Iconic Wrestling Photos

I was on YouTube recently and found this fantastic video by Ringdogggg featuring iconic wrestling photos of Tommy Rogers, mostly of Tommy in the ring (or on the floor next to the ring) striking some incredible poses.  I always loved to watch Tommy wrestle and I agree with Ringdoggg that he suffered beautifully — so let’s just say I was entertained by every minute of this 31 minute video.

Ringdogggg composed this video from a set of 192 Screen Captures from old videos of Tommy’s classic matches to exhibit Tommy’s skills at selling and using body language to inspire us to feel love and compassion for him — the hallmark of a truly great Face.  Here are a few of my personal favorites from Ringdoggg’s collection of breath-taking images…

A man after my own heart, Ringdogggg also wrote an exciting, provocative caption for each image to spice up the scenery.  He uses iconic wrestling words like “underdog,” “agony,” “humiliating,” and “pain & exhaustion” to entice the viewer.  I found myself having to pause the YouTube video so I could take in all the words and spend some time savoring certain images before moving on to the next thrilling photo.  This is truly a work of art (and of pornography depending on the eye of the beholder.)  I was quite impressed.

Ringdogggg also enhanced the images to sharpen and clean up each photo.  He added borders to highlight Tommy’s gear and splendid muscles.  In some images, the artist changed the colors of the gear or added contrasting boot laces to improve the visual interest.  He jacked up the saturation, or took out the distracting lights and background noise to make these great images even greater.  I think he also made Tommy’s trunks appear tighter, skimpier, and bulgier.  As I recall, Tommy wore tradional full-sized trunks, but Ringdogggg has dressed the Fantastic One in bikini briefs.

Here are a few words the artist wrote in his description of this video to explain why he chose Tommy Rogers as the subject of this impressive work:

“Tommy Rogers is the only subject here because he looks so wickedly proportioned as to make the iconic poses look awesome and there are lots of videos of him with iconic action and body language poses…  Conversely because Tommy did a lot of rolling around and stretched out on the mat hurt poses and they are still slow moves, they looked great on film and photos, so there are a lot of them.”

So I just want to recommend this video if you enjoy looking at a masterwork of suffering by one of the best looking sellers of all time and you have 31 minutes to spare.  I also want to congratulate and commend Ringdogggg on a great work of pro wrestling art.   (Hey Dogggg, I 

hope you don’t mind that I capped these images from your video and blogged about it…)  Great job!