Take Axel to School

Ethan Axel Andrews is seeking donations for his education. The sooner he pays up on his training as a certified fitness trainer, the sooner you can hire him to customize your individual program ... or something. Go fund him and win valuable prizes at gofundme here.

A Real Man Doing Manly Things

Everybody's free to choose his own favorite, but Big Sexy, 6', 205#, still is, by far, my favorite wrestler at Thunder's Arena, partly because of his mat savvy, largely because of his studly muscle, mostly because of his easygoing gonzo wit and, when his heart's in it, his ferocity.

His heart is mostly in it in Battlespace 45, as he battles a guy named simply Muscles, 5'10", 218#, here in his fifth match for the Arena. At first it's fun and games as the two muscle dudes push and shove for maximum exposure to the camera and fans and trade obligatory insults about each other's brightly colored gear (Sexy's back in shocking pink and green).

"This is what they want to see. A real man doing manly things," Sexy kids as he flips Muscles over his shoulders into a fireman's carry. It's clear that he and Muscles are enjoying themselves. Muscles gets Sexy in a full nelson. At first, Sexy sells it, mugging in over-the-top WWE style. A reverse bearhug on Muscles effectively demonstrates Sexy's power, as do the subsequent nelson, camel clutch, and armbar. Sexy's working up a sweat, loosening up.

Sexy's at his most intense on the mat. On his feet he clowns around--and nobody I can think of at the Arena clowns with such style, unselfconscious about how he might come off, playing the goof and still looking terrific. A natural. But his mat work shows off his knowledge of moves and his agility in moving from hold to hold, especially impressive given his size and muscularity. Standing, Sexy plays a broad caricature of himself--the vain and arrogant muscle man--but against the mat he's a fighting machine. When he gets Muscles flat on his back, we see what Sexy brings to a match that no other wrestler brings.

Muscles poses a real challenge, mostly because of his thickly packed muscle and reckless w-t-f attitude towards wrestling. He dominates Sexy for most of the match, but he lacks Sexy's grace and easy charm. Muscles is game for anything, and his go-for-broke approach to competition gives him the edge, more often than not. In previous matches, the ruggedly built, severely barbered Muscles has faced the likes of Python, veteran macho man Johnny Bravo, Dominic (another personal favorite), and hot, young newby Atom--larger and smaller wrestlers, all superb in many respects. Big Sexy, though, is the total package, in my opinion--big, strong, smart, quick, tough, funny, sometimes laid back, sometimes fierce, and always sexy.

My Field Trip to UCW (Day Two, Saturday 6-15-2013)

The day started with an awesome match, featuring crazy-raunchy heel Quinn Harper, 5'10", 175#, and sinister-calculating B&D heel Nick Diesel, 5'9", 145#. Two newbies. Two heels. Two fantastically different attitudes and looks. I consider myself lucky that I got to see this match live.  My pre-release review in 24 words or less: Nick and Quinn in a rope match you'll want to buy for your dick only if it's been a very good dick this year. I'm just saying. I can't tell you more than these three things: it's a classic, it's probably going to be remembered as one of UCW's top ten matches of all time, both these guys together have more chemistry than DuPont.

Right after the match I got to interview Diesel, a wrestler I admired in his previous match against Private Jack and in his work at BG East (under another name). I told him how great I thought the fight against Quinn was and asked him what goes through his head after a match like that. He said, "One thing I think about is how I could make the next match better. How I could have made it more torturous." I ask him how in the world it could have been any better than it was, how he and Quinn could have been any more sadistic as villains. "More ropes and hooks," he replied.  Diesel is a bondage master, intent, he told me, on "turning wrestling fans into bondage fans." In the match, he counters Harper's raw blasts of energy by binding him in a web of nylon cording. (The night before he had demonstrated his roping skills by crucifying me between two beams, lashing me across the chest with a rope end, and twisting my nipples hard. I know, I know. How lucky can one blogger be? Here's how--later in the day on Saturday, when both of us were at the sidelines watching another match, he quietly and rather distractedly tied my wrists together, looped the nylon cord on a hook, and commanded me to "stay.")

He told me he has no real background in wrestling, just bondage. He's been a bondage master for the past five years. He got hooked on bondage through a site he found on the Internet (see? concerned parents are absolutely right!) "A lot of crazy clients like seeing me tie up people, all helpless," he explained. "Some clients like to be tickled and tied up. Mixing pleasure with pain." I asked him what the connection to wrestling was, for him personally. He said that in wrestling he's "using my body as ropes to bind and dominate somebody else." As soon as he said that, I remembered a couple of his previous matches, where the description was a fitting summary of everything I had felt about them at the time.

