Wrestlers
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Wrestling is an ancient sport. We previously showed this sculpture by Vincenzo de Rossi, c. 1560, of Hercules wrestling Diomedes, who is fighting dirty.
One of the wrestlers in this Bob Mizer photo seems to have been inspired by Diomedes' technique.
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Wrestling was one of the Olympic sports in ancient Greece. Another sport was Pankration, a combination of wrestling and boxing, somewhat like modern mixed martial arts. The athletes were naked, like all ancient Greek athletes. Anything was allowed except biting and eye-gouging. Choking or strangling your opponent? Allowed. Punching or kicking him in the balls? Allowed. Breaking his fingers? Allowed (one fighter was known for doing this).
The Greek drinking cup above, c. 500 BC, depicts the Pankration. The two guys are fighting, although it looks like they're doing something else. If they are, that would have been allowed, too, since anything was allowed except biting and eye-gouging.
Here's an 1883 photo by artist Thomas Eakins of some of his students wrestling naked outdoors.
And here's a gif of wrestlers from Eadweard Muybridge's stop-motion photographs in 1887.
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Georg Lurich, an Estonian wrestler, posed as Hercules c. 1900.
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One of my all-time favorite photos is this guy in the sauna at a Finnish Army boxing and wrestling match in 1943. Talk about a hot guy! He's literally steaming.
Here's a wrestler weighing in at the London Olympics in 1948. If modern Olympic athletes competed naked like the ancient Greek Olympics, I might actually watch. Correction: I would definitely watch.
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The days of naked Olympic athletes are long gone, but in 1949, wrestlers of the Nuba tribe in central Sudan still competed naked. This photo by George Rodger shows the winner of a wrestling match being carried around in triumph.
Physique photographer Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild (AMG) studio made thousands of short mini-films from the 1950s to the early 1980s. The clip above is from a 1965 film called Albert Aldritch vs. Cliff James. The plot, if you can call it a plot, is that two young men meet, go out onto a patio or courtyard, get naked, and do some weightlifting, boxing and wrestling. This is the wrestling sequence from the film. Are they demonstrating good wrestling technique? That's not the point. The point was to show some young guys naked.
11 comments:
I don't know about wrestling technique but they do some lovely dance moves.
Only males were allowed into the stadium during the ancient Olympics, and you had to show your cock and nuts to get in I have a stamp from Estonia with George Lurich on it, but it doesn't show that magnificent uncut penis.
Fabulous post!
When I was working in Turkey 20 years ago, good Turkish colleagues took to me to see Turkish wrestling. They explained that wrestlers would often try to get their hands into their opponent's pants so they could grab and squeeze painfully their penis and scrotum, and have the opponent surrender. I can see how it could have developed from the pankration.
i still dont know why they have to be naked in sports event, can someone explain to me, my first thought is they can move freely when doing sports and that was rule back then because nudity was normal amongst men
The ancient Greek Olympic Games were held in honor of the god Zeus. The nudity of the athletes represented purity of the soul as well as the body. When an athlete won, it was thought that the athlete, in his natural, pure state, had been blessed by Zeus. Very different from modern religion.
Reminds me of how plains tribes often had two men's societies, one for men with long foreskins (as in "fully erect and I still default to my head being completely covered") and one for men with short foreskins (as in "even flaccid I'm at least partially exposed").
Both societies would meet naked in the warmer months, simply forgoing the loincloth in the colder months. Though they did wear a few things.
The long foreskin society (called naked dancers) wore either a wisp of grass to keep their foreskins forward or a leather strap, if they had earned a feather. The leather strap would then be tied to a red feather. (All of this had to be removed to urinate, by the way.) They also painted their breast with a red bison rampant, who was himself aroused.
The short foreskin society, known as Sluka (basically a word for erection, and not even the most common word) went with more paint, painting their noses red, and sometimes the glans as well. They also wore a white feather, the tip dyed red.
Both societies had a no flight rule. The short foreskin men pinned a sash in place. The long foreskin men tied their penises toa stake. Plenty of room to maneuver, though.
Here's the thing: You cannot release yourself, so, yes, there was an entire warrior society that expected another dude to touch their dicks after battle.
Though I must note they saw the exposed glans as indicating impure thoughts.
What's amazing is how much Gnosticism still influences modern Christianity. The preoccupation with sex, the idea that the material world is evil. But NEVER suggest that one should surrender as many worldly possessions as possible, or stage an elaborate suicide like Jesus does in the Gospel of Judas.
In sone sports where speed wins, clothing can be a handicap that slows you down. An example is in the movie biography of Jim Thorpe, where a track coach is amazed at how fast Jim can run in street clothes and wonders how much faster he'd be in track shorts. One explanation of nude Greek Olympics was that others followed the example of a runner who accidentally lost his loincloth and won that race. For uniformity, maybe all of the contestants copied that lack of attire, even in sports where clothing wasn't a hinderance.
Nude games were entirely male only, including spectators and officials. After a mother attended her son's wrestling match as his coach, even they had to be naked.
Wrestling would be so much more interesting if the men were naked. As long as there weren't any 'grabbing the balls and squeezing' allowed!!! I think that besides me enjoying watching, I certainly think that the wrestlers would enjoy the body contact.
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