Most definitely in the collectors category, this is a good example of wrestling in its era, albeit one that doesn’t lend any real insight into the business itself. It’s the work of Jack Curley, a major boxing and wrestling promoter of the late 19th and early 20th century, responsible for several of the style and rule changes that made pro wrestling more entertaining, and a key part of the original “wrestling trust”, a forerunner to the NWA. Fliescher was editor and creator of Ring Magazine, which originally covered wrestling as well as boxing. The book is an instructional manual with details of how to apply holds and training exercises. It’s written at a time where the only real difference between pro and amateur rules was the three count (the rules listed here don’t mention submissions), so in practice it’s an amateur wrestling manual. There’s also a suggested menu, which sounds good to me: bacon for breakfast, lamb chops for lunch and steak for the evening meal! There are plenty of illustrations, both drawings and photos of stars of the day such as Ed Lewis, Ray Steele and Jim Londos performing holds, both in posed demonstrations and match action shots. It’s…
When the index to a book takes up 25 pages, you know it’s going to be detailed. While it’s reputation may have been boosted a little by its irritating rarity, Gary Hart’s tale remains one of the top tier books on pro wrestling. In its simplest terms, it’s an account of a wide-ranging career taking in wrestling, managing and booking in multiple territories, most notably in Florida and World Class. The breadth of Hart’s time in and around the ring would have made this worth investigating even if it were merely a dry chronological recollection of events such as Dusty Rhodes’s babyface turn or the Kerry Von Erich-Ric Flair cage match. The book feels comprehensive and you’ll struggle to find a significant moment in Hart’s career that isn’t addressed. What makes the book stand out, however, is the depth. It almost serves as an educational guide into what works in the wrestling industry, with Hart clearly on a mission to share his knowledge and experiences. He doesn’t merely recall what happened with a particular match or angle, but also his reasoning at the time and, just as importantly, how that decision turned out and what lessons he learned. He also manages to…
This is a great historical study that was sorely in need of an editor. Covering the history of the Alliance — and by default the US wrestling business as a whole — from its origins in the 1940s through to the 1970s, with some brief coverage of later events, what really stands out here is the detail. Hornbaker has clearly worked tirelessly to track down documentary evidence rather than rely on the opinions and memories of those involved. Key to the book is the consent decree, a 1956 agreement between the NWA and the Department of Justice that was designed to settle allegations that the group acted as an unlawful cartel. The files relating to this agreement were made partially public following legal action by Jim Wilson for the book Chokehold, but Hornbaker was able to get access to thousands more pages through freedom of information laws. This allows him to cover the activities of the various promotion in extensive detail. The downside is that the sheer level of detail is overwhelming and leads to a dry narrative at times. It appears Hornbaker has fallen into the trap (with which I can personally sympathise) of being reluctant to leave out any of…
One of the big perils of successful career autobiographies — as seen with Mick Foley — is that subsequent volumes cover a shorter and shorter period and require more padding out of concentration on trivial detail. Chris Jericho has presumably tried to avoid this with his fourth book, which is presented not as a chronological sequel but rather a self-help motivational title. Such an approach can work, as shown in Bobby Heenan’s follow-up to his original career autobiography. Here, though, it falls flat. The book follows a consistent pattern in each of its 20 chapters: Jericho introduces a generic platitude (most of which come down to “work hard and believe in yourself), then recounts some incidents from his life that relate to it with varying degrees of relevance. This usually fails in two separate ways. One is that the connections are usually strained at best. For example, “don’t take no for an answer” is illustrated by an incident when he was late for an airport check-in, resigned himself to waiting for the next flight, then was recognised as a TV star by a staff member who spontaneously offered to bend the rules. The incident neither proves the point, nor has much use…
A Hornwsoggle autobiography might not seem the most obviously engaging title, but it could be the sleeper surprise of 2019. While the book does address Postl’s height and medical condition, it’s very much not a cliched story of “triumph over tragedy”. Instead most of the detail on the subject is about the practicalities of his lack of height such as the fact he can drive a car without any problems but would likely be endangered rather than helped were his airbag to deploy. Wrestling makes up the bulk of the book and in turn his WWE stint makes up the bulk of his career. It’s a great insight into the pros and cons of a WWE run, with a few added twists such as spending many hours under the ring during live events and TV shows. The book is ghostwritten by Ross Williams and as with his previous collaborations with Bob Holly and Al Snow, it feels honestly told rather than a deliberate attempt to either maintain good relations or settle old scores. There’s plenty of acknowledgement of the opportunities and fortune of travelling the country and being a TV star, but also the frustration at an impenetrable creative process…