I asked Nick what he thought made bondage erotic for him and his clients. "The feeling of control," he said. "It's what it's like being the snake or the rat in a snake tank. The feeling of overpowering, it's more intense than regular sex. And it involves characters. You become someone else, whether you're doing the binding or you're the one that's bound."

Eli Black arrived, bragging to a few of us about his hot tub and trampoline hetero-sex-wrestling adventure the night before. I missed his first match against Quinn Harper, futzing around with this blog instead, and from what I heard (and from what I could have guessed for myself) I missed a great match. Later, I asked him what it was like facing a challenging fighter like Quinn. He said, "Me being Eli Black, nothing's too challenging, but I consider a challenge something that's fun and a fun match would be Quinn Harper. I finally met a worthy opponent!" I asked whether, given their mutual respect following the match and their shared interest in bullying, an alliance might be upcoming.  "I like what he had," he said. (In fact, later in the day, he and Quinn set up a team to take on Axel and Michael Hannigan--even calling on me to participate in a small way.) I also asked him whether, having played the mouthy heel for the last year and a half at UCW, he might ever turn babyface. He said that he's "better looking than a babyface. ... Eli Black is definitely an asshole," he conceded. "But it's not all bad. He's more confident than cocky. And that's what you need in the fight world. You don't want to be unsure of yourself. That said, Eli Black is the best!"

When I asked him what UCW wrestler's on his "black list," he did not hesitate in naming Axel, who had also topped Quinn Harper's list the day before: "I've shorthanded UCW. One guy has eluded me. It's that pussy Axel, who's afraid to do more than just talk to me on the mat." I asked him what his beef with Axel was. He said, "He's a little Democratic pussy. And I'm a badass Republican!" So this is political? "All said and done, Axel's just a little pussy who wishes he could be me." Later, he told me that he thinks Axel has "severely damaged" the "standards" at UCW. How? "By being a bitch and a pussy and a cum-dumpster. I'm gonna chew him up, spit him out, and make him clean himself off the mat."

What about his fans? I asked him. "I appreciate the fans that I have and even the haters, who are just fans in denial. I get emails every now and again, telling me how sexy and awesome I am. Telling me whether they like or dislike my facial hair. But all being said, I'm Eli Black, so I get the final say in what comes and goes. So suck it up, bitches!" (His goatlike chin patch has been a minor controversy among gay fans. You'll notice in the pictures, though, that the patch disappeared this weekend. Eli's "final say"?) 

Last summer and this summer, Eli had insisted that he fight back-to-back matches. I asked him why. "I like to get a nice warmup with whoever thinks he's got what it takes to step on the mat against me and that sets me up to demolish the next guy. It sets me in a groove, and I run with it. I do what I do and do it well. I'm a finisher." I ask him to tell me the secret to good smack talk, of which Eli is an undisputed master. "Um. Just open your mouth and make the other person shut theirs."

Two of the company's younger, less experienced wrestlers were scheduled for a two-out-of-three match. Damien Flawless and Michael Hannigan had been talking shit about each other on Facebook for weeks, dividing fans' allegiance between them. I spoke with Damien first, asking him what the inspiration for his wrestling persona was. "I think my real personality," he said. "I have a bit of ego actually. I wanted to base a character on that. A character who thinks he's great whether he really is or not. I wanted to portray a character who could get away with saying anything, so fans either laugh with me or go 'what the hell is going on here?' Kind of like I was the popular kid at an all-gay Catholic school." (Whuh?) I asked him which wrestlers he had looked up to, growing up. "I really love Chyna. I got to meet her about two years ago. What I admired about her while I was growing up was that nobody at first knew what to make of her. Nobody had seen anyone like her before. You didn't know whether she was going to be a success or a joke, and she ended up being massively successful." Among male wrestlers he admired, he named Shawn Michaels and "Macho Man" Randy Savage. He couldn't single out any current young male wrestler he admires. "You don't really get that kind of immortal male wrestler today."

I asked about his feud with Michael. "I would love to talk about Miss Hannigan," he said. "Which is ironic, given my character. I will say one positive thing about him, though. What I do like about him is that when we perform together, we've got a really good chemistry. I like that he's not just doing it for a paycheck. I really kinda gotta respect him for that." I asked him whether there was a "but" after all the praise. "There's always a 'but' with me. He kinda started with me because I was starting to get my own little following--nothing on an Axel level, obviously--and I think that bothered him, that I had guys who were starting to send me speedos and such."

