In the brief gap between Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and the Power Rangers, the WWF was the craze in the United Kingdom: selling out Wembley Stadium, saving a sticker album company and proving the musical theories of Simon Cowell. This is the story of that craze, told in a way that captures both the numbers and the magic. Such a project (which I must enviously confess I had considered as a book pitch myself and never followed through on) could have been approached in several ways. It could have been a straight recap of the on-screen product in the same vein as multiple PPV history/home video history releases. It could have been a business analysis of the boom and bust in both ticket sales and merchandising as WWF led Sky TV to a growing market. Or it could have been interview based, getting the experiences of those who worked in the industry or experienced the fandom. Herbert’s winning approach is to combine all three. There’s extensive details of the UK tours from the London Arena debut in 1989 to the lesser-known afterlife of Shawn Michael’s Survivor Series Knights in 1993. But this is interspersed with deep dives into every element…