If photo books are your cup of tea, this is one of the better wrestling options. It’s based around a tight theme, specifically the small ECCW promotion in British Columbia. Given the subject, it’s an appropriately low-fi presentation: a black and white photo on the right hand side of each spread, with an accompanying extended caption on the left-hand side. These add useful background detail and context, and can sometimes be wonderfully dry as in: Cheechuk was exhausted, breathing heavily, and bleeding from the forehead. He stopped for me to take this picture and then took a pull from his can of root beer, walked outside into the pouring rain, and vomited over a railing. Honky Tonk Man and Christopher Daniels aside, you probably won’t recognise too many of the wrestlers in this book, but the themes will be familiar to anyone who has experienced low-level indy wrestling. Howell makes sure to also cover the other people in and around the shows, from the referee to the regulars in the crowd, a personal famous being an elderly man who sells smoked salmon from a plastic beneath his ringside seat. This most definitely doesn’t have the luxurious feel that makes a “coffee table…
A brief read, this still manages to convey a life and career that was fuller and more widely influential than many wrestlers can dream of. There are few wrestling tales that take you from the Snake Pit in Wigan (described in all its unglamorous reality) to the US territorial scene to both the glory days of New Japan’s TV era and the growth of the shoot-style promotions (and in events obviously not covered here, to WWE’s cruiserweight show via trainee Jack Gallagher). Robinson tells a story that encompasses his skills and accomplishments without ever seeming arrogant. In particular, the moment he defeats Billy Joyce in a legitimate gym bout (which Joyce made a prerequisite for dropping the British heavyweight title in a public worked match), he is quick to point out it was more a question of ageing vs athletic prime than superior talent. There’s also a great balance of including the technical detail of Robinson’s grappling skills without confusing the reader. One key example is when Robinson explains how legitimate catch wrestling, which allows both pins and submissions, was able to work as a contest: while at first glance these might seem two completely contrasting aims, Robinson tells of…
This is about as a close to a must-read wrestling book as is possible in something dealing with a niche topic. Most wrestling histories fall into one of two traps: they have solid research delivered in a dry, academic manner; or they are full of engaging stories but don’t give a complete picture and context. McCoy is one of the rare authors who manages to pull off a book that tells a story in a comprehensive, authoritative and highly readable manner. Based on more than sixty interviews in addition to secondary sources, the book sticks close to the narrative of the history of the Stampede promotion but doesn’t ignore its wider effects on wrestling history as a whole. It pulls off the right balance of dealing with the way the story of Stampede is so closely intertwined with the personal triumphs and tragedies of the Hart family, as well as addressing the final days of Chris Benoit in an appropriate level of detail. Another impressive element is that McCoy’s writing style uses literary flourish to add flavor and humanity to the storytelling, keeping it from being a dry recollection of facts, but without losing the book’s sense of authority. The…
In the days when wrestling books were a relative rarity, this was a reasonable buy. Today it will be of little interest to most fans. Part of a “Performance Studies” series, this is two for two on the “wrestling academia” checklist: it quotes Roland Barthes’ essay on wrestling, and it devotes little or not attention to the fact that people promote professional wrestling events as a business. Indeed, most of the book continues along the usual lines: wrestling is a drama, not a sport; there’s a lot of emphasis on masculinity despite men in tight underwear rolling around with one another; the portrayal of women is very simplistic. A couple of chapters do offer new takes, at least within the context of the academic wrestling essay. One sees Mazer spend time at Johnny Rodz’s gym watching trainees go through their paces, contrasting their training with that of boxers in the same gym who are solely there to learn legitimate combat. Another looks at the growth of the ‘smart fan’ as wrestling became more popular online, and the way some fans refuse to believe anything they see on TV for fear of being ‘worked.’ All in all though, fans of wrestling won’t…
(I must, of course, include a disclaimer here — I wrote for Power Slam over the course of around 30 issues in 1996-1998 and 2006-7.) For those readers who were aggrieved at Power Slam being restricted to 40 pages — a subject addressed in this book — this will be more than compensation. At approximately 240,000 words, it’s a perfect example of a title that would only be viable as an e-book as a printed copy would have been unmanageably bulky and prohibitively expensive. For the book’s intended audience, it represents excellent value. The book is made up of two interspersed sections. The first, which makes up the bulk of the content, is exactly what the title suggests: a truly comprehensive account of both the in-ring and business sides of wrestling over a two decade period. It’s largely in year-by-year sections, though the past five years or so are lumped together (partly because so much of the business was repetitive in this era.) For each year, Martin recaps the main happenings in each of the major US promotions, then Japan as a whole and, where appropriate, those British promotions aiming at a more hardcore, Internet or travelling crowd. The level…