By Patrick Theodore
Special to YNOT

ALBANY, N.Y. – Upon the recommendation of a friend who works as a state assemblyman in New York, I took a shot at watching a new line of gay porn from a studio called UFC — which must stand for “Ugly Fucking Crackers” because aside from having nice musculature, most of the performers aren’t much to look at.

UFC promotes a genre of gay porn called “MMA,” or “Male-on-Male Action.” Apparently it has been around since the early 1990s, but somehow it has managed to stay off my radar as a gay porn reviewer all these years.

The video I watched, Gunnar Nelson vs. Brandon Thatch, started out in a promising fashion, with high production values and a great setup in which some very flamboyant and extravagantly-dressed man named “Bruce” introduced the two performers and bellowed something like “it’s time.”

I had hoped Bruce meant oral sex time, but evidently this meant it was time for the two guys to stare at each other while hopping around like a couple of bunnies on speed as a very large black man named “Herb” cryptically admonished them to “follow his commands at all times.”

From this, I deduced Herb must be the director of the video, but as the scene unfolded, the only aesthetic he seemed to care about was the bad look of someone hooking their fingers through the chain links of the cage in which Nelson and Thatch were getting it on. Other than that, he just sort of walked around the cage staring at them, almost as though he were waiting for a sign to jump in and join the fun. Sadly, my hope for an interracial element in the scene was never realized.

As for the aesthetics of the fighters themselves, Nelson is sort of a bear, I guess, with a nice red beard which seems like it would pleasantly highlight semen sprayed in his face during a pop shot. Once you get above the beard, though, this man definitely has a face made for radio, if you know what I mean.

Thatch is a bit more meticulously groomed, but he has this big, creepy skull tattoo that looks like someone let an ancient Mayan artist loose in San Quentin to scrawl prison ink on people while they’re drugged unconscious, or something.

Once the real action of the scene started, it became one of the most violent and least sexy things I’ve seen in more than 20 years of reviewing hardcore gay porn. Not only did these guys never once kiss, but they never even took their dicks out of their shorts!

Speaking of those shorts, I mean helloooo, could they be any tackier? And what the fuck is a “Xyience,” anyway? The shorts looked like the sort of thing California surfer dudes wore in the ’80s, but I’m not sure either Nelson or Thatch could make the “hang 10” hand symbol with those ridiculous little gloves on.

I do have to give Herb (or whoever the director was) some credit for originality here, because I’ve never seen porn in which the performers kick each other in the legs. Personally, I don’t find this arousing at all, but it might do something for the foot and leg fetish crowd.

After a sort of bitchy little slap fest, Nelson totally lost it and straight-up punched Thatch in the face — twice. Thatch fell on his butt, looking shocked but still conscious. It then became very clear who the “top” was in the relationship, as Nelson dropped down and started smothering Nelson with his whole body.

“Finally,” I thought to myself. “Now we’re getting to the good stuff.”

The two men grasped and struggled with each other and Nelson continued with what seemed like excessive harshness even during rough sex, at one point hitting Thatch in the face with his fucking elbow. Not only is this rude as fuck, but I’m pretty sure it left a mark so big it’s going to be hard to cover up, even with the most generous application of NARS Radiant Creamy concealer.

Anyway, through all this squeezing, writhing and bashing, Nelson eventually wound up underneath Thatch, with his legs wrapped around his partner. I kept straining my neck as I moved my head around in an attempt to see if there was any penetration going on. (What do I know? Maybe those awful shorts have little buttoned panels on them like old-school flannel pajamas.) This didn’t appear to be the case. I’ll say this much, though: with the faces Thatch kept making, it sure looked like someone was railing him up the ass.

At one point, Nelson worked his forearm under Thatch’s chin and started to choke him unconscious, literally. With his eyes bugging out like a cartoon character, Thatch started slapping Nelson’s arm and Nelson let go, so presumably, slapping someone’s forearm is Thatch’s non-verbal safe word.

I expected them to just change positions and get back to it, maybe with Thatch taking a turn on top, but the next thing I knew, Nelson was running around with his arms in the air like he’d just won an Olympic gold medal, while Thatch lay there on the ground, bloodied and exhausted.

At this point, I wondered what my friend in New York had been thinking when he recommended this UFC porn studio to me. Sure, I got semi-erect while Nelson was throttling Thatch from behind, but that was in anticipation of what was to come — which I certainly expected to include at least a little blowjob action and hopefully a reach-around or two.

The really frustrating thing is had he wanted to butt-fuck Thatch and give the guy’s cock a little tug at the same time, Nelson totally could have — and one has to assume Thatch would have preferred anal penetration to being elbowed in the face repeatedly.

Making matters worse, the entire scene — minus all the irrelevant setup with Bruce and Herb — lasted only about three minutes. Even with the short attention spans of the internet generation, this seems awfully short for what was supposed to be a “full-length,” uncensored scene.

I’m giving Gunnar Nelson vs. Brandon Thatch only two stars out of five. For all the excitement of the build-up, all the bouncing around and muscle flexing, the sex acts — if you can call kicking someone in the legs and choking them with your forearm a “sex act” — put way too much emphasis on the rough stuff for my tastes. Topping it all off, we never even get to see whether I’m right about how fab Nelson would look with cum dripping off his beard.

All in all, a very weak gay porn effort, UFC. Weak and lame.

Patrick Theodore is an erotic film critic who specializes in critiquing alternative gay porn genres and the author of the e-book “Enough with All the Firefighters Already: The Desperate Need for a More Diverse Range of Characters in Gay Porn.”

Image © Eric Langley