Review: Austin Tyler vs. Ethan Slade (Muscleboy Wrestling)

Full disclosure: This video was sent to me by Muscleboy Wrestling.

MBW is teasing catalogue 14 on Twitter (it's now released), so I better get through the last two catalogue 13 videos I have. My penultimate review from this catalogue is Austin Tyler vs. Ethan Slade, which features two very different kinds of muscleboys. I’ll end with Scrappy vs. Joey McCoy on Thursday. That one has been been covered by both Ringside and W.R.’s Screencaps, but I just want to add to the gushing.

What about this match? Is it worthy of gushing?

It's pro vs. joe at MBW.

Austin Tyler is my reigning Cavey Award winner for Favorite Wrestler (shameless self-promotion). I thought he’d be out of the running for 2019, but we’re nearly halfway through the year and I’m still discovering these new and awesome matches. He looks great in pink and in comparison to Ethan, the indie pro looks like a beast and he wrestles like one.

While Austin fits my definition of a “muscleboy” more than Ethan Slade, the young porn actor definitely has his charms. Ethan is a handsome and very trim young man (Frank Sinatra's My Lean Baby comes to mind), which makes him a perfect victim for the powerful pro wrestler. He’s eager to moan, ripped like an anatomy chart, and extremely bendy. And he does get bent, folded and twisted a lot in this one.

Pretty in pink.

That's a bendy jobber boy.

I do love those legs. Damn.

Not surprisingly, this is a squashy match (90% Austin) and the outcome is never in doubt. Austin never really shows an obvious weakness like other MBW powerhouses, so the only guys I remember challenging him are bigger musclemen (e.g., his outstanding match against Nick Flex). Unlike most MBW matches, there are actually multiple submissions here, all going one way.

There’s not a ton of talking. The soundtrack is grunting, moaning and pained cries. Austin delights in his role as dominator, amplifying and extending the punishment, but he’s not really a heel. There’s no animosity (until the end after Ethan gets desperate). It feels like this is a job to the pro (nice work if you can get it) and Ethan is in no position to get cocky or trashtalk.

"And every night, when I hold [him] tight,
The feeling is nice, my arms can go around twice."
- My Lean Baby, Frank Sinatra

Ethan gets the full tour of the mat room.

I'm sure Austin squats a lot more than Ethan.

Action-wise, Austin’s experience makes this match really go. He knows more than enough moves to keep things interesting and the intensity up for 27 of the 30 minutes of wrestling. I prefer my squashes short, but there isn’t much repeated. The multiple falls works, because they’re natural breaks and Austin deserves to hear it after all his hard work.

Ethan puts up his best fight at the end, head butting Austin’s ample bulge (And why not? I mean, it’s right there, you can’t miss it). I love the repeated elbows to Austin’s taint. I was surprised, because I had Santa Claus do the same thing to his Elven opponent in my 2015 Christmas Day story. I also wrestled a guy who included a taint chop in his pro-fantasy repertoire, which is where I got the idea. It’s just plain fun and sexy to see Austin with his ass up being humiliated by the lean amateur.

Austin is methodically ruthless.

Butt Blaster? Ass Attack?

Austin's a beast in this one.

In the end, if you like these guys, you’ll like this. If you like the idea of a squash with a muscular pro wrestler crushing a skinny wannabe, you’ll like this. Austin’s skill makes it fly by and he never runs out of ways to torture Ethan. And the young jobber never runs out of moans and cries as he’s brutalized. The lone memorable reversal works, too.

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RINGSIDE: BLURRED LINES

So that’s my take. What’s yours?

Alex