I then asked Michael Hannigan to respond to what Damien had said. He explained matter-of-factly that the feud had been started to fill the hole left after the sudden disappearance of Twisted Torment, whose long-running harassment of Hannigan had been Hannigan's introduction to UCW. Michael noticed that Damien was using Facebook videos to respond to fans' questions and decided to mock Damien in a few videos of his own. "The fans wanted to see me in a feud with somebody, so I picked Damien. They deserved a fight, and I picked a wrestler that wouldn't chicken out and run like a little bitch." Then he told me, smirking slightly, that 95% of the fans tell him to kick Damien's ass.

Michael got hooked on wrestling around the age of ten, watching WWE on TV. "I got my friends into it, too, and we started wrestling around with each other, backyard wrestling. I still do that." His backyard wrestling has diminished as he's become more involved at UCW. "Now I know how to do everything right and they don't, so that's been a factor." I asked about his favorite match. "So far I really like the Christmas match I had. The fact that I had four different opponents. And I think I did pretty good in that match." His strong points? "When Bodyslam taught me the ring awareness stuff, that became my strongest point." He sees a lot out of the corners of his eyes. That wide range of alertness helps him respond to the events of the match quickly. When I asked him what it was about wrestling that so strongly appealed to him, he said, "Just the fact that it's really physical. Not just running back and forth on a field. Or running around a baseball diamond. It's more physical, more active."

The last match of the evening was as great as the day's first, I thought. Rope-master Nick Diesel versus ego-monster Eli Black. All decked out in red, white, and blue, this is the match you will see this coming Independence Day. And wow! Strangulation fetishists should have a field day. The angle is that Diesel wants to declare his independence from UCW. He wants out of his "exclusive contract" with Bodyslam so that he can work for other wrestling companies. According to the contract, Diesel can win his release only by fighting and defeating one of the owners of UCW. Axel was away, and Bodyslam was still physically unable to wrestle, so Bodyslam found a clause that stated he could pick a proxy. He picked Eli.

This fight was as raw, violent, and savage as any I have seen. I would compare its visceral intensity not to Tarzan movies exactly, but to my darkest red-in-tooth-and-claw fantasies of Tarzan. Eli and Nick fought like a couple of pissed-off crocodiles, raising the temperature in the garage (which already was hot--98 degrees Fahrenheit). After the fight, Damien, Eli, and Quinn left for home. Bodyslam and Axel started a fire in the backyard for toasting bratwursts and s'mores. Nick and Phil, UCW's "bean-counter," picked up some mojito mix. Hannigan, feeling a little sore after his match against Damien, joined us, as we sat in lawn chairs, in a semicircle around the blazing fire. It was a great way to top off a great day.

Between matches, Eli Black fearlessly attempts to outshine Damien Flawless

My Field Trip to UCW (Day One, Friday 6-14-2013)

Friday afternoon I sat down in Bodyslam's office with Quinn Harper, 5'10", 175#,  the highly controversial new bad boy at UCW. I have had something of a love-hate relationship with this guy these past few months. His abusive language and unstinted savagery often put me off; nevertheless, I feel strongly that, as I have stated before, he is the most exciting thing to happen at UCW in a while. I love to watch this guy work an opponent. Nobody does it like he does it. With a background in high-school wrestling (seeding first, second, and third in Maryland), martial arts, and gymnastics, Quinn tears up the mats with moves, with attitude, with pure, unstoppable aggressiveness. He's also been a fixture in east coast pro wrestling for over a decade.

I asked Quinn how he got involved at UCW. Word of mouth, mostly. He heard about the company from a friend. He checked into it and saw that it produced the same kind of raw, balls-to-the-wall fight shows that he was used to from the pro ranks. Once he got there, it turned out that he liked the people--at least enough to feel it was a good fit for him. "Something else to dominate," he boasted to me, the arrogance in his facial expression unmistakable. "A new place for me to vent my frustrations and be myself. It was a chance to dominate. I could be top dog here."

So, I asked, what would UCW be like if Quinn Harper were in control? He didn't skip a beat. Clearly it's a question he had already asked himself. "Amount of vets versus newbies. I'd invite more vets. But I love giving the newbies a beating that you can't give a vet. That makes it worth my time to be here."

I mentioned Bodyslam's once calling UCW the "working man's wrestling company." "I am the walking personification of that idea," he said. "I'm a hard worker: a construction worker by day, a wrestler by night. My hands are cut up. I got 'man's hands.' That's clearly not a disadvantage to me around here."

