While an authentic and creative twist on wrestling fiction, this novel doesn’t reach the heights of its subject. Most fiction titles I’ve covered in this blog have been in the third-person and have covered multiple characters, whether a romantic pairing or an intricate web of backstabbers. Hail, Caesar takes a different approach, presented as a fictional autobiography of wrestler Bob Ceasar. A wrestling novel needs three things to succeed: authenticity, good writing and a gripping story. For the most part this succeeds on the first count. It reads much like a ghost-written account of a wrestler’s life, much in the vein of a WWE publication. While the timeline doesn’t always match up (the book’s equivalent of early 1990s Monday Night Raw has a full-blown creative team and dedicated segment writers), the settings of a Quebec independent group and a WWF-like national promotion are both plausible, though the lack of any competing groups remove a dramatic tension that the real Monday Night Wars brought. The book is an easy enough read without needless complexity, with the odd apparent diversion usually turning out to serve a purpose. There is the occasional misstep including a section where Ceasar goes into great detail about…
If you despise Bret Hart or you have no attention span, this might be worth a miss. For everyone else, it’s as close to a must-read as it gets. The most mindblowing thing about Hart’s autobiography is that the first draft was reportedly as much as three times longer than the nearly 600 pages here. It’s hard to tell whether that would be the best or worst wrestling book you could ever read. What was published is incredibly in-depth, covering every match and incident of any note and many others. While older wrestlers, particularly ones who’ve suffered serious concussions and strokes, don’t always have the best memories, Hart kept detailed records not just of the events in his career, but his reactions and state of mind at the time. It’s clearly a book written to be completist rather than tailor it to emphasise what a publisher might assume to be the most appealing sections. There’s extensive detail on his pre-WWF days, while the section of Montreal is sufficient but is certainly not dwelled on to excess. The flaws, such as they are, are limited. Hart is exceedingly confident about his own abilities, something that may grate on some readers. It becomes something…
[This review was originally — and coincidentally — published on the day Hogan was fired by WWE after the emergence of recordings of him making racist comments.) Hardys, Hart, Hart, Heenan, Heenan… what’s up next? Well, that’s interesting timing… If this were the type of blog which bigged up the positive every book to try to boost revenues from affiliate links, today would be a very awkward day. Fortunately it’s not and I can tell you that only the most dedicated Hulk Hogan fan should read this book (which may be a better option that reading anything else Hogan-related today.) The most obvious problem with the book is that Hogan is generally full of it and ghost writer Michael Jan Friedman — whose regular gig is writing Star Trek novels — appeared to have neither the ability nor the will to press Hogan on the accuracy of his recollections or check up the facts. To be fair, the book isn’t home to the worst of Hogan’s fibs, which are collated by Frantic Planet author Stuart Millard on his website. Instead the book is more a collection of his greatest hits, BS-wise. We’ve got Vince McMahon Sr firing Hogan for taking the…
As cash-in titles go, this is pretty decent if not exactly hard-hitting journalism. While there’s a couple of chapters of capsule profiles and a pre-1984 history (including the claim that the wrestling business collapsed in the 1960s and was still in a terrible state when Vince Jr came to power), it’s largely a kayfabe-respecting account of the main Hogan and WWF storylines from his title win through the first WrestleMania, with that event covered in enough detail and photographs to take up 55 pages. It’s very much a storyline-based history in which Roddy Piper was born in Glasgow and Moolah was at the end of a 26 year title reign, and there’s no original research, with all the quotes taken from WWE broadcasts, TV guest show appearances and wrestling magazines and books. Despite all that it’s a relatively fun and breezy read that captures the Rock ‘n’ Wrestling era well. It’s also got a good selection of photographs licensed from both the wrestling and mainstream media. It’s not one to go out of your way to track down, but well worth picking up for collector value if you see it at a decent price. Buy on Amazon
This is an insightful book that is thankfully already out of date. It smoothly brings together two different styles of book: a history of British wrestling’s development after more than a decade off TV and an autobiographical account. Lambert is a newspaper reporter, former Power Slam writer, and was previously involved in the FWA and his own XWA group as a manager and later promoter. (British fans remain disappointed he never managed Andy Simmons to create the team of Lambert & Butler.) It’s by no means a comprehensive history as it concentrates very much on the “new school” promotions such as the FWA which combined a new generation of performers in a modernised style and the use of imports from the American indy scene. What makes it work is Lambert’s insider accounts, covering not just the big-time image presented to the public, but also the realities behind the scenes of shoestring budgets and improvisation. In particular, the book has one of the most rounded and balanced portrayals of the ever-controversial Alex Shane that you’ll read. The only real downside is that the book ends in 2007 with the storyline death of the FWA. The British scene since then has changed…
