There’s a part of the male anatomy that is off-limits for handling in public, a place that even footballer Brett Favre with his reputed locker-room ass-slapping would likely avoid. Yet on a routine basis this erogenous zone is casually handled and pawed in wrestling arenas everywhere without a second thought.
Those anticipated moments in pro wrestling, where the losing grappler is gripped at the butt between his legs and lifted (often just prior to the final pin) don’t escape the notice of doughboy watchers everywhere, since it’s our guys, the jobbers that we affectionately call doughboys, which usually are on the receiving end of the groping.
The spectacles of flesh meeting flesh in configurations that normally would be frowned upon in polite society is a happenstance as old as wrestling itself. From ancient-world nude grappling to today’s amateur action on the mat, countless instances of provocative moves and pins inevitably have occurred. Take for example the 2003 Amateur Wrestling Freestyle World Championship in which Russian grappler Sajid Sajidov gleefully handles American hunk Carl Sanderson with a grip to the butt that kneads and presses upon Sanderson’s most private nether-regions. A similar move off the mat would be decried with homophobic slurs. On the mat, they are part and parcel to the sport, accepted and rewarded with gold medals.
The advent of pro wrestling with its rivalries, feuds and oversized personalities dramatically raises the stakes and the homoerotic potential of this “contact” sport. The meeting of flesh against flesh is no longer an accidental brushing of one body part against another, but rather a full-blown deliberate scenario in which an overpowering heel belittles and humiliates his weaker opponent by groping and pawing at the most sensitive, personal parts of the male anatomy. In the three pro wrestling bouts which follow, the brightly-attired butts of the doughboys (one is clad in gold, one in pink and the third in stripes) become the targets and the means for jobber humiliation and heel domination:
At the end of the day, in their day, for featured heels Paul Roma, Typhoon, Earthquake and Razor Ramon, perhaps all of this kneading and handling of jobber ass was as routine for them as hauling a sack of garbage to the dump. For the doughboy watcher, however, viewing these matches today, these electric moments bear a myriad of emotions that are anything but routine. Our emotional attachment—“needing” doughboys—comes into direct conflict with our desire—“kneading” doughboys. While we empathize with and feel for the jobber, our carnal instincts follow the path of the heel’s hands and fingers. We watch with envy as they journey through that region between butt and groin. Would that we could feel, grope and experience that beefy flesh with the same abandon. We revel in the vicarious thrill and follow along that same path—through those hot, forbidden doughboy erogenous zones…
One of my earliest wrestling magazine memories – which triggered so many early jobber fears and fantasies – was seeing a picture in a mag from the mid 1980s. It was a pic of an old match, like from the late 1960s or maybe early 1970s. But in it, in a closeup, was a shot of a heel holding a jobber in the backbreaker position, but the heel had a firm grasp of the jobber’s trunks, right at his asshole. It terrified me because I already imagined being in that position. The heel looked so mean and the jobber so helpless, his side on the heel’s knee, the anguish on his face, his trunks being clutched by a bully.
Great post, brings back those memories, not to mention the idea of being in that position – especially the guy in pink Roma’s crushing – remains a major desire.