GETTING ON TOP
Why Greco-Roman wrestling is high on the list of fetishised sports that gay men love.
Greco-Roman wrestling is high on the list of fetishsed sports that gay men love. The bulges, the body contact, the lycra singlet… it all seems pretty clear why! But, writes Dr Joseph Brennan, there are other more complicated factors, historic and sociological, that make wrestling even more intriguing…
Opponents square-up for a match. They appear evenly suited; roughly the same age, height, weight and build. They are muscular but not in a gym-sculpted way; their muscles are rounder, denser, with a corn-fed fullness that’s in keeping with their youth.
There is a range of male bodies on display in wrestling, yet the men of this match are the kind that we, as gay men, are most familiar with: university aged, with the looks from of a Greek Adonis. In the modern sporting arena, wrestling is no longer contested in the nude, but the singlets the wrestlers wear today are so form-clinging they may as well be.
Wrestlers’ butts are especially plump due to their leg work, and as the bodies of these two men come together – manoeuvring as one entwined mass on the mat – the spandex/ lycra/nylon material of their uniforms reaches right between their muscular cheeks, surely touching their holes. Some competitors wear a jockstrap, but most prefer to go naked under their singlet, which means their bulge is also available for viewing. Sometimes they adjust themselves mid-match, their cock often directed up towards the chest in a state of seemingly constant semi-hardness.
The singlet is designed to mimic the sensation of naked wrestling, reducing friction between the men as each joust for superiority over the other, measured by pinning one’s opponent. This means the penis and scrotum are constantly available for grabbing, tantalisingly in reach – though such a move is forbidden.
In Ancient Greek wrestling schools, men would meet to hone their combat skills, discuss politics, philosophise and, on occasion, find lovers.
Instead, the men’s bulges glide against each other, naturally fattening as rubbing intensifies over the course of their contest.
At the height of these sweaty exhaustions, it is sometimes only the contrasting colours of the wrestlers’ uniforms that helps tell them apart: the two men are so deeply embedded in one another.
As a collector of homoerotic sport memorabilia, antique and vintage press photos especially, wrestling has always been top of my list. And I am not alone. Much of the sport’s homoerotic elements are appreciated by gay men like me and have been absorbed into gay culture.
THE GREEKS AGAIN
Much of gay history can be traced back to ancient Greece. Even our contemporary gym culture has its roots in the Greek municipal schools for exercise. The word “gymnasium” is derived from the Greek word gymnos, which means naked. This says a lot about our gym culture and the Greek-inspired appreciation for male athletic beauty.
In the same tradition of the gymnasium emerged male-only wrestling schools that, as Louis Crompton writes in his gay history (as traced to early Greece), were often “adorned with statues of Eros” the Greek god of love and sex, “as if to suggest that a beautiful physique might inspire a passionate relationship”. And it often did. In these wrestling schools, men would meet to hone their combat skills, discuss politics, philosophise and, on occasion, find lovers.
The Romans then adopted wrestling as part of their own traditions, many of which were modelled after Greek customs. For example, Wrestlers by Lysippus is a Roman marble statue from the First Century AD that was based on a lost Greek bronze from the Third Century BC. It depicts two muscular men naked and mid-wrestle, their bodies entwined. The “top” wrestler has his genitals pressed against the back of the man on the “bottom”. Yet the tables could still turn. For the balance of the bodies, as they have been sculpted, also reveals that the game is not yet over. This lends the work a sense of movement and anticipation, like the sport itself. It’s also reminiscent of the doggy position in gay sex.
The sculpture was discovered in pieces in a Roman vineyard in 1583 and has since been meticulously restored. It is now on display in the Uffizi Galleries in Florence. I have a replica of it which takes pride of place in my office. The sculpture can be virtually admired from all angles thanks to a 3D model created by Indiana University (viewable at digitalsculpture-uffizi. org). This particular sculpture is important, as it has shaped the perception of wrestling, even into the present day, and has helped stir appreciations for the sport among gay men.
