#chris colt

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Saturday Scissor Series

The recent Dark Side of the Ring episode featuring Chris Colt (Season 5, Episode 6) mentions his participation in gay porn after his wrestling career ended. I got the sense he must've made numerous adult videos, but I found a website explaining that he really only appeared in two such films, both for the same company (Palm Drive Video) and both having a wrestling theme:

Uncut: Pro-Wrestler Chris Colt 

Sex Aggression: Jack Husky's First Night at Chris Colt's Wrestling Academy

Today's Scissor clip is from the second video, which I was able to find on a porn website. In the clip, we see Colt, shirtless in jeans, giving his trainee a prolonged Headscissor and torturing his nipples.

So it seems Chris Colt was not only a pioneer and innovator in mainstream wrestling, but also as an early producer of Wrestle-Porn on video. His Sex Aggression film came out in 1990 at a time when home VCRs were still fairly new and very little explicitly gay wrestling content was being filmed. (I found an early BG video called "Live at Phantom 1" filmed in 1988, which had to be one of the first wrestle-porn videos, but that was a public show so I doubt it involved actual sex as depicted in Colt's avant garde films.)

According to the article describing his porn work, Colt was aware that many guys get off on wrestling and would even pay for private sessions with pro wrestlers, so there was clearly a market for wrestleporn for at-home viewing. Colt also wanted his videos to expose the hypocrisy of the homophobic, closeted fanbase by outting pro wrestling -- by pointing out that it's, of course, super gay. Colt knew that lots of wrestling fans will pay for matches if you make them just a bit more homoerotic than the televised version.

[suspiciousbehaviorproductions]

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I don’t know how much footage even exists, or how plausible it would be to do something like this, but I would love to see a “Dark Side of the Ring” episode devoted to the story of Chris Colt. He had a truly wild career, threw himself into innovative gimmicks, caused at least one riot while high on peyote at a show, and was openly gay (well, openly gay to the wrestling industry) at a time when that was practically unheard of (”Colt” was the name of his favorite “male model” magazine). His life had a pretty dark trajectory, and he died of an AIDS-related illness in 1996, supposedly during a period of homelessness. 

In his 1970s prime, he was supposedly one of the best workers in the United States (although fantastically unreliable, given his fondness for incredibly terrible drugs), but there’s almost no video of his matches, and he was out of the business by the time the WWF was taking over the world in the mid-1980s. He’s one of the many fascinating wrestling figures who basically doesn’t exist in the WWE-approved version of wrestling history, which makes him all the more intriguing to me.

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Vintage Comic - Colt .45 #04

Pencils: N/A Inks: N/A Photo: Chris Colt (Wayde Preston) Dell (Feb-Apr1960)

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More Chris Colt hotness. So wonderfully gay, even without my colorful shading! This sparkling queen knew exactly what the audience wanted to see in their pro wrestling (even if they didn't know it themselves yet.)

[wrestlingarsenal]

Below are excerpts from this article about the Hell's Angels gay tag team -- Ron and Paul Dupree (aka Chris Colt) -- from the July 1969 issue of Inside Wrestling that I recently stumbled upon.

Before exposing their big secret, the article describes how they got together as partners when Ronnie Dupree, tired of playing a Good Guy, went looking for his biker brother, Paul, in San Francisco so they could form a Heel team.

[By the way, I had to look up "Frank Merriwell," the character that Ronnie Dupree was likened to. This was a fictional character in old 1900s dimestore novels, continuing on to 1950s comic books. Merriwell was the ultimate Boy Scout, an older version of Gallant from Goofus and Gallant. He was a model of healthy, obedient, positive behavior for straight American lads to hopefully take after.]

(The above image is NOT from the 1969 Inside Wrestling article.)

Back to the article, which included the following photo of the "brothers" in their leather vests with Paul down on his knees:

How implicitly gay can you get with Paul's face at bulging crotch level?

The next part of the story provides a kayfabe explanation for how Paul (aka Chris Colt) was convinced to take up pro wrestling in addition to biking.

Of course Paul refuses to abandon his biker buddies. Motorcycle gangs have long held gay overtones and homosexual associations in the popular imagination since they began in the 1940s and 50s. I mean the whole point of the hobby is to go around with other bad boys in leather, while your vehicle offers no easy way to bring your wife and kids along for the ride. There were even explicitly gay biker gangs like the Satyrs, founded in 1954. And of course, one of the Village People (a 1970s gay disco band) had to be a biker -- an icon of gayness.

I recently read an article claiming that the actual Hell's Angels members would kiss each other on the lips, supposedly to shock the squares in their vicinity... Even the 2024 film The Bikeriders about the rise of motorcycle clubs included a really, really gay conversation between the two (ostensibly) straight male characters.

