Scene from a Ring of Honor match.
Want to piss off some pro wrestling fans? Write that their sport is gay. In a “Best Of” list from the Village Voice, one of their writers was clearly having some fun when he voted the Ring of Honor pro wrestling circuit the “Best Place to Watch Straight Men Get All Homoerotic.”
Wrestling is gay. That’s not an epithet (like we’d ever . . . ). It just is, literally, gay. When a man in ball-outlining shiny undies wraps his crotch around another man’s head, flexes his muscles, and grunts, the activity has more to do with porn than sports. … If the gay community ever catches wind, wrestling is going to be as popular with the homos as the WNBA.
The item was clearly written in the spirit of fun while stating the obvious — wrestling IS homoerotic, if not for the grapplers then for the audience. Many a gay man has grown up glued to the set watching hunky pro rasslers showing off in their tights. But the commenters on the Voice post were not pleased. Someone called The Butcher (who said he is “From Not Jew York,” which tells you all you need to know about him) threatened death:
So help me God, If I ever find out who wrote this, I will f***ing kill you. Not just kill, I will torture you until you beg for death.
Snap! Other commenters were outraged to varying degrees (“If you ever show up to an ROH show, we’re going to f*** you in your cute little skinny ass”), which means they took the bait. This prompted this nifty retort from a writer at the Cageside Seats wrestling blog:
ROH is very, very gay, and they should embrace that fact. An audience full of gay dudes would probably provide a much classier crowd atmosphere than most of the fans who currently go to their shows, too.
Just check out the hunks in the Ring of Honor’s many photo galleries and you decide? Whether it’s gay or not, it’s at least pretty campy judging by some of the costumes.
on Oct 23rd, 2009 at 1:13 PM
nobody watched this weeks south park? real wrestling is gay porn, whas these people do is theatre which means it is just gay.
on Oct 23rd, 2009 at 7:34 PM
Guess no one told them in ancient times athletes wrestled naked (are you listening, MMA?)
on Oct 24th, 2009 at 5:44 PM
Pro wrestling is entertainment and athletic. Most wrestlers and promoters are entirely aware of the gay audience. Some promotions have even gone so far as to specifically cater to a gay audience, either at live events or online videos. MMA is now in the same boat.
Remember my own columns for Outsports.com about pro wrestling years ago? And I also keep gayprowrestling.com just for the masses to take a peak. There are of course gay pro wrestlers and promoters, some open and some not. So to think that pro wrestling is somehow exempt from LGBT people is silly.
on Oct 24th, 2009 at 7:00 PM
I guess this article touched on one of the two most forbidden topics in the world of professional wrestling…the other being drugs, of course. And, the biggest promotions, WWE and TNA, have ever so often gotten into some kind of gay-stereotype story line, which is usually insulting and demeaning by the time the story line has run its course.
on Oct 25th, 2009 at 2:02 AM
OH, Puh-leeeeze!
When I was 16 (a few years ago, ahem….) I loved watching alllllll the wrestling shows. Why? Hot, slicked up, speedo-clad, butch-ish men jumping on each other n’ shit.
Wrestling is gay. That’s all there is to it.
I would love to go back to the first Olympics when it was all done naked. Yum.
on Oct 26th, 2009 at 4:08 AM
“pro” wrestling is were all spandex lycra fetishes begin
on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 6:31 PM
Wrestling isn’t gay. It’s gays that have made/turned wrestling gay.
on Jun 26th, 2010 at 6:37 PM
You just contradicted your first sentence with your second Socks… and if you look at history, like say, back when the Olympics were started with Greek wrestling in the nude (bisexuality happened in Greece) it is not exactly new.
I might have as a youth been offended by the sport being labelled gay or something. I am not now since I am friendly about it and stuff, but I do not like it being dumbed down to just that or even primarily that because it is about a myriad of much more complex and interesting and important factors than merely sexual orientation or eroticism.
on Aug 20th, 2010 at 12:50 PM
Puhleeze! Guys getting dressed up in spandex, oiling themselves down and pretending to hit each other before grappling and groping each other is gay. C’mon…anyone with huge arms that laid in a punch and landed it square in the face would break skulls. Its theatre as stated above. its a fun spectacle but it is still acting and stunts. UFC is the real thing and IMO the guys are more fit and real…which makes it better to watch. They also seem to respect the sport…