The birth of AEW. The Bloodline. The disgraceful resignation of scandal-ridden Vince McMahon… twice. Three times? I’ve lost count. The continued survival and growth of indie promotions around the world post covid. Cody Rhodes going to WWE, and CM Punk and Edge going to AEW… CM Punk coming back to WWE. Whatever other nonsense happens between the time of this writing and publication.
If you’re not a wrestling fan, the above fragments are probably meaningless, but to those that follow their chosen flavor of sports entertainment, they’re pivotal and defining moments of the current era of professional wrestling. One of the most unlikely industries to survival a global pandemic would probably artistic morality plays built entirely around semi-nude men grabbing each other, but not only has pro wrestling survived, the genre is arguably in one of the best places it has been in a few decades. This is thanks largely to the popularity of new stars, long term plotlines, and real alternatives to a company (WWE) that has had something very close to a monopoly on the industry for years, despite having, up until the recent Bloodline storyline, a critically panned product.
And if something exists, there’s porn of it. And if something’s popular, there’s definitely porn of it.
Wrestling was always at least a little gay
If you’ve somehow algorithmically stumbled upon a gay porn industry website when you really just wanted to read about sports entertainment gossip, now’s your chance to smile, nod, and walk away. This also isn’t going to be a place that will do a lot of explaining about the mechanics of wrestling, or why you might be interested in a wrestling kink at all (though perhaps that’s something that deserves an essay, too.) To the rest of you, though, let’s talk about gay erotic wrestling, and how it could be improved for consumer and company alike.
Some nipple twisting in a CMLL match, one of Mexico’s oldest lucha promotions. Even CMLL knows why you’re here.
For those with a gay wrestling kink, porn studios that cater to it are in a bit of a weird place right now. Many of the biggest names—places like Can Am, BGEast, Thunder’s Arena—have been around forever, and coast on word of mouth they’ve built up since their inceptions, some dating back as far as the 80s. It’s kind of shocking to say this, but BGEast, which is many people’s first brush with gay wrestling porn, basically has no social media presence outside of their own site. The contact information for applying to be a wrestler lists an AOL email address. They’ve only just recently launched a streaming service. I don’t mean to pick on BGEast in particular, but the archaic inscrutability of their site and business model is easily the biggest reason why they aren’t bigger.
Erotic Gay Wrestling Has Produced Real Talent
It’s certainly not because of quality or content. It’s an open secret that BGEast and other gay porn studios have hired wrestlers that went on to become huge success in sports entertainment: before Finn Balor/Prince Devitt became one of the greatest wrestlers of all time in WWE and NJPW, he was “Devil Devitt” at BGEast, and you can still find matches of him versus Johnny Firestorm there. Seth Rollins, the current world champion of WWE at the time of this wrestling, did softcore gay porn wrestling for Cyberfights under the name “Tyler Black.” There’s many, many examples like this, but these two are perhaps most famous examples of mainstream wrestlers with kinky beginnings.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s exactly who you think it is,” BGEast writes in a genuinely thoughtful and touching introduction of Devitt’s match against Paul Hudson.
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So if these studios are hiring legit wrestlers and making quality products, why not, you know… try to sell them?
Wrestler4Hire And The Power of Titles
Cameron at Wrestler4Hire gets that part, at least, and gets it better than many of his contemporaries. W4H offers lower prices ($20ish per download, and sometimes there’s big sales) than some of their competitors, and allows direct downloads. They also has a social media presence and are actively involved with its community via a blog. Where W4H shows its cracks, and where it probably could learn the most from the recent explosion of wrestling’s new era, is the emphasis on storyline.
Fans of Bareback+ might be quick to recognize Jax Thirio in this Wrestler4hire match.
This is an area many gay porn/gay kink wrestling companies miss: winning and losing are, for many in its audience, not the only part of the fantasy. The ramifications of those losses, too, are important. Many of these companies don’t have a championship belt, and if they do, the champion/belt itself are poorly advertised.
It’s a strange thing to miss: a championship belt is an invaluable prop in both a professional sense, and wrestling kink. You put a belt on a guy that you can slap on the cover of your site, or your social media, yeah? He’s your guy, your method of bringing people to your product. And if you build that guy up enough and he loses, well, that’s a thing you can sell, too. And on top of all of that, a dominate champion dripped in gold is just kind of hot. I don’t think that’s a controversial statement. I, uh, hope.
The fun twist here is that W4H does have belts, but you would never know that when you first log on to the site, shy as they are to advertise the belt. There probably isn’t a company better positioned to advertise champions than them… except, maybe—
Black Wrestling Network, Factions, Plotlines
That’s something Black Wrestling Network seems to get better than many of its peers. BWN has plotlines, interesting characters, a variety of belts—hell, there’s factions! BWN’s clips and aesthetic hint at a well-produced product and world wholly unique to itself, and of all the companies I’ve listed in this article, probably gets the theatrics of modern wrestling the most.
I’d love to sing BWN’s praises as often as possible on here… except, well, it’s a shame that everything is absurdly expensive. Downloads of individual matches—assuming they are even available to download—typically start at $50, and the cheapest subscription service that gives you access to all content is nearly $400/yr. That’s 4 years of the IWTV, which also has plenty of gay wrestlers, just of the non-erotic variety. (Mostly.)
Tiger vs. Hawk’s 40 minute erotic grudge match
It’s almost difficult to blame them for that, though. These are price tags certainly born out an abundance of concern for piracy, and there’s a lot of overhead to consider when making wrestling content even, when it doesn’t have the production level of BWN. There’s money needed for the space/location, filming equipment, wrestlers, crew… and let’s not forget, when a wrestler is slammed down, put in a hold, etc., they are risking their body. Damage, real damage, accumulates over time even with the most practiced and worked of spots, even in the theater of of sports entertainment, and even on the stage of a porn shoot. I’m such that all goes into the overhead, but at the end of the day, I am just a consumer that balked at the price tag of what would otherwise probably be a product I’d go in on. I doubt I’m the only one.
Wrestling Porn should look to the wider industry
Just about the only thing all gay porn wrestling companies seem to have in common is none of them have quite landed the complete package. Most promotions would improve drastically if they just offered a reliably streaming service in the same way most porn companies have figured out, and worked directly with places that most likely might steal their content (PornHub) to make official channels to guide viewers to their website for full clips. A few just need better community engagement or presentation. But most need something.
There’s many more companies than the ones listed here—I tried to offer something of a cross section of companies that do different things very well, but also have different faults. Will anything come of it? I don’t know. If watching wrestling has taught me anything over the years—erotic or otherwise—it’s that sometimes wanting something loudly enough is the easiest way to get a promotion to do the exact opposite. But you’ll never know how a promoter will respond unless you cheer or boo loud enough, and since wrestling around the world is at a high it hasn’t seen in years, I thought I’d add one more voice to the crowd.
Sources: BGEast, Black Wrestling Network, Wrestler4Hire
