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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...

Bahamian Rhapsody, a history of pro wrestling in The Bahamas, and Volume One of Wrestling Newspaper Ads and Articles. These are my new "Throne Room Reads".

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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...

I tried to set an alarm reminder for this, but somehow put myself in a wristlock instead.

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  • 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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