Wrestling With Words
Author Hunter Whitworth has a forthcoming collection of short stories which includes one, Michael Fury vs The Dead, which deals with a wrestling theme. It’s scheduled for release on 8 December.. Whitworth has his own trivia note connection to the wrestling industry: he was a college classmate and sometime training partner of Austin Creed of the New Level.
An ambitious undertaking, this feels like at least three different books and none of them quite hit the mask. On paper, this is a biography of Rikidozan, but it opens with a list of names from Rick Santorum to Chris Benoit that trails some significant departures into wider wrestling history, decades after the subject’s death. It’s also a exploration of the societal effects of Rikidozan being a Korean man who not only downplayed his heritage when living in Japan, but became a true national hero in his adopted culture. The straight biography is well researched, but often meandering. There’s no shortage of material to work from, though the combination of relying on translations from Japanese and Korean, and the inherent deceptive nature and mythmaking of a pro wrestling icon’s life means even Muchnick’s work here leaves many open questions and conflicting accounts about Rikidozan’s life and career. It’s not a chronological account, instead skipping between subjects and themes. On occasion this means historical context is missing: for example, a lengthy exploration about fears and suspicions of whether Rikidozan might go off-script in his high profile matches with Lou Thesz lack impact because the book has not yet covered his double-cross…
Pro wrestling is a fictional world that exists in, is performed by people from, and blurs the lines with the real world. That’s an obvious statement, but one that creates a rich seam for exploration, which is what Lords of the Ring attempts to do. The book stems from a mid-2010s podcast series in which Higgins explored the intersection between pro wrestling and real world events and culture. In as much as there is a consistent theme to the book, it’s about the way wrestling handles social topics, often in challenging ways or with a lack of subtlety that borders on problematic. Most explicitly, Higgins speaks to dozens of pro wrestling figures such as the former Muhammad Hassan, Rico (on the Billy & Chuck gay wedding storyline), Effy, Mark Henry, Rikishi and the former Eugene about their portrayal of characters with distinctive traits. While there won’t be a lot of new detail for long-term wrestling fans, there are some surprising insights, with the most compelling being the contrast between those who portrayed something they were not (Hassan as an Arab-American, Eugene as somebody with a developmental disorder) and those for whom the characteristic is both an in-ring persona and a…
