Pro Wrestling Books

Following on from his biography of little known British wrestling pioneer Douglas Clark, Steven Bell turns his attention to perhaps the two best known British wrestlers of their generation. The story of Dynamite Kid in particular is well-documented through his own groundbreaking autobiography and other titles including the memoirs of Bret and Bruce Hart and Heath McCoy’s history of the Stampede territory. Bell combines material from these and other books with original interviews, most notably with Ross Hart and the Billington family, providing illuminating details about home lives and some more amusing incidents from life on the road. Bell’s literary approach is both the greatest strength and weakness of the book. Rather than having quotes from any of the participants or sources, it’s presented almost in the style of a novel. This certainly makes for a consistent voice and a highly readable account. However, it can make it harder to assess the origin or validity of some of the content. Most notable are sections which include lengthy exchanges of dialogue created by Bell. While the introduction makes clear that “some minor details and dialogue are imagined”, some readers may still find these sections a little jarring, particularly where they aren’t…

With this title aimed at a niche audience, it is a fittingly in-depth work that will satisfy the most curious reader. The book follows a simple premise: follow the first 10 significant independent promotions to launch in Japan following the establishment of All Japan and New Japan as top dogs. With more than 500 pages in the book, this means each is explored in depth, including its origins, demise and a combination of in-ring and backstage development. Compared with the largely similar approaches of the existing promotions, the first thing to stand out is the sheer variety of in-ring styles of the 10 groups featured here, including shoot style (UWF, PWF-G, UWFI-i, RINGS), high-flying (Universal Lucha Libre), mixed martial arts (Pioneer Senshi, Seishin Kaikan) and violence (FMW) along with the more traditional styles of Japan Pro-Wrestling and Super World Sports. The accounts of each promotion are written in a self-contained manner, bringing pros and cons. It highlights and reveals the connections between the groups, particularly the perhaps underappreciated importance of Hisashi Shinma to the Japanese scene. However, it does mean some elements of repetition for those who plough through the book as quickly as possible. For anyone but the most…

To misquote Donald Rumsfeld, most books of this type tell you things you didn’t know about wrestlers you know. This one tells you things you didn’t know about wrestlers you didn’t know. In comparison to the first two volumes of the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame series, this is something of a mixed bag. The main limitation is that many wrestlers were either covered in depth their role as a Canadian or a tag team member, or were better suited to a book on babyfaces (which indeed followed this one.) Such wrestlers are either left out of this book altogether or given only a brief coverage here. In particular, some of the profiles of wrestlers from the 21st century feel both too short and padded out with quotes reused from third-party interviews. While the publishers may have preferred more recognisable names, covering a narrower range of wrestlers in more depth would have improved the book overall. It’s the older eras that make the book, however. The heels of the territorial era are covered with the familiar detail of this series, complete with insightful interviews with the wrestlers and their peers. The highlight is certainly the sections on undersung villains of…