AND THE AMERICANS
The Turkish have a wrestling tradition in which fit men, young and old, don leather pants, douse themselves in olive oil and take to an open field for a last-man-standing wrestle event. However, it is in America where the strongest connection between GrecoRoman wrestling and gay culture can be found. “Pro wrestling,” which is a theatrical performance, also has a gay followings but not to the extent that warrants discussion here.
America has always drawn on other cultures in shaping its own traditions. Think of the Greek system in college fraternities, of which, wrestling has also had an impact on the adoption of hazing practices, now wholly out of fashion (though still providing fodder for the homoerotic imagination in gay porn).
Wrestling’s origins are truly ancient. Its Greek and Roman roots are still alive to some extent as Greco-Roman wrestling is an Olympic sport. It was the American uptake of the sport, however, right from the British origins of their nation, that have forged the imagery we would most recognise, or fantasise about, today.
In a fitting tribute to its origins, it was in the high schools and colleges of the US that wrestling came to thrive, much like the wrestling schools of ancient Greece; though perhaps without the (almost) acceptance of sexfollowing-sweaty-combat in the ancient context – which is not to dampen gay fantasies, of course. Scholastic (high school) and collegiate (university) wrestling are the most vivid in the gay imagination.
Let’s start by exploring a key controversy associated with gay appreciation of wrestling, namely, that we have perverted the sport by pointing out – and incorporating into our culture – certain homoerotic aspects.
There is no shortage of historical accounts portraying gay men as “corrupting” male intimacy, especially in sports like wrestling.
In 1945, for example, US Sergeant Martin S Bergmann, on the “affliction” of the “chronic homosexual” in army settings, wrote: “the masculine society of the barracks and the close physical contacts in boxing, wrestling and other Army routines offer an excessive stimulus to the homosexual”. Bergmann provided psychiatric consultation services to the army.
Beyond Bergmann’s clinical and offensive use of “the homosexual” as a deviant individual is recognition, in a scientific context, of wrestling as excessively homosexually stimulating. Until relatively recently, wrestling was the sole dominion of men, which brings it into line with other male-dominated pursuits and locales such as boxing and the military. In fact, the Latin root of the word contest is con testis (meaning “with testicle”). And as with many exercises in all-male intimacy – such as bonding in boarding schools – these have long been catalysts for gay realisation.
Yet such realisations do not come without risk. As Bergmann notes: while witness and participation in army wrestling may appear as a “homosexual’s paradise… any attempt to satisfy his aroused senses would be fraught with more danger than similar overtures in civilian life”.
In fact, the military setting has been fraught with danger and complexity for gay servicemen into the present century thanks to US policies such as the 1993 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (repealled by the Obama Administration in 2011). This policy revived 1950s-era suspicion in the US that gay men are underhanded and “tricksters” and led to the pursuit and harassment of any who were suspected of being gay.
Sadly, anxieties around gay men perverting the homosocial innocence and masculine performance of wrestling continue today.
The 2014 film Foxcatcher, starring buff gay favourite Channing Tatum, is a case in point. In Foxcatcher, Tatum plays Mark Schultz, an Olympic gold-medal wrestler whose entanglements with John Eleuthère du Pont, an unhinged millionaire and wrestling enthusiast, culminated with (spoiler alert) the murder of Schultz’s brother.
Though initially positive about the portrayal, Schultz himself later unleased a tirade of death and violence threats on social media when critics began reading a sexual undertone between his character and du Pont. His change of heart about the portrayal was due to “all these idiot critics and reviewers who have been trying to imply a sexual relationship,” Schultz told The Guardian in 2015.
The penis and scrotum are constantly available for grabbing, tantalisingly in reach – though such a move is forbidden.
There was one scene in particular that garnered audience attention, where the two men engage in an impromptu, darkened wrestle that some interpreted as gay sex. Schultz’s vehement rejection of the film following homoerotic interpretations is a textbook example of “homosexual panic”.
It serves to illustrate the precarious position that overt expressions of male-to-male athletic action still holds today. (Those in search of a more light-hearted homoerotic wrestling film are advised to try 1985’s Vision Quest, while Gregg Araki’s 2018 Riverdale episode also provides good homoerotic fodder.)
