Pro Wrestling Books

(The following article was originally written for a website before this blog — and indeed my own book on the topic — existed.) The gold standard for British wrestling books remains The Wrestling by Simon Garfield. Recently republished, it’s made up entirely of first-hand accounts from nearly 50 wrestlers, promoters, writers and other figures in the industry. There’s also a subplot where Garfield tries in vain to persuade in-ring comedian and real-life hardman Les Kellett to give him an interview. The revised edition contains a somewhat depressing afterword detailing the many participants who have passed away, including Davey Boy Smith. Two biographies of British grapplers who became worldwide stars include details of their days wrestling in the UK. Pure Dynamite by Tom ‘Dynamite Kid’ Billington  was widely regarded as the most revealing and honest wrestling autobiography at the time of its 1999 release, a year before Mick Foley’s first book hit the shelves. Only a small section of the book deals with his British days, but it’s still an intriguing look at the ups and down of working for Joint Promotions, then run by the family of top star Shirley ‘Big Daddy’ Crabtree, Walking a Golden Mile by William Regal…

Written by an author from Belgium, this novella demonstrates that some elements of being a teenager and loving pro wrestling are universal. The plot is relatively straightforward for what is intended to be the first of a lengthy series. A bullied teenager discovers pro wrestling and begins training while fighting back against his bullies. In this world, wrestling is a worked sport and provides him with confidence rather than legitimate fighting techniques. The writing style and language are crisp and clear (though many readers will be encountering the phrase “lick a pig!” for the first time.) Between the content and the style, it’s likely to most appeal to younger readers. Adults may find it a little brief and predictable, hence its billing as a novella. Though set in Belgium, the wrestling content will likely be familiar to fans of small-scale grappling around the world. Some elements particularly ring true, including the excitement of discovering the appeal of wrestling for the first time, and the descriptions of working matches that are considerably less choreographed than the average viewer may realise. As noted, it may be too much of a young adult novel for some people’s tastes, but it’s worth checking out…

This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those looking for a literary approach to pro wrestling it’s worth checking out. Most wrestling books which don’t take a “traditional” approach to the business/artform come at it from an academic perspective – all Barthes references and homoeroticism. Purely literary takes on wrestling are rarer, with The Dead Wrestler Elegies the highlight so far. Body Drop brings together a collection of Oliu’s short pieces, many previously published in a host of literary magazines and outlets. They are for the most part not straight pieces on wrestling, but rather Oliu reflecting on his own life and experiences while framing it in, and comparing it to, the wrestling world. It’s an approach that takes full advantage of the often contradictory and brain-crunching blurring between fiction and reality in pro wrestling, a business made up of both real and illusory pain, where anything can happen but ritual is everything. The parallels and connections vary immensely in degree. One chilling piece tells the story of Chris Benoit while purposely redacting every mention of his name, while Oliu draws a direct connection between the portrayal of Yokozuna and his own experience of being overweight at…

Laser-focused, like its subject, this is a WWE autobiography like no other. Traditionally such books are filled with life stories and anecdotes about amusing or jaw-dropping incidents on the road. This is simply an account of one man’s drive to become a pro wrestler and get to the top and how he did it. When I interviewed the then Drew Galloway for Fighting Spirit Magazine it was clear this was somebody who obsessed over learning every detail and nuance of his profession and rarely if ever stopped thinking about the business. That’s borne out in this book which is effectively an account of what he was thinking at every moment of his rise, fall and resurgence. Those looking for gossip and dirt will be out of luck. His entire relationship with fellow performer Tiffany is covered in barely a paragraph. Other than the death of his mother and meeting his second wife, there’s virtually nothing about his private life. There’s no detail about outlandish ribs or road stories. Beyond the 2020 Royal Rumble, there’s very little detail about any individual match or angle. Instead what you have is a remarkably detailed insight into the lessons he learned, the mistakes he…

A biography of wrestler Chick ‘Cocky’ Knight by his great-nephew, this is a life worth exploring but reads more as a set of facts than a story. Knight had quite the life, not only wrestling on-and-off for more than 25 years either side of the war (including a televised BBC match in 1938) but also boxing professionally and working as a bouncer across London. He also saved three people from drowning in two separate incidents including diving from Hammersmith Bridge. It’s clear an autobiography by Knight would have been a compelling tale, but sixty years after his death, this account is naturally based on both family members and archive research. Unfortunately it falls into the common trap of seemingly including every morsel from that research and feeling like an information dump. It’s also very loose in how relevant the information is to Knight’s life, the most extreme example being a section which notes that Knight’s father worked as a taxi driver during the time of a driver’s strike, a meeting for which took place at Earl’s Court shortly before a Jack Johnson boxing match. While there’s no mention of Knight’s father being at the meeting, and Johnson had no connection…

