While it’s only fair to review a book after reading it in full, first impressions are also important. With that in mind, here are some initial thoughts on many recent releases. They are based on the free sample on Kindle, which usually includes somewhere up to the first 10% of the total book. Kicking Down Doors… by LJ Tracosasis an authorized WWE book covering the history of female wrestling. Written in full kayfabe mode, it looks like it falls into the obvious trap of having to simultaneously push the idea that the promotion revolutionized womens wrestling in 2015 while avoiding any suggestion it treated female performers unfairly at any time before that. This includes the particularly baffling comment that after losing the womens title to the Fabulous Moolah/Spider Lady (with no acknowledgement of the double-cross by the promotion), a devastated Wendi Richter “walked out of the arena and out of WWE for good, but with the satisfaction of knowing that she had changed WWE – and the way the world saw its female Superstars – forever.” Donald Trump and the Kayfabe Presidency: Professional Wrestling Rhetoric in the White House (Rhetoric, Politics and Society) by Shannon Bow O’Brien appears to be…
An in-character account by “The Animal” would have been a short read, but this attempt to capture his true voice disappoints. The book is presented as a first-person account in the words of Jim Myers (the man who portrayed Steele in the ring), but several style choices mean that even if this is how Myers speaks, it doesn’t feel natural. One problem is the repeated inclusion of extraneous facts that nobody would include in normal conversation. For example, when discussing his dyslexia, Myers/Steele mentions the “Dick and Jane” series and for some reason notes the authors, the publishers, the formal name of the series and even the years during which they were published. This ramps up to the extreme later on where we have several pages of the history of Joe Louis’s career leading up to barely a paragraph of Steele’s recollection of the time he refereed one his wrestling matches. Meanwhile a chapter about Steele’s appearance in the movie Ed Wood includes lengthy IMDB-style bios of every star in the production. Another issue is that a couple of chapters (covering Steele’s childhood and his time coaching sport students) are filled with lengthy first-person quotes from his peers and colleagues….
This account of Chris Benoit’s life and time in wrestling has been described as a true crime story. It reads like the case for the prosecution. (Before going further, I must say that had I been reading this book for “pleasure” rather than a review, I would have quit when I reached the point where the author refers to a group of sex workers as “subhuman ogresses”.) There is nothing wrong with a book on Benoit being extremely negative about him and the wrestling industry — indeed, it would be bizarre for that not to be the case. It’s also not inherently wrong to write a book that seeks to make an argument and concentrating solely on examples that back up that point. Once you accept a book is effectively just a list of every shitty part of Benoit’s relationship with pro wrestling, you can concentrate on the inescapable truth that there sure are a lot of shitty parts to list. The problem with Ring of Hell, however, is the absolute lack of nuance or ambiguity that is a part of even the grimmest reality. Almost everything in the book is stated with absolute certainty, with no room for doubt…