In my view, Schultz’s rejection of homoerotic potential in his sport is classic denial and failure on his part to reconcile that the act of wrestling is sexual, and unequivocally so.
Sex has long been conceptualised as a wrestling match, and of one person overpowering another – “fucking” is not possible otherwise. The sexual charge of the act of wrestling is inescapable. That’s why straight men love female mud wrestling; because it’s almost sex between scantily-clad partners.
Schultz’s panicked and verbally violent response when confronted with this reality also conforms to a familiar narrative: where straight-identified men react violently to any inference that they feel calls their sexuality and manhood into question.
…OR AN INEVITABLE ENDZONE?
So, what are the sexual realities of wrestling? Sidney H Phillips makes a compelling case when he argues that gay boys face “an atmosphere of sexual overstimulation” in their everyday lives. This includes in their schooling and rituals of male bonding, which have traditionally been based on implicit heterosexual norms. This is a situation that is starting to change, of course, yet I suspect such scenarios will ring true for many readers, especially those of a vintage earlier than the YouTube generation.
Many among us will recall experiences from their formative years where otherwise ordinary events of boy-to-boy intimacy became imbued with the eroticism of a burgeoning sexual awakening.
One memory of mine involved the nightly naked roughhousing among the lads of a summer cricket camp. It was the most erotic, towel-flicking two weeks of my adolescence, watching the moon reflect off the bare asses of dozens of young, fit cricketers darting through the dorms of a posh Sydney boarding school. Ironically, it also culminated in the spectacular failure of my father’s experiment to invest in masculine pursuits that might mould me into a more conventional young man.
As a psychiatrist at the Yale School Of Medicine, Phillips – who is openly gay – brings a weight of case history evidence to his sexual-overstimulation hypothesis, drawing on experiences shared during sessions with a number of his gay patients, both adolescents and adults, including a number of episodes of childhood voyeurism, similar to my own private school cricket camp experience.
Wrestling comes up in an early memory of one of Phillips’ patients, where the patient recalls that he would orchestrate situations with his male friends of interest that would require them to be shirtless and to wrestle, “so I could touch him and press my body up against his,” the patient recounted.
In Phillips words, everyday exposure to sexual over-stimulation that is unseen by most leads to “a tantalized inner-world of longing” for gay boys and men. It’s little surprise, therefore, that wrestling, the most unabashed display of male-to-male intimacy that is popular among young men, yet is still governed by heterosexual norms, has been carried over so vigorously into gay culture and actual sex.
IT’S BASICALLY GAY SEX
In their 2017 essay, Wrestling With Masculinity, Andrew Delfino and Jay Mechling make a provocative point, arguing: “wrestling both is and is not sex”.
Drawing on the work of Alan Dundes, the pair point out that underlying all male contests, from verbal duels to football, runs a key theme. Namely, that proving one’s masculinity comes by feminising a male opponent and that, in Dundes’ words, “the victory entails some kind of penetration”. Further, Dundes argues that the fear of symbolic anal sex comes to act as the ultimate dominating factor, energising the contest.
This explains the overt homoerotic nature of sporting vernacular. Footballers drive toward other men’s “endzone” and hockey players slap their puck into the “crease” for example. In other words, in competitive male sport, the endgame is to symbolically fuck your opponent in the ass, a symbolism that is embodied in wrestling more so than any other sport.
Typically, male-to-male intimate acts in sport – a grab of the butt following scoring in soccer, for instance, are carefully framed as “playful” and “part of the game”.
But wrestling is more intimate still and seems to blur the line between symbolic and actual anal sex. Wrestlers adopt positions and perform holds that closely resemble gay sex positions. Even the language is overtly gay. A wrestler can be either “on top” or “on bottom” with the top position indicating dominance, and the potential for victory; though not always. Sometimes victory can be obtained from the bottom position, when the bottom’s grip is strong enough to bring his opponent’s shoulders on to the mat and claim victory.