Having researched wrestling in Northern Ireland myself for what turned out to be around a 1,000 word section of a longer article, I would never have imagined it was possible to write a 400-page book on the subject. Not only has local wrestler and promoter Nick Campbell pulled off the task, but it’s a superb piece of work. Originally conceived as an oral history piece, Campbell gathered together enough material to produce a year-by-year account of wrestling in the area from 1932 to 2002. It draws on a combination of contemporary media reports and interviews with dozens of grapplers from the area including TV stars such as Fit Finlay and Eddie ‘Kung Fu’ Hammil and figures who are less well known on the international stage but were major influences on the local scene such as Noel ‘Darkie’ Arnott and Dave Finlay senior. The result strikes the perfect balance between the big picture record of how local wrestling developed and the individual experiences and anecdotes of those involved. It’s particularly strong on the unique aspects of Northern Ireland’s wrestling from the arm’s length involvement of Joint Promotions and its TV superstars to the bare bones culture of training gyms and the…

This may be a case of lowered expectations, but I found this surprisingly readable and insightful. It’s the usual approach by ghostwriter Scott Teal of keeping the narrative coherent while still reflecting the subject’s voice, and grounding the career account somewhat in reality in terms of dates and places, while still allowing the subject scope to make some perhaps questionable claims about their status and importance. This isn’t merely a chronological account of Atlas’ career but rather has a lot of explanations of how he learned the business, different promoters approaches to booking him and teaching him psychology, and the pros and cons of life on the road. Atlas also has clear views on topics such as racism and drug use that may surprise some readers but are expressed and explored so that even people who disagree with him can understand his viewpoint. There’s also far more detail on foot domination fetishes than you would ever expect and a full account of the night Bruiser Brody was killed just feet away from Atlas. The main narrative of the book is Atlas throwing away his potential, leading to periods out of the business and homelessness and his recovery. It’s very much…

This will reinforce everything you already thought about the Young Bucks. Perhaps inevitably, for older readers this will bring to mind the WWE Hardy Boys book with its similar tale of two brothers moving up from backyarding and enhancement roles to a high-profile career. The main structural difference (aside from the lack of a ghostwriter) is that the Hardys Book was almost in an oral history style, with individual paragraphs cited as either Matt or Jeff speaking. Here Matt and Nick write lengthy alternating chapters in the first person and, with the pair having similar writing voices, I was often left checking back to remember who was telling the story at a particular moment. For fans of the Bucks, this will be a fun experience reliving an uplifting tale of two guys who took chances and made their own career by treating themselves as a merchandise business while breaking many of the unwritten rules of wrestling. The most divisive element of the book will depend very much on your perspective of confidence: while only the harshest critics will interpret this account as being arrogant, there’s certainly no false modesty on display. The book is certainly an enjoyable read, but it’s…

This certainly lives up to its title, but that’s about it. Released appropriately on March 16, this is simply 316 entries relating to Austin’s career, covering three main formats. One is straightforward stories and incidents. Some are simply on-screen happenings while many of the backstage/real life events will be familiar to anyone who’s read the autobiographies of Austin and his peers and followed his various podcast series. The second category is transcripts of Austin promos. Some are short and effective while others, from the What?! era, are as tedious on paper as in the original telling. Finally there’s a whole bunch of trivia and lists. A few of the trivia notes are genuinely surprising, but there’s some serious padding here with lists including everyone who held the WWF title before Austin, everyone who held the WCW TV title for longer than him, and every other Texan in the WWE Hall of Fame. While the whole thing won’t take much more than an hour to read, it’s fine as a bathroom reading book and would theoretically suit the stocking stuffer/gift from a baffled auntie market. But the problem is this is a book about a wrestler who retired almost 20 years…

While well-written and informative, this book may struggle to stand out. If you’ve read any of the Greg Oliver/Steve Johnson “Hall of Fame” series, you’ll be familiar with the format of this book. It’s a series of profiles (primarily of US wrestlers) grouped together in broad categories, each combining a career overview with comments from interviews. In this case the participants are not the subjects but rather several dozen wrestling figures interviewed for the project, covering such diverse perspectives as Colt Cabana, Shayna Bayzler and referee Jimmy Korderas. These are backed up wit the occasional, clearly-acknowledged, extract from a book or broadcast interview. Between the category sections the book has a run-down of various historical eras such as the height of the territory system or the shoot-style period in Japan. The profiles are detailed enough that only the most devoted fans of wrestling history will come away without learning anything. The main limitation is instead the absence of a clear niche. The problem is that “wrestler’s wrestler” is inherently a subjective and fuzzy concept that’s defined largely by the contributing voices. At different points it covers skilled in-ring workers, those with a legitimate background, and those who connected with an…