A veteran wrestler refusing to break kayfabe does not necessarily mean an interview or book will be a bad thing. Unfortunately with the Fabulous Moolah, that’s very much the case. In this autobiography Moolah’s real name and age are treated as major revelations in a world in which wrestling is a genuine sport and, while wrestlers might flap their gums to hype a show, no finish is ever predetermined. It’s perhaps only to be expected from a woman who’s career was based around being a legend, in both the positive and negative senses of the word, but it makes for two separate problems in this case. First, it means that curiousity about many of the more interesting elements of Moolah’s career goes unsatisfied. The shoot between Mildred Burke and June Byers that led indirectly to Moolah’s own title reign is just another contest with no unusual elements in this account. Similarly Moolah’s infamous double-cross of Wendi Richter as the Spider Lady is just another hard-fought victory. We also get no insight into the building of the myth of the 28-year title reign (and how several title switches were left out of the story) or Moolah’s thoughts at being persuaded to…
Alkaissy is best known in the wrestling world as Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissie or General Adnan from the WWF, though he also had a tag title run in the WWWF as native American star Billy White Wolf. He grew up in Iraq and claims to have been a school classmate of Saddam Hussein. He took up an international football scholarship at the University of Houston and had an amateur background, later being introduced to the pro ranks by Canadian legend Yvon Robert. Although he returned to Iraq, he fled the country in 1963 after the rise of the Baath party. According to the book, Alkaissy was invited back after the Baath party was driven from power and met up with old schoolfriend Hussein who invited him to wrestle Georges Gordienko in front of 200,000 people in a Baghdad stadium, with another 100,000 watching on TV screens outside. So popular was Alkaissy, the book recalls, that he once went shopping and caused a traffic jam so large that Hussein, caught up in it, feared a coup was underway. It’s clearly very difficult to verify the claims given the lack of historical records. There’s certainly photographic evidence of Alkaissy and Hussein together (and…
Many wrestling books feature wrestlers telling the story of what happened in their careers, but none have matched this for explaining what being a wrestler is actually like. Unladylike works because of what it is and what it doesn’t try to be. Bandenburg mainly wrestled for the Lucha Britannia and Burning Hearts promotions, neither of which are widely classed as whatever counts as mainstream in modern British wrestling. Simply telling her in-ring story might have had a limited audience. Similarly, the book doesn’t try to be a comprehensive history or examination on feminism in wrestling. Instead it’s a very personal account of what wrestling means to Bandenburg from her lived experience and perspective. It’s an incredible rounded and self-aware portrayal that doesn’t merely cover the more commonly discussed psychological effects of escaping reality to portray a character and work with a crowd to create emotion. Instead it also covers body confidence and the effects – both positive and negative – on human physiology of both performing and training in pro wrestling. It’s one of the most detailed accounts of what wrestling training really involves, the challenges it presents, the rollercoaster of emotions and physicality that comes with struggling and succeeding…
The third in our series of reviews of books based around the photography of George Napolitano, this is a different proposition to Championship Wrestling and This Is Wrestling. Originally priced at an eyewatering $49.95 (in 1988 prices), this runs nearly 400 pages and is far more comprehensive. It’s made up of just over 100 profiles of wrestlers with a blurb of a few paragraphs and a spread of pics that usually includes at least one full-page image. It’s a bit of an odd mix as it has top stars from the various promotions active at the time of production (WWF, Crockett, Memphis and the tail-end of the UWF) along with a dozen or so women from GLOW, so you’ll have genuine superstar like Hulk Hogan followed by a profile on Malibu. The pics are a great mix of studio poses and action shots. There’s also quite heavy use of cropping where the wrestler appears to be bursting out of the frame, something that creates a neat effect but does have an air of wanting to show off what passed for the latest technology. Buy on Amazon
This will likely be the strangest book we review at Pro Wrestling Books. It’s an absolutely enormous 480-page coffee-table book (listed at 14.6 x 11.7 x 1.6 inches and nine pounds) made up of three types of material. Of most interest to readers here will be the extensive collection of wrestling photographs by Theo Ehtret who spent many years as a photographer in the Los Angeles territory, specifically shooting at the famed Olympic Auditorium. There are posed and action shots of most of the stars from the 1970s including some truly beautiful double-page spreads of the Auditorium and other local venues. However, the book contains just as much from Ehtret’s other photography role, producing shots of apartment wrestling in which women appear to have decided to resolve their differences by fighting in their home wearing little or no clothing. While it’s likely that a high proportion of those interested in pro wrestling will have no objection to looking at such images, the big problem is that the two are interspersed seemingly at random rather than in distinct sections. Pick any random spread and you stand a good chance of seeing a juxtaposition that puts one in mind of the 2000…