I pointed out how radically different his style was from other UCW wrestlers, namely Axel, whose name need only be mentioned to Quinn and his pupils widen and snap into crosshairs, like Wile E. Coyote's in a Roadrunner cartoon. "The most knowledgeable guy I've fought is Axel," he conceded with atypical grace. "The company's top man. He knows the most moves, knows how to get out of the most moves. He's the biggest challenge." Who else does he like? "[Tyson] Hammer's got talent. He's got a real future in the business if he keeps at it." I asked about his most recent match against Pippin. Quinn sneered: "Pippin's decent but too much of a pretty boy to my liking. My sights are on Axel. I'm gunning for him. One hundred percent balls out let's do it!"

"He's the boss's pet," he said, still speaking of Axel. "He gets away with anything he wants. To me he's just another young punk for me to take down. Now basically I've made him my plaything. I've got in his head. Wrestling is not just about wrestling. There's a lot of mental that goes into wrestling. I have successfully got into Axel's head, under his skin. And Axel is not just one man. He represents the whole company. He's got the promoter, the fans, all in his pocket, but all it's gonna take is that one guy, with enough drive, enough determination, to topple that empire. And as the old song says, you ain't seen nothing like the Mighty Quinn!"

When he got heated, I started worrying about how long his reach was. He continued, in somewhat calmer tones, to tell me about his place at UCW as he sees it. He's not, he said, "the average pretty boy floyd of UCW. I don't have the perfect teeth. The nice complexion." He spit out the word "nice." "I'm a little bit of a roughneck. I'm a lot of a roughneck. But I bring things other people don't bring, can't bring. A lot of people don't have the stomach for what I do."

He looked me square in the eyes, when he spoke next: "I get a lot of heat because I call a guy 'a princess' and 'a pretty boy' and other derogatory names. Bodyslam tries to tell me what not to say, what not to do. But I'm not the type to coddle. I'm here to take ass ... take names ... and be a force at UCW." I didn't comment on the Freudian slip. I figured his fist was only about two feet away from my chin.

Speaking of chin, I asked him about the goatlike chin hair, which other fans have complained about. Me, I kinda like the beatnik-meets-rough-trade look. "I am who I am," Quinn responded. "I've got the moves. I work circles around these guys. These other guys have the perfect bodies, but they don't have what I have. I got the moves. I got the drive. If you don't like it, change the channel."

Then I asked about his infamous thumb move, which I have nicknamed the "anal intruder." He told me the idea sprang from advice his high-school wrestling coach gave him, calling it "the best way to keep a guy off his knees." Yeah, I said, but why do you lick it before jamming it up an opponent's ass? "Just me being a nice guy," he said, smiling broadly.

Later that evening, while pork chops were sizzling on the grill, I got some alone time with Axel, 6', 160#, specifically to ask him to respond to some of the comments Quinn had made against him. "Next to me," Axel said, "Quinn Harper is probably the best wrestler at UCW right now. He's not the friendliest wrestler, and that he made perfectly clear with the two-on-one beatdown he and Stay*C Adams did on me. As for being the 'boss's pet,' I am the other boss at UCW. So I'm nobody's pet. I have earned my place here by working hard and being a fan favorite, and that's how you survive in this business, by being a fan favorite. And him, he's only been around for a few months. I don't see him lasting too long. The last guy with that sort of gimmick was Twisted Torment, and he's no longer a part of UCW."

I asked Axel about the pressures of being co-owner (this past year) of UCW. He named some of them: "Trying to take on more work, more responsibility in the company, other than being pretty and wrestling. Now I have to help bring in new talent, answer customers' email, a lot more administrative work." He said that, right now, finding new and capable talent with a commitment to wrestling was the most difficult task.

What might be some of the other challenges he's faced this past year? He said, "It's hard work to distinguish me at UCW from the versions of me you see on other sites. Here I'm the nice guy. I'm everybody's friend. I want people to come back and work for this company. At other sites I don't care about the other wrestlers, and there I get to let my angry side come out." I asked him which was harder, being the good guy or the bad guy. "Being the good guy is always harder," he said. "A bad guy can do anything. The good guy has to follow the rules." He tried to remember something Doctor Who (he's a fan) once said: "Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many." Which I took to mean that he thinks that it's the rules that make a good wrestler "good." Being violent by nature, he needs rules to keep his "angry side" in check.

