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YOUR ALL-NEW WRESTLING BOOK THREAD


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I haven't read it, but I would love to. Of all the "famous" dudes I've been in dinky indy locker rooms with, Sabu is one of the fucking coolest. Dude had time for everyone, wasn't at all bothered by most of his down time being sucked up by folks looking for advice, and he drew me up a super detailed schematic of the best way to string the wire for a no-ropes barbed wire death match, both for visual effect and to support the guys going into it from bailing to the floor.

Plus, he loves the reefer, and I got to chief a bunch of dope with him, and he was cool about it. All these motherfuckers want to smoke but don't want to chip in. Sabu was all about paying for the privilege.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 8/17/2019 at 4:39 PM, AxB said:

You know how most book printing companies have the word press at the end of their names? You know how sometimes publishers (or imprints within larger publishers) are set up just to put wrestling books out? Why hasn't one of them been called Flying Body Press yet?

Flying Body Press is Rock Rim's imprint under which he released his books on Rotten Ron Starr and the Northern California territory.:

http://theflyingbodypress.blogspot.com/

Edited by JasonP
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I got three Wrestling books for my Birthday: Shinsuke Nakamura, Vader and Sabu. Obviously I haven't read them yet, but I glanced through to look at the pictures. Sabu's has two forewords and quite a lot of guest chapters, so presumably either it would have been a bit short if it just had his own contributions, or he's excessively modest and the publisher wanted to put him over more. Vader's book is all him except for the epilogue is his son writing a posthumous tribute, which confused me because I thought there were supposed to be signed (by Vader) copies available. Unless he signed a bunch of blank pages that were then bound into the book after he died. He did know he was dying, after all. Damn McMahon not letting him in the HoF when he asked.

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On 9/8/2019 at 12:40 PM, Oyaji said:

And it's great. I read it last month and was very happy with it. I was very happy that the lion's share was about his younger days and the fascinating early stages of his career. 

Shinsuke's book was...weird.

Either Shinsuke's book was the greatest possible magazine interview about his life, or a mediocre biography. Either way, it's definitely worth a read because it's very interesting...just relatively dry and straightforward.

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6 minutes ago, SorceressKnight said:

Shinsuke's book was...weird.

Either Shinsuke's book was the greatest possible magazine interview about his life, or a mediocre biography. Either way, it's definitely worth a read because it's very interesting...just relatively dry and straightforward.

Those are valid points but I would still highly recommend it.  Reading it it seemed like he was in super chill mode with a nice cup of tea or something which I liked.  And for those like me not super familiar with New Japan's history it was a pretty darn nice historical narrative based on his experience there.  And hey, he talked about his love of Fire Pro so that's immediate bonus points there.

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Now starting Vader's book. He says Compton was a relatively well off, racially mixed area in his early childhood, but as he was growing up it seemed all the wealthier families were moving out. His Dad was a mechanic who invented the hydraulic car lift, but sold the idea (for $2000) to a couple of suit and tie guys who mass produced them and made millions. He played college football with Matt Hasselbeck's dad. Was drafted by the Rams while injured, got healthy in time for the playoffs and got game time in the 1979 Super Bowl (but lost to the Steelers). Then his knee re-exploded and he had to retire, so hr moved back to Boulder Colorado and became a real estate developer. And that's where I'm up to. He covered all of that very quickly and there's loads of book left, so the Wrestling stuff is probably much more in depth.

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So do you want rolling updates on Vader's book as I read more of it, or are you planning on having it on your Christmas lists? So far, it's a bit like the world's longest and most detailed shoot interview, transcribed. There has been one glaring editing mistake, where there's a paragraph in which he describes how his NFL retirement alienated him from his football friends and his childhood friends in South Central were largely going down bad roads, so he wasn't sure what to do with himself. Then a page and a half later, that same paragraph is repeated verbatim, even though he's already told us what he did next.

Lots of things I didn't know though. He had four singles matches with Stan Hansen, not two. The first, he was a green rookie who was on jobber duty, the second he was Denver's hometown babyface challenging for Stan's AWA title. Before he accepted Inoki's offer to become Vader, he'd actually got a verbal agreement with Baba to join AJPW in 1987. He was programmed with Brody for much of his rookie year in a failed (and arguably doomed to be counterproductive) attempt to teach him to work lighter.

If I was on my computer and not my phone, I would totally copy and paste the bit about the repeated paragraph here. But I'm not typing it all again, that's for sure.

So far, a great story, told adequately.

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Crusher Jerry Blackwell.

I'm now up to him joining WCW fulltime, so there's quite a few 'On the road with Harley Race' stories. See how in the Vader/ Cactus Texas Death Match, Harley used a stun gun behind the ref's back? Apparently that wasn't something they came up with just for the match. Harley just liked to have a Stun Gun in his possession as a way of settling arguments.

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4 hours ago, AxB said:

Crusher Jerry Blackwell.

I'm now up to him joining WCW fulltime, so there's quite a few 'On the road with Harley Race' stories. See how in the Vader/ Cactus Texas Death Match, Harley used a stun gun behind the ref's back? Apparently that wasn't something they came up with just for the match. Harley just liked to have a Stun Gun in his possession as a way of settling arguments.

Doesnt the "Owen Hart ribbed Harley Race by spiking his chili with dangerous amounts of hot sauce" story literally end with Harley zapping Owen with a stun gun the next time he saw him?

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Read Len Denton's bio, Grappler: Memoirs of a Masked Madman over the weekend via Kindle. It's a fine read, just way too short at just under 250 pages... he has some great stories to tell and his voice shines through in the reading.

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Bill Watts fired Paul E from WCW by fax! Bill Watts brought a young Tazmaniac in for a try-out in WCW, then didn't sign him. Not because he didn't like the match, he refused to watch it. He saw Taz and Joey Maggs calling their match in the back and decided he didn't have it. Not because they were calling it in the back rather than the ring, because they called matches in the back in Mid-South. He refused to sign him because they called the match in the back and weren't arguing with each other enough.

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On 9/25/2019 at 8:26 AM, clintthecrippler said:

Doesnt the "Owen Hart ribbed Harley Race by spiking his chili with dangerous amounts of hot sauce" story literally end with Harley zapping Owen with a stun gun the next time he saw him?

Not just that, he got him coming out of the shower and shocked him up the butt.

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On ‎9‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 5:28 PM, Pete said:

Read Len Denton's bio, Grappler: Memoirs of a Masked Madman over the weekend via Kindle. It's a fine read, just way too short at just under 250 pages... he has some great stories to tell and his voice shines through in the reading.

Loved Denton's book. Great stories and he seems like a really mellow, humble guy with a classy attitude. Definitely in the upper echelon of wrestling books for me, and I've read a bunch.
Felt really let down by the Shinsuke 'book' but am looking forward to starting on Sabu's shortly.

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12 hours ago, No Point Stance said:

Loved Denton's book. Great stories and he seems like a really mellow, humble guy with a classy attitude. Definitely in the upper echelon of wrestling books for me, and I've read a bunch.

It's one of the more interesting "what if" stories I've read. What if he hadn't walked out on Watts over money? Supposedly he was pulling in $2,000-3,000 a week in 1981 while holding three different titles, only to give notice because JYD was making more money than him. He was stupid (as he himself admits) and it took years to get his career back on track as a result.

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