If you’re a fan of Underground Wrestling and you’ve reached a certain age, you probably remember that Finn Balor (aka Prince Fergal Devitt) wrestled for BG East as “Devil Devitt” back around 2006 and appeared in five of their jerk-off videos.
If you didn’t realize that Balor had done Underground wrestle-porn, that’s not surprising because, for the past decade, BG East removed his videos from their website and few people mentioned his gay-friendly performances. Until recently, mainstream wrestling fans were intolerant of gay erotica and nobody wanted to queer Fergal’s chances at making it in the Big Show by outing him as a wrestle-porn star. In fact, I almost forgot myself whether Finn Balor really had wrestled for BG East, except that I have a couple of his old matches in my archives.
I find it interesting, and refreshing, to see Underground wrestle-porn slowly losing its stigma as a career-ending taboo. For example, Devil Devitt’s matches have now proudly re-appeared on the BG East website. In their recent Catalog #144, they even released an old match from their archives — Devil Devitt vs. Paul Hudson — under the title Pros in Private #13. The images in today’s gallery with Devitt wearing his light blue square-cut shorts are from that match.
Many other popular mainstream pro wrestlers have, in recent years, performed in our Gay For Pay rasslin matches without apparently ruining their careers. I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot (and you can remind me of more), but a few famous Public/Private wrestlers who readily come to mind (because I’ve jerked off to them in both contexts) include: Eli Drake / Dick Rick, Chris Dickenson / Guido Genatto, obviously Seth Rollins / Tyler Black, Jimmy Jacobs / Jimmy Jacobs, and Rhett Titus / Garrett Thomas. Nobody from the str8 world seems to care that these popular wrestlers did soft-core porn videos that gay dudes buy and masturbate to.
To illustrate the stigma associated with wrestle-porn ten years ago, consider the case of Luke Robinson / Donny Drake. He was an Indy wrestler trying to launch his career and pay his bills when he performed for BG East beginning in 2010. In 2011, he appeared on the WWE reality show, Tough Enough, where he was certainly one of the top contenders to win.
After his biggest rival, Martin Casaus, left the competition due to injury, I was certain Luke/Donnie would win. BUT THE WWE SELECTED SOME REDNECK SCHMOE NAMED “ANDY LEAVINE” AS THE WINNER INSTEAD!
Have you even heard of Andy Leavine as a famous pro wrestler?? Have any of you ever gotten off to one of his matches? I’ve always speculated that the only reason they didn’t select Luke, the clearly more talented and hotter stud, as the winner (and the reason they portrayed him as an arrogant dick-head on the show) was because of his gay wrestle-porn history which made him unacceptable to the mainstream WWE audience.
By the way, I used to avoid mentioning a wrestler’s Public nickname (or real name) in the same article as his Private name to avoid outing him as a Gay Wrestler — to avoid ruining his career if the promoters found out. Now I’m not sure that anybody really cares any more, which is a good thing.
These guys have to make money, and they’re in great shape anyway, so why not grab some cash out of gay dudes’ wallets?! They’re just wrestling after all, not unlike all of the matches they perform all the time on television. They’re not being asked to do Hard Core sexual penetration.
In fact, in many cases, the wrestling they perform on television IS JUST AS GAY, OR WAY GAYER, THAN ANYTHING THEY DID IN THE UNDERGROUND RING! For example, I ask you, which of Finn Balor’s costumes is more revealing: the boy-shorts he wore as Devil Devitt (see above), or the bulging Look-At-My-Cock speedos that he now wears in WWE?
Clearly Finn Balor knows we’re out here, enjoying his hard abs and swole physique and sexually suggestive performances in the ring. We know that all of the wrestlers who have performed in Wrestle-Porn matches are very aware that a segment of their audience is enjoying the Mainstream product for the same reason they paid to watch the Underground product — to get off on how hot it looks.
So Finn, God bless him, must be dishing out Fan Service for the enjoyment of viewers like me whenever he does really gay stuff in the ring like he did against fellow hottie, Johnny Wrestling:
I mean, what really is the difference between actions performed by Devil Devitt back in 2006 and by Finn Balor in 2019?!?!?!?! The only difference I see is that Finn Balor’s actions nowadays are much gayer and sexually suggestive than Devil Devitt’s ever were (and I’m not complaining — I’m just observing.)
As recently as 5 or 6 years ago, people would poke fun at wrestlers who had appeared in wrestle-porn. For example, Seth Rollins was frequently mocked for his work at Cyberfights, such as this 2014 Facebook post which cautions us to “don’t watch this” and “I had to turn it off.”
But a couple of Followers of that Facebook page posted somewhat positive feedback such as “you gotta start somewhere.” A more recent post on Reddit from two years ago invites us to “appreciate the 3 years Finn Balor spent doing Gay Erotica Wrestling.” (and someone responded: “I appreciate it a couple times a day” — good one!)
So it feels good to see Gay Wrestle-Porn gaining a measure of acceptance among the mainstream hegemony, thanks to brave queer-friendly performers like Finn Balor / Devil Devitt. For someone who grew up very worried that having a wrestling fetish was some kind of sickness, it’s nice to know that lots of other guys get off on wrestling too and it’s actually very normal and expected.