Besides Quinn Harper, who else at UCW needs to be put in his place? "Eli Black," he said, "obviously. Me and Eli have this little feud going on right now. I'm surprised we haven't had a match yet. I think Bodyslam is waiting till things between us reach a boiling point before putting us together in a match." Axel seemed to have a special animosity towards Eli, who would be arriving for scheduled matches the next day. He explained, "He likes to act like he's the greatest, but, as we all know, he lost to Joker. Of all people. And he still hasn't had the belt." Axel was the first wrestler to wear the UCW championship belt. "Other people have been in the company a lot shorter time than Eli and have accomplished a lot more. The only thing he has to show for all his hard work is a little slave. And a [homemade, cardboard and duct-tape] belt that looks like it was made by a fifth grader."

The "little slave" Axel spoke of is Private Jack Marino, who after losing to Black several months ago, was forced to serve as Eli's errand boy slash whipping boy. Black often carried Marino bound and gagged to his matches, as both a souvenir of his domination of the young soldier and a backup if Eli found himself in a tight spot in a match. "Private Jack was a huge find for us," Axel told me. "And I hate to admit it, but Eli Black deserves credit for bringing him to us. Unfortunately, he's in the military, and he's away on active duty now. We're not sure when he's coming back." He said that Jack was hoping to be deployed overseas soon. "Our main hope is that no harm comes to him, and we hope he'll be coming back to UCW. He's one hell of a fighter, and the Army is lucky to have him."

I asked Axel about UCW's future plans. He said, "I definitely would like to see us acquire a new space. The garage has been good for us, but the company needs  a change of venue to grow. We've been looking for a bigger space. There's been talk of getting a ring, but there's also  question about whether that's right for UCW. The no-ropes, bare walls, open fight space is what has made UCW unique among other web sites. By moving to a ring, we risk sacrificing our identity." In response to a question about new talent, Axel tells me that he and Bodyslam attended the Philly Pride Festival earlier this month, passing out brochures to several hot guys who looked like real prospects for the company. "We're hoping to get some of those guys to wrestle for us." Word of mouth is one way the company builds its roster, and it even offers a finder's fee to its wrestlers who recruit other wrestlers. But this approach to roster-building has not been as successful as hoped for. "It's kinda like Fight Club," Axel told me, "not a whole lot of our fighters talk to others about the fighting side of their lives."

The topic of Axel's new body came up. Even more than the photographs demonstrate, I got a sense of Axel's being heavier and harder, especially in his neck, shoulders, and upper back, than he was when I last saw him. Fans have responded to his physical changes in a "huge" way. "If you were to put a picture of me now next to me when I started at UCW, the difference would be obvious." He's trying to add lean mass slowly, not bulk up too quickly. He's lowered his intake of sugar and processed foods. He takes in 3000 calories a day, which he monitors on his smart phone. "I listen to my body pretty closely," he said. In the morning he works out with weights. In the evening he trains in jujitsu. He works out four to six days a week, sometimes twice a day. Then, of course, there's the fact that he wrestles for a living. "There's no miracle drug. It all comes down to looking at what you eat and how active you are." Right now he's going to school to become a personal trainer. He said he plans to start using the UCW video-blogs to pass on information about fitness, stretching, "even stuff you can do to improve your conditioning while watching TV."

"Because I'm in such good shape now, I get more offers to model. Plus there's a chance I might be appearing on a TV show later this summer." I begged Axel for more information about his acting prospects. But he suddenly went tightlipped on me, and, besides, the pork chops were ready to eat.

Axel and Bodyslam scour Party City for props and costumes for upcoming matches and the Fourth of July

Quinn Harper

Axel 

Bodyslam

Quinn

Quinn looks like he means business during our interview in Bodyslam's office

Quinn, in a more reflective moment

The planning board for the weekend's match schedule

Quinn watches himself in a match against Ashley Decker

Nick Diesel, whom (speaking of Freudian slips) I kept calling "Dick"

Pork chops and cajun-style beans and rice

Axel chats with me about the burdens of leadership

Quinn preparing to shoot a video interview with me in the garage

Quinn and me in the garage

Daddies I'd Like to Wrestle

It's Daddy Day at the old Skull Island compound. I like to imagine that, after a long day of training my crack team of smooth and lean fight-bois, I wrestle their daddies after lights-out. After the twinks are asleep, I can stop picturing myself as a slender 160-pound hipster-heel who targets go-go boys and fraternity brothers. Instead, I expand and solidify and go for bigger game. We pull out the steel cage and prepare ourselves to make it roar. These guys could make it happen, too. Happy Father's Day, bros. Pick a daddy or two, tuck an illegal weapon into your trunks, and let the rumble begin.

STR8cam Jeff

Samuel Colt (?)

Angelo Peterson

Tommy Tucker

Dean Coulter

No name on this one. Help me out, if you can.

Pavel Petel

Vincent Greco

Jessy Ares

Michael David Barre