Valentine’s Day Partner Ship

In honor of Valentine’s Day, here are Tag Team partners getting all affectionate and flirtatious with each other.  I dig when a wrestler rests his arm across his partner’s shoulders or gives him a shoulder rub.  And I really get turned on when they hug each other chest to chest after a rough, sweaty battle.

The brutality and violence they inflicted on the competition during the fight makes their post-match intimacy for one another seem even more tender and loving.  And I think they know we get off on this gay stuff because they keep doing it all the time — blatantly and proudly expressing their mutual love for all to see.

Tag Team wrestling tells us the story of idealized male-male relationships — the success and power that comes from getting homo-social with another man.

Lots of hugging between wrestlers emphasizes the tightness of their bonds, revealing that they trust each other and have feelings of compassion for each other.  We are led to understand that the reason they won — the secret of their success — is the purity of their brotherly love.

Some tag teams, especially sexually ambiguous Heel teams, go beyond brotherly love in their poses to incite Gay Panic in the viewer.  Check out Ventura in his flamboyant flowered tights, holding open his cape around his partner — Adrian Adonis.  Their intention is to give off a sexual, homo-erotic vibe, and to threaten us (or their Good Guy opponents who stand in for us) with the potential of rape.  In the photo below, two modern day wrestlers pose in a very similar, very sexualized manner.  I suppose this is meant to make us hate and fear them, but I just find it hot.