In other words, both top and bottom positions can be positions of power, and versatility – the ability to oscillate between positions in the heat of the wrestling match, to get on top from a bottom position – is highly prized.
Survey research has shown that the majority of gay men identify as versatile in their sex lives, with the most recent research placing this number at 50 per cent. It is one of the great freedoms of gay sex. With versatility comes the unique opportunity to experience pleasure from both dominance and submission.
Wrestling celebrates the masculine advantages of submission.
Delfino and Mechling illustrate this with reference to a popular T-shirt they have observed being worn at wrestling matches. The shirt sets out “Ten Reasons To Date A Wrestler,” the top three of which makes the homoeroticism of the sport clear: “3. Can score from any position. 2. Never stalls on bottom. 1. Knows how to ride.”
To ride a man, of course, evokes being astride his dick, something to keep in mind the next time you watch a wrestling match.
With its built-in homoerotic intimacy, it’s little wonder wrestling has been absorbed into gay culture. “Wrestling” is often used as an adjective for gay identity, as in, “he was wrestling with his sexuality”. The act of wrestling is a popular form of gay foreplay and is sometimes performed during sex.
My husband may not be delighted to read this but one of my hottest memories is of wrestling with a martial arts ex of mine. He was a fourth den black belt at the time so often ended up on top, which I didn’t mind in the slightest. In fact, the principles of that sport, it can be argued, can be beneficial to a healthy gay sex life.
Research has found that for those of us who are routinely topped in our sex life, “getting on top” for a change can function as an important means of maintaining a masculine self-image; this explains why wrestling singlets rank alongside swimwear and jock straps as popular sex-play gear in many a gay man’s bedroom.
The men’s bulges glide against each other, naturally fattening as rubbing intensifies over the course of their contest.
AND NOW A POPULAR PORNO
Just as the wrestling singlet is a popular choice for bedroom fuckplay, the sport itself has also been an important theme in gay porn.
Wrestling receives dedicated attention from “jock” studios such as Falcon and Next Door, their Buddies branch especially. My favourite is Next Door Buddies’ Perfect Practice, starring Rick McCoy and Tyler Torro.
McCoy fascinates me and was the subject of a research project I published last year in academic journal Porn Studies.
What is striking about this video is a longerthan-usual segue from narrative set-up or “webbing” (of McCoy receiving wrestling tuition, which accounts for 25 per cent of the video) to the inevitable hardcore sex (of McCoy getting schooled in a different way: being fucked by his tutor).
Holding off on the action serves, in my viewing at least, as a form of edging, as part of the foreplay, and allows for certain erotic elements – the singlet bulges and frictionless contact – to be dwelt upon.
As a viewer, I felt encouraged to engage in an (almost) genuine interest in wrestling technique as part of the sexual set-up; yet further evidence of the already sexual dimensions of the sport.
The scene reminds me why I collect antique and vintage wrestling materials: because they capture an erotic innocence and embrace male intimacy in a more ancient way. Modern homoeroticists like David DeCoteau, especially in The Frightening, fail to capture this.
Oddly, many misread the relationship between masculinity and homosexual desire. In 2013, Vladimir Uruimagov, a Russian wrestling coach, blamed “the gays” for a decision by the International Olympic Committee to drop wrestling from the 2020 program, a decision subsequently reversed. He believed we were behind the “blow to masculine origins”. The pleasures of puns astride, Uruimagov fundamentally misunderstood gay interest in the sport, namely, that we are among its biggest advocates. I suspect he would’ve found such interest distasteful had he been cognizant of it.
Today, gay interest in wrestling finds a life online through compilations of matches on tube sites like Pornhub, which highlight the appreciation that many of us have for the sport: an unabashed celebration of two ideal masculine physiques, struggling for dominance or submission in sweaty body-to-body embrace.
MORE: Dr Joseph Brennan is a media scholar specialising in male sexuality. His work on homoerotic sport includes essays on Tom Daley’s body and a controversial leaked image of Australian footballer Todd Carney. josephbrennan.com