While you might expect this to be a fantastic book given the author, it’s not only merely decent, but it isn’t Heenan’s best book.

Written with former PWI staffer Steve Anderson, the book is pretty slim at 192 pages of very large type. It’s a slightly unconventional format as the first 100 pages or so are a chronological recollection organised into logical chapters, while the rest is based around themes such as the territories, celebrities and dealing with fans.

There’s very little depth in the book, though as expected a great deal of dry humour. It’s also got a lot of single-sentence paragraphs which are presumably meant to serve as punchlines or emphasise a point, but have the effect of making the writing very brusque at times. It comes across as an attempt by Anderson to capture the sharp wit of Heenan, but the voice doesn’t feel authentic to his more familiar style of longer sentences and going into detail like he did in promos and announcing.

This isn’t to say the book is worthless — there’s a lot of coverage given to Heenan’s wrestling and managing career before the prime years in WWF for which he is best known. There’s also a truly fantastic story of his first road trip managing the Assassins (not the better know duo of that name) with a killer closing line.

It’s a fun enough read but not worth going out of your way to track down. That can’t be said of Heenan’s second book.

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