One of the most common wrestling holds featured on the covers of the old wrestling magazines was the Sleeper Hold. There is a very good reason for this — the Sleeper is a hot hold with erotic implications. It displays utter emasculation and surrender — leaving one man totally defenseless against the other man’s advances. It’s a loving embrace turned deadly.
Presumably, the victim of a Sleeper Hold would be susceptible to whatever abuse or molestation the victorious wrestler chooses to inflict. The viewer doesn’t need to see images of torture, but the possibility is introduced and implied when the victim sinks into a helpless state.
The frequency of this same hold on the cover shows that they’re using the sexiness and eroticism of the Sleeper to sell more magazines; they’re trying to attract the attention of potential customers perusing the magazine rack.
Seeing the Sleeper Hold on the cover was a promise that the reader could find more photos of this and other hot holds inside the magazine. The Sleeper Hold is the come-on or the tease — bait that is meant to entice the buyer into wanting to see more.
Once inside the magazine, you’d often find more Sleeper Hold photos to enjoy, often with suggestive little captions or long stories depicting the agony and aggression and passion shared by the two brawlers in the ring.
This cover shows the lucky reader not just one, but two Sleeper Hold images. Ricky Steamboat is shown with his teeth bared like a savage animal while blood gushes down his sleeping prey’s face. The caption reads: “Does he have enough ‘killer instinct’?” which implies a level of violence and destruction beyond merely trying to pin the other man.
A smaller photo features our beloved Kerry suffering in the deadly embrace of the Von Erich family’s bitter enemy: Chris Adams. The caption asks: “Who’s the king of Texas?” With our hero struggling for his life in the Sleeper, it would seem Chris Adams is the king of Texas. (This assumes their is a king over each state, and that one can earn the crown by winning in the wrestling ring…)
The caption says that Gagne shows off his patented sleeper both in and out of the ring, and we see him dominating another wrestler on a tiled floor (rather than in a ring.) He apparently has done this to “dozens of men” — each victim counted like another notch on his bedpost.
The implication is that Gagne enjoys dominating other men, that he puts dudes to sleep when he’s getting paid to do it in the ring, AND just for the opportunity to “show off” — to sleeper some other stud just for fun. This is meant to encourage the reader to fantasize about other situations where Gagne might sleeper a dude in public — possibly the reader himself.
