All Good Fun

Bruce Ballard rubs his superior Rock Hard Wrestling experience in Blake Keller's face, naming the basic parts of the wrestling ring--ropes, turnbuckles, mat--as if the new hire had never seen a ring, much less wrestled in one. Six-foot-two Blake listens good-naturedly and then shoots back with cracks like "Don't get short with me"--like five-eleven is short?

Bruce is on the cusp of cute and gorgeous, with a wide aw-shucks grin straight from Mayberry and a rock-hard physique from Mount Olympus. Blake is strapping, fit, and ready to rumble. He lacks Bruce's finesse, but he makes up for it with the raw, no-nonsense force of somebody who gives poundings that still smart a month later.

The match is right out of the official RHW recipe book: collar-and-elbow lockup leading to boot-stomping, then one or two suplexes followed with your choice of elbow drop or kneeing, then (in any order) a medley of bearhug, chinlock, back and torso stretch, and not strictly legal use of the ring ropes. Reverse and repeat. Sprinkle liberally with extra boot-stomping and ab-punching to taste, turn up the heat and simmer till skin is flushed and shiny.

It's not so much the recipe, though, as the freshness of the ingredients. Where does Rock Hard find these big boys? Is there a brochure? In five years RHW has introduced and polished the talents of some of the brightest stars of underground wrestling. In addition to being one fine specimen of fleshliciousness, Bruce Ballard knows how to command attention, my attention, with a combination of arrogant swagger and contempt for his opponent's pain, topped with a dollop of good, clean fun.