In the era of kayfabe-breaking shoot interviews and autobiographies, honesty as a selling point has become somewhat distorted. It’s often interpreted as somebody “shooting” in the form of spilling scandalous secrets and viciously attacking those who have crossed them. Daniel Bryan’s autobiography comes across as among the most honest WWE books ever published and yet it has none of these mudslinging characteristics. Much of the honesty comes instead the form of self-deprecation, with Bryan readily admitting to his perceived weaknesses, whether they be a lack of athletic talent as a child, never having weighed more than 205 lbs regardless of billing, or believing he failed as a headline attraction during his run with Randy Orton. The flipside of that is that his matter-of-fact approach brings far more credibility when he writes things that cast WWE in a less-than-glowing light, of which there are many. Bryan discussed the relatively low pay (given the associated costs) of working at the bottom of WWE cards, the way he was almost set up to fail in the initial NXT run, and the lack of long-term planning in many aspects of booking. Most notably he puts paid to any theory that his character’s treatment in…
While by no means an infallible Bible, this is by far the most important book written about the fascinating period of wrestling between the wars. It’s an era that saw the culmination of the process of wrestling changing from a fixed event designed to scam gamblers into one where match finishes were designed to build up future bouts for ticket-buying customers. It’s arguably the period when, while the style and pace may differ, professional wrestling as we’d recognise it today really came to the forefront. Published in 1937, Fall Guys is an insider account which claims to tell the real story of the behind-the-scenes chaos of the 20s and 30s as promoters built and broke allegiances and tried to deal with the dilemma of performance and charisma becoming more important then real grappling skills at the box office, but a ‘shooter’ trying to snatch the world title against the script still a genuine concern. These promotional battles on several occasions led to those left out in the cold seeking their revenge through the media or the legal system, both of which revealed secrets about what was really happening behind the scenes. The book is by no means perfect: the sheer complexity of…
By comparison to 99 percent of wrestling books, this is excellent. The problem is that Foley’s second volume inherently invites comparison to Have A Nice Day, something that perhaps unfairly highlights its shortcomings. Foley is Good, while in the same style and tone (still largely warm and optimistic with little in the way of cynicism or bitterness) differs from its predecessor in a couple of ways. Firstly, despite being a similarly epic length, it covers a far shorter period, specifically the 20 months between his winning the WWF title for the first time and retiring for the second time in six weeks at WrestleMania 2000. As a result the hit-to-miss ratio is lower, with several less engaging stories making the cut, and often excessive detail on less significant events. Secondly, the book has more of a specific focus beyond a straight chronology. Subtitled “the real world is faker than wrestling”, it includes numerous anecdotes about incidents outside of the traditional wrestling arena, something that naturally increased once Foley became a legitimate superstar. Examples include his appearance in a new feature about backyard wrestling, his work with a ghostwriter when starting his first book, and his testimony in a trial resulting from…
Although Dunleavy had a lengthy run as a pro wrestler including several years as a TV regular, this is primarily not a wrestling book. Only a few chapters of this autobiography are dedicated to his time in the ring, though there’s some interesting stuff in particular on his training at the infamous Snake Pit and on the boxing booths. The book as a whole is ghostwritten in what comes across as a very authentic conversational voice, complete with all manner of diversions and tangents. At times it can be confusing though, with Dunleavy suddenly directly addressing ghostwriter Thompson or even referring to the structure of the book itself, while later sections include comments from his family members where it’s not always easy to keep track of who’s talking. It’s hard to recommend this just for the wrestling content, so it’s more suited to people with a likely interest either in Dunleavy’s tale of a rural Irish childhood and emigrating to work in the UK, or as a local history piece on Birmingham from the 60s to today. Buy on Amazon
Simply put this is one of the best biographies written about a professional wrestler. The basics of the story of Raymond ‘Gorgeous George’ Wagner are well known: with a combination of flamboyance, ring music, an arrogant persona and an elaborate entrance, he became arguably the biggest star of the first TV wrestling boom in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He later faded from glory and died impoverished and with alcohol problems. Capouya takes the story a step further however: rather than merely cover George’s in-ring antics, he chronicles his life in a way that is detailed but never dry. That’s helped largely by the co-operation of George’s first wife Betty, who was clearly interviewed at life. Unlike many wrestling spouses at the time, she traveled with George and helped develop his trademark image. The result is an amazing level of detail including entire conversations — or at least Betty’s recollections of such conversations — and insight into George’s thinking and the way he established his box office magic persona. Unlike many wrestling history books dealing with the vintage era, there’s no filler here: the detail of and references to historical and cultural events are all directly tied in to…