have long treated it as a fact that the stomach claw is just a family- and TV-friendly substitute for grabbing an opponent's balls.

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