So during the 1960s and 70s, you couldn't BE any sketchier, any more gay adjacent (or outright gay) than to don leather gear and join a (male only) biker gang. And this is exactly the gimmick adopted by the Duprees, as noted in the article -- how much louder could they possibly scream, Yes we are totally gay!?

My next post will reveal the shocking secret that, according to the article, these bikers/wrestlers are trying to hide. Prepare to be underwhelmed.

To be continued...

[wrestlingarsenal]

Let's continue our review from yesterday of this tell-all exposé of the Hell's Angels tag team, published in the July 1969 issue of Inside Wrestling. The photos and text that I'm posting are taken from that article. Toward the end of the article, we finally begin to learn about the big secret the Dupree Brothers are hiding:

So this is their big secret?? That the brothers will cut each other's hair. That is not very shocking. What else?

So we learn that they can cut hair and sew on buttons -- big deal. I want my 50 cents back!

Does their ability to sew on a button imply that they are weak and can't fight?? Actually back in 1969, that is exactly what it meant! To have domestic skills was to be possibly queer, and to be queer back then was to be weak, incompetent, submissive, and cowardly.

So for the fans who could read between the lines, this article is absolutely calling them gay and poking fun at the sissies from start to finish. There is no blatant accusation of sodomy, which would've probably gotten them thrown in jail in 1969 (especially if they're brothers, as the article purports, which would be even more scandalous!)

Instead, the descriptions of their behind-the-scenes activities are meant to raise our Gaydar Alarms. Noting their physical contact in the photo, calling Ronnie the "Golden Boy", using the term "domestic serenity" which implies marriage, and calling their needlework "a little fancy." Noting that they are actually "not that tough" -- i.e., not masculine. Mentioning that Paul lived in San Francisco (perhaps you've heard what goes on there!)

Also, dressing them up as bikers -- icons of queer counter-culture. Even the title of the article, Hell's Bells, seems emasculating given that a "belle" is a pretty girl.

These coded terms and imagery convey to a savvy reader these big strong bikers in their tuff leather vests are actually a couple of prancing nancies, probably sewing and doing raunchy gay stuff all night long -- we just can't print that in a magazine in 1969.

It's interesting how the Hell's Angels could travel around sharing hotel rooms, could dress as explicitly gay as they wanted with their bleached hair and Village People clothing, could be outted by these magazines -- yet in the ring, they maintained this veneer of threatening, merciless, hyper-masculine toughness.

It's as if partaking in pro wrestling and joining a biker gang are two of the most daring, dangerous, hyper-masculine activities a man could do. Yet if we look with a queer eye and dig into the behind-closed-door activities, pro wrestling and biker ganging can be the very gayest pursuits for a man. This dialectic is exactly what makes me (and I suspect Chris Colt) love pro wrestling so much.

Posted below is the entire three-page article if you want to dig more into the subtle outting of these "partners" and their shocking secrets:

[wrestlingarsenal]

So I've been diving deep into the wrestling career of the Heel known as Chris Colt -- searching for his rare 1970s matches on YouTube, and falling in love with him as one does with gay wrestling icons.

My obsession was kicked off by a recent episode of "Dark Side of the Ring" which aired on Vice earlier this year. I recently streamed it and couldn't help noticing Colt's blatant homoerotic energy, which was perhaps not clocked by most str8 fans at the time.

As with most wrestlers featured on "Dark Side," Colt's life story is filled with trauma, addiction, violence, and a sad ending. However, he was also really sexy, and gay, and clearly loved everything about pro wrestling. All of today's images are from the Dark Side of the Ring, Season 5, Episode #6, "Chris Colt: Welcome to My Nightmare."

His persona and his wrestling performances really captured my fancy. Like other 70's Heels using the Gay Master persona, he mixed queer hip-swiveling with aggressive brutality and eye make-up. He was a violent, sissified dick-tease, just how I like them. He liked to bite and scratch his opponents like a sassy bitch. His costumes were colorful and always super queer, and oftentimes either he, or his opponent, or both would end up bloody-faced.

His many innovations added entertainment value to pro wrestling which we still enjoy today. He was the first to adopt flamboyant Rock n Roll fashion, and first to use Entrance Music (in his case, Alice Cooper's "Welcome to My Nightmare.") He was one of the first to jump off the top rope onto a prone opponent. And most of all, he knew the audience wanted MORE than just the same old holds and finishers -- they wanted to see sex in the ring (as much as the law would allow.)

He was also gay IRL and didn't seem to care who figured that out (which was rare, and rather trail-breaking, during the homophobic 1970s.) And I'm sure he got bullied and blacklisted and possibly beaten because he happened to like men.

Check out the documentary and let me know if you feel the urge, like I did, to hug Chris Colt and tell him it'll be OK. You can hopefully find it if you have the Vice Channel on your cablevision. I know it's also available for streaming from Amazon Prime Video for like $2.99: