YOUR ALL-NEW WRESTLING BOOK THREAD

[RazorbladeKiss87]

3 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Got my copy of JC’s book. It’s a magazine size soft cover full of remembrances and pictures. A wide variety of people including a bunch of profiles of old school TN folks, like Pat Malone, Sputnik, Lance and Ron Wright. Also, Heenan, Bruno, Ray Stevens, Percy, Vader, Troy Graham and the Sheik, among others. 

That looks interesting.  Now we just need a reprint of that Midnight Express Scrapbook so I can get one without selling a kidney.  

[odessasteps]

Plus the cook book

[zendragon]

Irresistible Force: The Life and Times of Gorilla Monsoon , by Brian R. Solomon Foreword by Bret "Hitman" Hart an even 500 pages including appendixes and notes (Will you skip the those Highly Unlikely!) someone should use it as a foreign object during a pearl harbor job.

Bob Marella (Aka Gino, Aka Gorilla Monsoon) last public appearance was at WMXV as a judge for the disastrous Butterbean v Bart Gunn shoot, his end to a four decade career in Capitol Wrestling/WWWF/WWF where he did pretty much everything. That was over a quarter decade ago, despite his importance (perhaps second only to VKM himself) everything fades into the mists of time as referenced as a quote from Becky Lynches book referencing being backstage in the "Gorilla Position"  which according to her was named after a "famous backstage announcer", serving as the impetus for the author to write the book. Not realizing that it was named after the man who would be king.

And he would have been king owning 20% of the company at one point and being next in line as Vince Sr's handpicked successor. But that getting ahead of things. Most of us remember Gorilla as the legendary commentator working alongside Vince, Jesse and Bobby or for those of us slightly younger his run as President Monsoon famously getting destroyed by Vader or costing Bret the title with a spontaneous overtime period in the Ironman match. That is covered but the first half of the book goes back to his childhood as a standout amateur wrestler in college to Singing "Gino" Marella ethnic babyface in the 60's, To the first real Monster Heel Gorilla Monsoon who main evented MSG against Bruno 7 times and feuded up and down the northeast corridor. Bought into the office, owned a piece of Puerto Rico. Had his own part of the WWWF that he promoted along with being a main eventer anywhere in the world. One thing I particularly liked in between this and the Tim Hornbaker book on Buddy Rogers I have an understanding of The Capitol Wrestling to WWWF transition, along with how we went from the Vince Sr. era to the Vince Jr era and how it wasn't smooth sailing and what actually happened.

Brian Solomon did it with Blood and Fire and now he's done it again, put this on the short list of great wrestling books. Highest recommendation.

[bobholly138]

Tempted by the newish Wolfie D book. But so far no reviews out.

[twiztor]

15 hours ago, zendragon said:

Irresistible Force: The Life and Times of Gorilla Monsoon , by Brian R. Solomon

the first half of the book goes back to his childhood as a standout amateur wrestler in college to Singing "Gino" Marella ethnic babyface in the 60's, To the first real Monster Heel Gorilla Monsoon who main evented MSG against Bruno 7 times and feuded up and down the northeast corridor. Bought into the office, owned a piece of Puerto Rico. Had his own part of the WWWF that he promoted along with being a main eventer anywhere in the world. One thing I particularly liked in between this and the Tim Hornbaker book on Buddy Rogers I have an understanding of The Capitol Wrestling to WWWF transition, along with how we went from the Vince Sr. era to the Vince Jr era and how it wasn't smooth sailing and what actually happened.

damn, that sounds pretty damn interesting. thanks for the suggestion!

[Curt McGirt]

We need to do a rundown of what's come out this year around Xmas time so I can beg for a couple of these.

[SirSmUgly]

OK, I take it back, this Hornbaker Flair book is the height of hagiographic nonsense that glosses over Flair's failures and exalts every single little thing he's ever done to the height of ridiculousness.

However, if YOU are looking for a once-read, slightly-used Hornbaker book on Ric Flair to read, I am happy to offer it to you for the low price of zero dollars and zero cents, and I'll throw in free shipping on top of it. Just DM me if you're interested. 

[SirSmUgly]

Cool little find from the type of used bookstore that has stacks of books sitting on the floor because there isn't enough shelf space: A copy of a book on Gorgeous George Wagner written by John Capouya that is stamped UNCORRECTED PROOF: NOT FOR SALE. The publisher plopped on a sticker with the name, phone number, and work email address of a Harper-Collins rep and noted that the book has a 9/2/08 release date.

 

[Pete]

On 10/26/2025 at 7:56 AM, RazorbladeKiss87 said:

I started The Six Pack. Not far yet but it's okay.  I also got the Vince book, Ringmaster, at Ollie's for a song. 

Was this the song?

 

[SirSmUgly]

 John Capouya's Gorgeous George: The Outrageous Bad Boy Wrestler Who Created American Pop Culture overstates its premise in the title, but not really by all that much.

I enjoyed it. It's a quick read, and I appreciate that it aims higher than placing George Wagner in the pantheon of pro wrestlers to properly place him in the pantheon of American entertainers. It makes sure to establish George's influence on multiple entertainers including James Brown, Muhammad Ali, John Waters, and Bob Dylan. 

(On a side note, I get a kick out of the recursive nature of the robe revival spot that went from George to James Brown and then from there right back into the wrestling ring with Ernest Miller.)

The book only briefly mentions the '80s WWF or the '90s MNW revival in favor of emphasizing how important George was to early televised pop culture and is better for it. 

I do have to offer a bit of negative critique; the book depends on tens of live interviews with George's family and contemporaries in the wrestling business, which is fine, but Capouya will often write from George's first-person perspective, offering up George's inner thoughts as direct words even though no one would have been in a position to report on them unless he explicitly told them what he was thinking, which is doubtful. Does it make for a breezier read in cases? Yes. Do I also trust a lot of the hearsay in this book? Well, I wouldn't trust it anyway, but I trust it a bit less because of how it is presented. 

It's still a decent little read worth picking up if you, too, come across it in a used book store. 

[zendragon]

Beyond Nitro: Untold Stories From the WCW Era by Guy Evans. 641 pgs

Like it sounds this is the sequel to his excellent Nitro book, so if you haven't read that go ahead read that before coming back to this review. This volume comprises material that didn't find a place in the first book and if you saw the page count there is plenty of it! The first four chapters include the woman who designed the NWO logo, the guy who was the voice of the N-N-NEW WORLD ORDER... , Lash Leroux and Dusty hosting Motorcross Madness. Later chapters, go into WCW finances (based on what out their WCW arguably made more money and lost less than previously reported, also due to The Crockett's owning 1% any reported profits would have meant that they needed to get paid), The WCW sale (Vince also had to agree to buy 20 million in advertising and Turner got to keep the debt so they could continue to write it off, Vince didn't actually buy WCW actually just select IP) .

later chapters get into WCW legacy as far as influencing modern day product (mainly the cruiserweight style) for better or worse (the athleticism taking precedent over every other factor that we often talk about here), The late 90's being the last vestige of kayfabe and a comparison to essentially with a current post-kayfabe era (what constitutes "good work" in current times), A chapter on Hogan, Bischoff, and Russo's adventures in TNA  and a chapter on Russo's post wrestling life (Russo for all his fault's actually articulates a few good points about structing a wrestling show) and the cultural impact of WCW in the 90's and especially the NWO. And of course the beloved THQ video games that so many of us grew up playing get a write up.

The final chapter is a musing on wrestling nostalgia and tape trading and why so many people look back on WCW so fondly. If you are someone who still mourns dubaya cee dubaya losing the war this book if for you (and there are many). Not just a collection of anecdotes but thoughts on comparing WCW to modern wrestling, and what was lost by WWF having an essentially a monopoly on mainstream US wrestling for two decades as well as social media's impact on wrestling (think back to the MNW was really the birth of the modern internet with message boards ect) . Plus Randy Savage winning the one accolade that Hogan never did.

