Body Contact

Ricky Smokes vs Richard Holliday, Hot AF (Fight Life)

I like to think this match subconsciously mirrors Sigmund Freud's theory of "castration complex," tinged with "repetition compulsion," and Herbert Marcuse's idea of history as a fight against the repression of our desires and instincts. Don't take me too seriously on these points. I'm not a psychologist. In fact, I had to retake Introduction to Psychology because I failed in my first attempt. But my theory that wrestling and fighting are sexual acts (often in denial and often choreographed) carries some weight.

This match like most wrestling is a repetitive reenactment of desires and instincts, designed to take the place of real-life violence and/or real-life male-to-male (i.e. homosexual) body contact. Sustained body contact is both sexual and controlling. And often wrestlers sustain and repeat that contact not so much for "winning," as for the thrills it generates. Wrestlers and wrestling fans alike pretend to fight and cheer, to some extent as a way to articulate sexual desire. 

In underground wrestling - and in the performances of some mainstream wrestlers - the fight might not be "real," but it is a conscious celebration of bodily contact and domination that can be reinterpreted as sex. I mean if they are not "really" fighting, what then are they doing? Speaking for myself, I find the flesh-to-flesh contact electrifying and the conquests, a form of mating, male bonding, connecting, or whatever.

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Running time - 11:05