Wonderful Claw

Paul Orndorff was portrayed as the Ultimate Alpha Male — husky, swole, confident, and aloof.  He was practically unbeatable in the ring with his powerful physique and his life-ruining Pile Driver.  His beautiful ring robes just added to his Better-Than-You-Trolls mystique.  Even his nick-name — “Mr. Wonderful” — made you want to just worship him.

When he flexed those well-oiled muscles for me and gave me that masculine smirk, right into the camera, his body language said to me: “You like that hard body?? What you gonna do about it, huh boy??”   Most of his matches were total Squash Jobs, with Mr. Wonderful playing the Squasher, so I was pleasantly surprised to recently find this match on YouTube where Orndorff is reduced to a limp biscuit by the masked Spoiler.

The Spoiler is clad in black from shoulders to feet, a mask covering his face.  This coverage is meant to keep our focus on the other (nearly naked and very Wonderful) body in the ring.  The big Spoiler, who weighs nearly 300 pounds, soon beats the Wonderful One down.

To stir up our fantasies, the commentators (“Gorilla” Monsoon and Jessie “The Body” — whose nicknames are just as homo-erotic as “Mr. Wonderful’s”) explain that Bobby Heenan has put out a $50,000 bounty on Orndorff.  They don’t exactly explain what another wrestler must do to Orndorff to collect the reward, but presumably if they hurt, humiliate, or fuck him up to Heenan’s satisfaction, they will get paid.  I’ve written a couple of articles about the erotic undertones that are stirred up when a man puts a bounty on other man in pro wrestling.

It is not easy to see from these blurry screen captures (sorry about the quality), but the Spoiler works a cool Sadistic Heel scenario where he lowers his left shoulder-strap and wraps it around Orndorff’s throat to strangle him.  How wonderfully sadistic!  Orndorff’s head is now trapped like a dog on a choke-chain, his skull propped between the corner pad and the Spoiler’s cock.  Later the cheater bends Ordorff over the top ropes to show us his chiseled body and again applies the sadistic Strap Choke…

But the Spoiler’s favorite form of sadistic torture is his Claw, his gloved hand clamped across the victim’s forehead so he can squeeze the other man into paralysis.

Orndorff plays along like a nice little jobber, obediently selling the masked man’s superior power, laying down limp and helpless like he just chugged a big glass of roofies.  The masked man kneels over that hard body like a boss.

Jesse “The Body” snidely remarks:  “Mr. Wonderful ain’t looking too wonderful right now.”    On the contrary — I think he has never looked more wonderful!

And the hottest thing about this claw is the duration.  The Spoiler just keeps that pressure on for over four fucking minutes!! The ref tests Orndorff’s limp arm over and over again, with Orndorff sprawled out on the mat as if all the strength in his big, perfect body has been drained out of him.

Some of you may be thinking this must be very boring — to just watch one dude grip another dude’s face for like half the match.  Well either you are into this sort of wrestling or you’re not — it’s hard to explain.  To see the dominant man just keeping up the pressure, twisting and squeezing and jerking the other man, relentless in his abuse, with the victim utterly submissive — mmm Hell YES!  Like I said, either you are into this or you never will be.

The spoiler was actually named Don Jardine — shown here without his trademark mask.  He was master of the Iron Claw, which the promoters absolutely fetishized and shot their loads over.  They always reminded us about the freakish power in his grip.

Some wrestling programs even censored his Claw Holds — placing a big “X” on screen to cover his victim’s face.  This made the hold seem even more dangerous and potent, inspiring our imaginations about what he was really doing with that big hand.

This match really has a lot going for it homo-erotically.  You’ve got a bounty on Orndorff’s ass; you’ve got all kinds of breath control and S&M punishment by the masked man; you’ve got one of the most spectacular bodies sprawled out and rendered helpless; and you’ve got that sexy and flamboyant mask laced up tight on the Spoiler’s face.

So there weren’t any fancy flips, leaps, and kicks, but no, I didn’t find this match boring whatsoever.

I need to invent a term for that Limp Hand Pose that suffering wrestlers often assume.  They reach out blindly, grasping in vain with open fingers as if they’re waiting to squash a mosquito, their fingers open and loose as if holding an invisible beer can.  I dig that position — it’s one of my Subtle Little Things about wrestling.  Got any ideas for what we can call this “Hold My Hand” pose??

I wrote an article back in 2012 called the “Inner Jobber Scale” about the Spoiler using his deadly (and sexy) claw to destroy some chubby jobber.  A reader at the time begged to see the Spoiler working over a more worthy and wonderful opponent:

“Love ya, but I think you missed the point. It’s about gym muscleboy wrestlers getting humiliated, and not hairy chested doughboys. The cleancut studs with the guns and the pecs thinking they’re hot shit up against the 340 bruiser and getting publicly humiliated. Muscle vs Monster obvious squash that excites us to identify with the stud that gets beaten down unfairly forced to flex our big gym muscles. Nothing more humiliating than your proud muscles defeated and ridiculed by some fat bastard!”

Well here you go, Swim10gym3.  Is Mr. Wonderful’s suffering and humiliation perhaps more to your liking?

Well, all good things must come to an end, and eventually Orndorff proves he is truly Wonderful by escaping that deadly Claw that has put so many weaker men under and even bloodied their foreheads.  That big body proves to be too much for Spoiler to handle and he is soon begging for mercy.

So we did not get to enjoy the utter humiliation of  Mr. Wonderful by seeing him defeated by the Spoiler, but at least he willingly played the helpless jobber bitch for most of this classic match.  It was certainly rare for Orndorff to play the Baby-Face with a bounty on his head and his big powerful body rendered submissive and helpless by some Goon.  But wrestling fans — at least the readers of this Blog — seem to enjoy the Helpless He-Man mind-fuck, so they should’ve made Orndorff job more often…