Wrestling & Sports In General

[kumu]

I have watched a few UFC matches on TV. The guys all have great bodies and they often wear nice small trunks. I appreciate that. What gets me to thinking is the positions they get in. Face to crotch, crotch to crotch, crotch to butt, hand to crotch or butt, etc. If they were doing it for fun it would be considered porn, it would never be on TV, not a chance. But because its a fight not done for fun its fine family entertainment. I know a guy who was his high school quarterback, he swore the idea of getting turned on by having his hands on the center's butt never even crossed his mind. I just don't get that. Like with speedos themselves, some people like me respond erotically and for some its as non sexual, non erotic as a loaf of bread. When I was a kid I got off on the sports page--all kinds of athletes, and swimmers more than others. But as I said, for other people a speedo, a speedo clad swimmer, are no more erotic than a rock.

Its sort of a fetish thing. To some people business suits are sexy. To me, business suits are anti-sexy, their point is to convey Business and only Business. How inanimate objects acquire a sexual quality for people is a mystery to me. Speedos, football pants, bike pants, levis, black leather motorcycle jackets all seem to just scream Sexy to me, but jock straps or shoes or boots can do it for others. I do not get how a hunky guy in tight jeans and a black leather jacket can be seriously blind to the sexual image he is conveying. Or a football player. Or a swimmer in a speedo. Oh well. Life is a mystery.

[Byron]

Most interesting to read your reflections kumu - I can only agree and life is indeed a mystery.
How can a guy possibly believe he is not making a sexual statement if he has a great body and dresses as you describe for all to see (with pleasure for the likes of you and me).
You know of a football quarterback and it would be most interesting to hear also from a rugby player on this forum. If you look at their developed bodies and tight kit as they are today they are a lot different from a team of twenty years ago. Not only that, their after-match horseplay can be quite homoerotic (and not to forget the French calendar for Les Dieux du Stade
and their sideline employment in some instances as male models).

Many will say the sexual inferences in all of this mean nothing to them in the enjoyment of their camararderie - yet on the other hand we have had not so long back the CAPTAIN of the Welsh National Rugby Team coming out as gay after being conventional for many years of his life as a married man.

So, what can we understand from all this apparent confusion ? - perhaps try not to put a label on any of it and just enjoy whatever comes along amongst
the myriad ways in which human nature expresses itself.

[Torchwatch]

It takes ten years to produce a top sportsman, he will start as a child looking cute in his kit and progress through puberty and into manhood wearing state of the art sportswear for his sport. As he becomes professional our sportsman's sportswear becomes his working clothes, be it speedos, cycle skin-suits, or a football uniform. His body become a working tool set that he will improve through training. I have seen young professional soccer players from the local team wearing wearing kit just to go to the shops to get snacks, it seems to be the policy to keep them in shorts during training days.
The concentration required by sport will place eroticism in the back of the mind, and the game in the front.
In an apparently heterosexual training squad there is no room to tell other boys or men how sexy they look in their kit, such feeling have to be repressed and replayed auto-erotically alone at home and never admitted.
Pro team players don't tend to come out until they are ready to retire the rewards and penalties are too great to do otherwise, and the wrestler although he may be all over his opponent's body, cannot afford to be seen to be aroused by the crowd.
That the press and supporters find sportsmen to be sexually exciting is without question, raunchy TV series like Footballer's Wives go to prove it.

[Byron]

LOL - to take your penultimate paragraph some of those boners on those fit college wrestlers sure are unhideable (if there is such a word) in their singlets !

[kumu]

Supposedly in the ancient Greek Olympic games competition was only by males and they were naked. Women were barred from viewing the games, as husbands of the community thought the view of superbly toned male athletes might challenge their wive's loyalty. Aah, the old Greek days. When it was just standard practice for males to love. And so it was, too, in pre contact Hawai'i. What absolute paradises those and maybe other cultures must have been.

[Byron]

Such love was well known amongst the ancient Greek soldiery but the elite of the Sacred Band of Thebes all lost in battle in 338BC.

[shaulis]

The Ancient Greeks were kind of lucky, if they lost they didn't kill the losing side. The Ancient Aztec and Inca among other cultures killed the losing side after their games.

[kumu]

That would be a big incentive to stay off the playing field. There is so much to admire about the Aztecs but they did seem to take the value of life really lightly. I guess if you compare that to our modern culture we, too, take life too lightly, but on a less regular basis, with wars every few years, and then everybody gets cancelled, not just the males. For a long time I've wondered if there's some biological basis to killing off surplus ("surplus") males. It happens a lot among our fellow mammals. Maybe us, too. Its pretty obvious not all the males that are born are necessary to breed the species. Killing off the extras with sacrifice like the Aztecs and others did or with wars like we do is one way of dealing with the surplus. Homosexuality seems to me to be preferable for a lot of reasons. Homosexuality fits in because non breeding males can contribute a lot of things to a society that need doing, so societies with homosexuality have a better chance of succeeding.

[SwimTeamSpeedo]

I always enjoyed the swim suit aspect of swimming, almost as much as the sport itself. To the point made above, as I got older, into high school and college, the work required to be competitive was hard. The chance to show it off in a very tiny, tightly fit suit that showed off every aspect of the body was part of the reward. Lots of guys who did not swim would ask how in the world I could wear such a tiny suit in front of people. A naive question for which there was no answer they would understand. The tiny suit was part of the art of the sport. Much like form fitting cycling attire is part of the colorful art of cycling. In swimming, I also always felt the guys had the advantage, our suits were less covering and more interesting than the female attire. It is why I love to run wearing a racing swim when at the beach (and in triathlons).

My second thought is that I think it is much more revealing for wrestlers in the form fitting singlets. At least swimmers had cold water and a pool. I had a freind who wrestled in high school and college. The times he had one of those "guy situations" he would tell me he had no way to hide it and no pool to jump into. He had it happen once while in an actual match and he said it was clearly displayed, even though he tried as much as he could to cover it. Clearly a predictament. It makes no sense, but to me a racing cut swimsuit is actually less showing than some larger form fit clothing.

STS

[Byron]

Yes, it happens: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zzwPCxrzvb0/TUPUM6yN1ZI/AAAAAAAAD9Y/8_VpvTLRmlw/s1600/boner+wrestling.jpg

[shaulis]

I have found that even jammers show more than a racing brief from personal experience. I know cyclists don't wear anything under their shorts because the extra seams will cut into their skin. Is that a reason why wrestlers don't wear anything under their singlets?

[SwimTeamSpeedo]

Agree with Shaulis on Jammers. I think the big difference is that the racing briefs keep everything in one place and there is little room for movement. Jammers, on the other hand, don't do that. Your stuff can go anywhere, even down the leg, which looks very obvious. The other drawback to Jammers is that when that happens, the only way to fix it is to reach down inside and adjust. With a brief its a quick hand movement to put all back in place.

[singletlover]

When I wrestled (in the 70's) we were to wear a jock strap. Years later when I coached, the jock went out of favor and the guys just free balled. Never seemed to bother them with out the jock. Personally I like everything confined and held in place.

[kumu]

Speaking of "adjusting". Once I saw a football game (on TV) where the guy who was going to do the opening kickoff was real nervous and continually adjusted his crotch. For some reason the kick off got delayed and delayed and delayed, but the cameras couldn't go off him because he was going to do the kick off. Millions of viewers were treated to the sight of that guy's hand fondling his crotch.