One of the psychological things I find fascinating and amazing about wrestling is just how respectful two wrestlers will be of each other's genitals in a contest that could really inflict some pain and damage on them.

You can see that in this pic. The top man there could easily ram his elbow or whole arm into the crotch of his opponent whom he's trying to defeat.

But he wouldn't even think of it.

Males, when they wrestle, will have an instinctive resistance to really hurting the one thing on their opponent that makes them male, makes them fight, and makes them sexual. Partly due to the perfect location of genitals protected between the legs, and partly that wrestlers are trying to show genetic dominance of muscular strength, skill, and courage, the genitals are always there in a nude match, totally exposed and vulnerable and yet are not the focus of the fight.

I think that's really cool. Other than a reverse crotch grab that is done more as a reminder that the top man is in control, or crotch flip that can raise the level of aggression of a match, wrestlers will usually show an instinctive respect for their opponent's penis and testicles.

It must be built in to us. Everytime I've wrestled naked I have encountered the same mutual respect.

In college I took a lot of History because I wanted to know how we got to where we were.

I had read about the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans doing sports in the nude and wondered with excitement for years what it must have been like. One reason for doing sports naked was that temperatures in the Mediterranean world allowed for naked athletics outside. And of course they didn't have stuff like spandex or nylon. They also were not ashamed of their naked bodies because Judeo-Christianity had not come along and told them to think that way -- yet. And the use of olive oil on the skin was not so much to make fighting erotic, but to protect the skin from friction with the hard mud mats they used. Even when we wrestle today we use skin "protectant" to help prevent staph infection.

For instance in my high school world history book I remembered a picture of a wall relief from ancient Egypt of wrestlers doing all kinds of moves on each other. Dozens of them. It really turned me on then and I was only about 14 at the time. There was no internet to do research or to connect with people of similar interests so I just kept the "fantasies" to myself.

Now I realize what a common desire it really is. We've all been suppressed males for centuries. I don't consider myself anti-religious in any way. But I think that the Judeo-Christian influence (especially the Old Testament) has had a strong influence on the Western World regarding a disdain for nudity and attraction among males.

Phallic amulets worn by Hellenized Judaic soldiers

In College I took Greek and then Roman History at a public university which was much more open about facts in history than the Christian school I had gone to. It was then that I began to piece together how the Western World became so homophobic. After 330 B.C. the Greeks conquered the Eastern Mediterranean (including present day Israel). They overlaid it with sexually liberal ideas and their brand of individuality. This Hellenic sexual freedom -- including nude wrestling, nude boxing and nude no-holds-barred fighting or pankration -- was quickly adopted by young Jewish males of course, but was found repulsive by Jewish elders. Writings in the later Old Testament directly state this, especially referencing the practice of not getting circumcised. An uncircumcised penis would definitely be better for nude wrestling I think.

pankratiasts

Centuries later when Christianity basically becomes the ruler of the Western World these Judeo-Christian ideas of sexual physical shame would overlay sexual attitudes for centuries. Which is where we are today.

Now that is a massive amount of History in a nutshell. But it is fairly accurate I think.

I also think that, in part because of the internet and it's exchange of ideas, we are moving back to an age of individual personal freedom -- I hope.

At the wrestling club I go to anyone can join and wrestle. Gay, straight, or whatever the hell else a guy claims to be at that moment.

We call it shut-up-and-wrestle. I'll try to stick a guy to the mat whether he's gay or straight or whatever. When I wrestle him, I just want to beat him. We can be friends later. And we usually are.

Anyway I could write a book on this; maybe I should.

Cause basically the ancient Greek Olympics were an all male, month-long sex fest. Males only. Totally physically fit males who wrestled, boxed, fought, ran, competed, ate, slept, and bathed together for a whole month, once every 4 years. That's what the Olympics were really about. Had nothing to do with advertising or other stupid bullshit like what we have today.

I thought it would be cool to have a place somewhere that gets hot every summer that is set up for sports - naked of course - where athletes could plan on coming to every summer to compete. If it was in the same place it could be maintained without having to build a bunch of new athletic buildings in a new city every time like we do with the modern Olympics.