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YOUR ALL-NEW WRESTLING BOOK THREAD


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  • 2 weeks later...

BLOOD AND FIRE: THE UNBELIEVABLE REAL-LIFE STORY OF WRESTLING'S ORGINAL SHEIK By Brian R. Solomon Froward by Rob Van Damn

An immensely detailed and well researched book looking into the life and times of one wrestling most mysterious figures. Goes back to his families history, his military service, and breaking into the business in the late 40's and 50's. Tremendous detail of his work in the 60's and 70's (almost too complete in this regard, I did feel it was a tad unnecessary to mention seemingly ever booking he took in these decades) also of personally interest was his running of Big Time Wrestling as I love hearing about promotions that time has seemingly forgotten ( also interesting coverage of him working for Mike Lebell in Hollywood and Jack Tunney in Canada). Of note Ed Farhat, The Mavia's and Tony Khan only non-white major wrestling promoters in the US? He had a love hate relationship of with the NWA with the Thezse's and Mushnick's of the old guard hating "gimmick" wrestling. He got BTW so successful that he purchased a Mobile TV truck to film his TV from the Arena's as opposed to the studio wrestling popular at the time, this truck was also leased out to shoot concerts and sporting events. KISS recently released a bunch of pro-shot 70's concert footage of the ALIVE! concerts, so that was probably using his truck!

It also covers his decline and fall from grace as his respective booking and keeping himself on top for far too long, He bought the territory from Jim Barrnet. Then later Jim Barrnet tried to take back the territory by freezing him out on talent. This caused him to run outlaw and work for opposition promoters as he spent the 80 in the wilderness. Then he had a bit of a revival in the 90's with FMW taking off and breaking Sabu and RVD into the business.(Sabu had a WWF tryout in the mid 90's working with Scott "Scotty too Hotty" Taylor and Owen Hart, talk about holy grail footage! tuned down the offer. Would have likely gotten the Sultan gimmick that went to Rikishi but didn't want to be managed by The Iron Sheik) Did an appearance for WCW and ECW then and got inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame posthumously. 385 pgs including end notes

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  • 3 weeks later...

Anyone read Steven Verrier's Professional Wrestling in the Pacific Northwest? I really want something that covers Portland that I can get easily and I've had my eye on this for a while.

I'm sick, and I've been getting depressed lately. I'm a teacher so I don't work tomorrow and I can't workout so I'm looking for something to keep my mind occupied.

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  • 2 weeks later...

A few weeks into reading Volume One of Wrestling Newspaper Ads and Articles and it's a nice look back. If there was one thing that the author had done was group the listings/articles by territory and also done a little closer QC because one or two of the match lineups get listed twice.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...
On 3/19/2023 at 7:17 PM, notoriusvig said:

Anyone read Mike Rodgers' Katie Bar the Door on Portland wrestling?

I have.  Honestly, its a bit disappointing.  Its largely just results with little bits of background, biography and commentary punctuating them.  It could really have used a good proof read too.

The only thing I learned was that maybe Don Owen wasn't the kindly old fella I thought.

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Read Backlunds and MOX recently. Backlund's is perfectly fine, with some good info on the WWWF and Vince Sr. Doesnt go into too much after he lost the title. A few small chapters but no where near the detail before. MOX is crazy, but I found myself longing for more details on his life in Cincinnati and the independent scene and less WWE. Then again I dont watch current wrestling, but got the book based its recommendations. I enjoyed it, just would have liked the other parts to be longer, Quibbles and all that. . . 

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I'm blowing through Abraham Riesman's Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. So, this is going to sound mean and a bit reductive, and I don't mean it in that way, but the best way to describe this book is a much-better researched Sex, Lies, and Headlocks

That still might make it worth reading to you! It goes out of its way to de-myth-ify Vince's stories about growing up in North Carolina, for example, which SL&H doesn't do at all. But also, if that doesn't sound like enough for you, it probably isn't. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/11/2023 at 10:44 PM, zendragon said:

I did not know pre wrestling existed in the Bahamas, has anyone read Butts in seats?

Very late to this (I rarely visit the thread, was seeing if anyone's read Ringmaster yet and caught your post) - I've got it, wasn't too bad but I'll be honest: when buying, I somehow completely missed the fact that it was a graphic novel and not a traditional memoir - so needless to say, I was kinda disappointed out of the gate (but that's 100% on me for having inaccurate expectations - Tony did a really nice job with this).

That said, I've never seen an autobio done this way, so it was pretty novel in that regard, no pun intended, and we learn a bit about his breaking into the NWA, and his time in the wilderness between WCW's death and AEW's birth. The art is pretty good, too, if you're into that sort of thing. If you haven't gotten to it yet, I'd be happy to send you my copy if you have a PO box or other non- 'give a total stranger my exact location' address you want me to use.

Edited by Zakk_Sabbath
Zen's got it already so if anyone else wants it shoot me a PM!
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Professional Wrestling: The Theatre of the Absurd , I never wanted to be a Star by Tom “Rocky” Stone aka Steve Hall

under 200 pages and a brisk read. Stone was an AWA and WWF job guy in the 80s. Also promoted Indy shows before they where called that and was a trainer.

Interesting to hear from the perspective of someone who wasn’t a star in the business also interesting to me is a good bit of the book invokes his thoughts on wrestling psychology both from an inring perspective and a booking perspective. Also critiqued modern wrestling most of which I think are fair. Christopher Daniels is on his “coaching tree” so his impact is still being felt

Steve Corino writes the forward

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The Story of the Development of the NWATNA : A new concept of in PPV Programming 

Jerry W. Jarrett

A very interesting book as it’s a diary of him starting TNA 2002, it’s a year in the life

covers a lot, how early Dixie was involved, his thoughts and issues with Russo , early financing, Panda Energy getting involved, him and Jeff almost going bankrupt . Thoughts Issues that plagued WCW a lot about the creatives side of wrestling and putting together a tv show which I always find fascinating, also a lot of talk about dealing with Russo’s input.

 I do think early TNA was ahead of it’s time both as I think a lot of the fan base was burned out after MNW/attitude era and not ready for an alternative. I also don’t think that weekly PPV model is not that far off from what Tony Khan is doing with putting ROH on Honorclub behind a pay wall and I do think it’s only a matter of time before one of these seemingly endless streaming services launches a wrestling program 

also this trip down memory lane makes me hopefull that AEW continues to have success after watching WSX implode, LU came and went and TNA never really getting out of its own way ( lately AEW seems to be falling into the TNA on spike trap of being WWE Lite but that’s another thread)

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