You’ll sometimes see a WWE authorised book dismissed as “propaganda.” But this North Korean biography of Rikidozan really is propaganda. The story of Rikidozan is well known: he was the first star when pro wrestling caught on in a big way in Japan, he was among the first major TV stars in the country from any walk of life, he was a genuine cultural icon, and if you see a ranking of famous or historically significant wrestlers and he’s not in the top 10, you can safely dismiss it as a joke. What’s less well-known is that he was born in Korea and was adopted by a Japanese family in 1940: when he became a sumo star, he changed his name to Mitsuhiro Momota and posed as a Japanese native to avoid xenophobic attitudes in the country. While the country was still united when he left, Rikidozan’s birth place was in what’s now North Korea, hence the inspiration for this 1989 biography that, while rare in the West, is widely available in bookshops in the country, particularly those aimed at tourists. As you might expect from North Korea, it goes far beyond the historically correction of explaining Rikidozan’s true origins and…
This book has some fascinating stories. Some of them may even be true. Having dealt with, and known people who’ve dealt with, Piper professionally, he was a mixed bag. His insight into ring psychology and protecting oneself within an often cutthroat business was always top notch, but his recollection or telling of facts and dates was, to say the least, something you had to keep on top of. For example, the book includes Piper’s traditional story that his first pro match was a quick loss to Larry Hennig, which was not the case. He also tells of a prank being played upon him in his Madison Square Garden debut that led to him being immediately dropped by Vince McMahon Sr, when in fact he wrestled at the venue twice more that year. There are also plenty of details which don’t quite stack up, such as him recalling being infuriated during his boxing match with Mr T by the commentary lines of Susan St James, which would have been difficult to hear given the announce position was nowhere near ringside. Other stories are plausible but difficult to verify. For example, Piper claims he was booked to lose a house show match…
It seems likely that Joanie Laurer got a lot out of the experience of writing this book. It’s just as likely you’ll get nothing out of the experience of reading this book except for a deep sense of discomfort. Avoid. Buy on Amazon
As the alternatives to WWE become fewer and weaker, autobiographies by WWE performers are likely going to have less diverse background stories. Angle’s book is one of the rare examples of somebody having a story to tell from before pro wrestling, though it may prove disappointing for those coming to the book for the first time. Of the 300 or so pages, just over half deal with his life before signing with WWE, concentrating on the premature death of his father, followed by Angle’s amateur career and the Olympic gold medal he won with, as is widely known, a broken neck. Co-writer John Harper has done a great job of recognising many readers of the book won’t be amateur grappling aficionados and thus avoiding too much technical detail or jargon about the sport. There’s also some good stuff about the tricky transition to “real life” after the Olympics and attempts to cash in with endorsements and media work. The WWE part of the book runs up to the end of Angle’s first heavyweight title reign in 2002. While there’s not a great deal of insider scoops or scandal (the ECW crucifixion incident is addressed over a couple of pages), there’s…
Very much a scene-setter, this initial instalment of a graphic novel series has promise, though it’s hard to draw too many conclusions about where it’s going. Without wanting to go into too many spoilers, on the face of it the initial issue is about “Rock ‘n’ Roll Rory Landel”, a fast-talking heel from the territorial era who loses his spot when the business switches to a family-oriented style. Passed over for world title status, he declares himself the galactic champion, something that we later find out has attracted the attention of an alien lifeform that is (presumably) 15 light years away. Alien elements aside, the storyline is plausible enough from a wrestling perspective and there’s some nice references to real world characters and locations to watch out for. The problem with recommending future instalments is that there’s no real indication of how much the focus will switch from the world of grappling to science fiction elements. The artwork is effective enough, with the style closer to caricature that cartoon, and the use of colour is particularly striking and atmospheric. (Obvious as it may seem, while this is available on Kindle as well as print, it’s best saved for either tablets…