“Difference in Rank”

One of my loyal readers recently mentioned in an email that he is really enjoying the hours of hot wrestling action posted on YouTube each week by All Elite Wrestling (AEW). Here’s what he wrote:

I think AEW might actually be my favorite major fed right now because of their two weekly YouTube shows (Dark Elevation on Mondays and Dark on Tuesdays). These shows tend to be at least 90 minutes without commercials and feature a decent number of matches with indy dudes getting beat down by AEW’s lowercard and midcard wrestlers. I personally love this type of match.

I personally love this type of match too. Boy howdy, do I ever! So I decided to check out a recent episode of AEW Dark Elevation on YouTube to see what my reader is talking about. Right off the bat, the very first match on the May 17 episode of AEW DE, I witness exactly what he described: an indy dude getting beat down by an AEW midcard wrestler!

Here comes the indy dude:

This Adrian Alanis struts to the ring, his beard and body looking sexy and he knows it, grinning to the fans and showing off his guns in a sleeveless Tee. Yet totally doomed to be humiliated and defeated.

Meanwhile the commentators gush over his good looks, just like they would back in the 80s when a well-built Jimmy Powers or Rocky King entered the ring — hunky but doomed. Here is what they say about Adonis, oops I mean ALANIS:

“Kind of a good looking kid coming out here, huh?”

“YEAH! He’s a handsome young man.”

“I dig it. I hate him already.”

“Well if you hate him already, get ready. Because, speaking of handsome young men…” (out comes his opponent,…)

The “handsome young man” (aka the “midcard wrestler”) who outranks Alanis and will now be permitted to dominate him is young Jungle Boy.

He’s hot and charismatic, he speaks well, his father was a famous actor. All the girls (and many of the gays) squeal for him and want to run their fingers through his curly locks. He can do anything he wants to his jobber and get away with it — the jobber must take it and not fight back too much.

These commentators are being just as queer as they want to be with all this gushing praise of the wrestlers’ good looks (especially Jungle Boy who is getting a big push.) These descriptions of the wrestlers’ sex appeal continue throughout the match, I suppose to ensure we all notice and appreciate what excellent eye candy AEW has procured for us.

In his email to me, my reader went on to say:

Seeing hot young studs getting dominated is always fun, but I find it even hotter when it’s a scenario where the difference in “rank” of the two competitors makes the winner a foregone conclusion. It’s that much more humiliating and futile that no matter how big and muscular the indy guy is, there is no doubt that he’ll end up getting pinned or tapped by the end. 

Yes this is an aspect of pro wrestling’s back-office politics that I also think is hot but I’m not sure I’ve talked about it very often in this blog, so I’m thankful my reader brought it up.

Even if the “enhancement talent” is larger and stronger than his higher ranked opponent, he can never win or even shine too bright. In the end, he must subjugate himself to the bigger star and take the fall, ideally in a humiliating manner that makes him come off as a big pussy and his opponent as a superior Alpha Stud.

Yes it’s just business. We all must perform degrading tasks in our jobs, to obey our boss’s orders. But it’s much sexier in the case of a wrestling jobber because his defeat is so public and emasculating, because he is made to look weak and submissive (while wearing little more than underwear), because in Man Law, losing a fight is the ultimate proof of the Beta Male’s lower rank.

The eroticism of pro wrestling is rooted in the power imbalance between the men. The story being presented is that Jungle Boy possesses superior skill and aggression over Alanis (perhaps learned from the beasts who raised Jungle Boy in the wild) and this is admittedly an arousing fantasy to consider. But the real power imbalance here is the ranking by the bookers who’ve already given Jungle Boy the nod, thereby sealing the helpless opponent’s fate as Jungle Boy’s little bitch. This is perhaps even more arousing to think about — that Alanis will lose not because he’s physically weaker but because he was ordered to serve as a whipping boy.

After the match, Jungle Boy’s friend, a scrawny little dirtbag named Marcus Stunt, tosses Alanis out of the ring — how utterly humiliating! Alanis is everybody’s bitch.

Then we get some hot views of Jungle Boy on the ropes in spectacular victory, the camera surveying his physique, and we forget all about that low-ranking jobber out on the floor. We’ve used Alanis, we’ve consumed him in a way, and now we’re all done with him.