A hugely pleasant surprise, this is something of a sleeper hit on a subject that would not top most people’s lists of obvious wrestling book subjects.

The Bahamas, specifically Nassau on the island of New Providence, was largely an outpost for US wrestling territories. Just 180 miles from Miami it was actually closer than many other stops on the Florida territory, albeit requiring a plane ride. Indeed, the bulk of its heyday shows were as an outpost for Eddie Graham’s NWA operations, albeit with its own angles and titles. Douglass covers this in full, along with attempts at a local independent scene and the brief revival in the late 1980s when Dusty Rhodes returned to the short-lived PWF promotion.

The book skilfully uses a combination of contemporary newspaper reports and interviews with wrestlers from the period. Unlike with many such projects, Douglass has picked his quotes skilfully, clearly avoiding the temptation to use every fact and opinion his research threw up. It’s highly focused on the big picture story, with wrestlers speaking on topics where they had expert knowledge, insight or unique first-hand relevance. There’s also clearly labelled but informative speculation where Douglass explores why particular decisions were taken or what might have been happening behind the scenes with the relationship between promoters and local media.

Perhaps the most impressive element is the inclusion of historical non-wrestling political events and cultural developments. Too often these can feel like padding or clunky scene-setting, but here they are included solely to give important context to how the promotions could operate and why they made particular decisions about what talent to use and whether touring was profitable.

The later sections of the book feel a little out of place as there was little Bahamian scene to speak of after the 1980s bar the occasional WCW tour and misguided attempts at independent shows. Rather than come to a swift conclusion, the book instead turns in detail to the story of Omar Francis, the first wrestler from the nation to win a major title in the US – if, that is, you class the Ohio Valley Wrestling title as major. It’s clearly an attempt for a neat symbolic conclusion but, as interesting as the story is, the length of this section (which includes his entire training and independent career in detail) feels completely out of proportion in a broadly chronological history.

That certainly does not detract from the book as a whole, though. It’s a well-told history of an underreported “mini-territory” that paralleled the US scene while still having its own quirks and his highly recommended even for people who’ve given little thought to the topic.

Read on Amazon