 

[twiztor]

2 hours ago, zendragon said:

Russo for all his fault's actually articulates a few good points about structing a wrestling show

i've said this before here, and i know others have as well. Russo has generally agreeable viewpoints about wrestling when he starts talking. They mainly seem like common sense ideas. But then he elaborates on them, or starts putting them into practice, and it turns into not at all what you thought you were getting. 

It's why he keeps getting a bit of a "Russo doesn't deserve all the hate he gets" every time he shows up as a talking head on any kind of show or documentary. But the execution sure ain't what the words implied.

[zendragon]

I agreed with his take that when he was writing raw you would start the show with Vince and Austin, then have another segment in the mid point of the show, and then end the show with the conclusion of the show long angle. Also having a bit of a cliff hanger or something announced for next week because in the end wrestling in serial so you need something to hook people for next week.  I really disagree with the idea that you can't have longer slower paced segments or longer matches. (even though i think many tv matches are a tad too long these days). One of the criticisms of AEW is everything feel rushed, you don't need to treat the audience like they have no attention span. Maybe every body doesn't need an angle and ever match doesn't need to go to the top rope or the floor, I'm okay with slowing it down a bit.

[AxB]

Link to a translated (into English) Biography of Misuharu Misawa:

https://puroprogramtranslations.blogspot.com/2025/12/mitsuharu-misawa-supreme-triple-crown.html

[JNLister]

Excuse the plug, but my book "Turning The Tables: The Story of Extreme Championship Wrestling" is 99p on Kindle throughout January (UK only deal I'm afraid): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Turning-Tables-Extreme-Championship-Wrestling/dp/1520782489

[zendragon]

oh cool that you wrote that. I reviewed it back in the thread

[Cobra Commander]

Just finished up Irresistible Force: The Life and Times of Gorilla Monsoon. (479 pages/17 chapters)

It was a pretty good/interesting story. The Wrestling career era parts were a little more in front of everybody than the back-nine where there was a certain amount of "this was happening in the company around Gorilla" and the whole business mechanisms element. The stuff like Gorilla doing international commentary is still largely unsurfaced and the number of countries getting International Superstars would have to be an assortment of countries with enough English speakers to keep an English-language commentary 1999 WWF show on the air but not prominent enough to get the top shows. So I don't know if there's someone in Barbados or Israel getting Gorilla Monsoon commentated versions of International Superstars or what. If you lived in some far off locale and taped that stuff, please contact (insert name of your favorite tape person that YouTube hasn't banned yet)

Joey Marella partially being done in by an insane cost-cutting company policy of "you have to fly out of the same airport you flew in from" meaning he was going from Ocean City to Newark for a flight to Florida instead of the numerous airports in-between is something. Gorilla likely was company enough to not overly blame the company for that but who knows how much changes if the company was a little more reasonable there. Like they probably keep Joey Marella around in some fashion for a long time due to family if he hadn't died in 94. Also didn't know how many refs were in the same South Jersey group (Chimel, Chioda)

There is a semi but not really related story about the decline of syndicated wrestling TV with how Gorilla's work ramped down.

There's always gonna be problems with biographies on people who died over 25 years ago who had a certain amount of contemporaries also die (and others who really aren't going to be interviewed for books for various reasons) but Brian got the family and the story was a lot more complete than the Tim Hornbaker Ric Flair book from a few years ago.

I'm guessing the viability of a similar Bobby Heenan book would be hindered by (1) lots of dead contemporaries, (2) Bobby writing multiple books, and (3) most of the unwritten history either involving minutae of the WWA or how much Bobby hated WCW

Gorilla also being relatively new at commentary and then having the company booming with him doing a lot of the work really is something. Along with the commutes from New Jersey to Connecticut later on.

Also, I might just plunge into Wikipedia one of these days to see how much I can nudge their Gorilla/Quinones pages since yeah, if Victor Quinones was born before Gorilla was in the business, then I can believe that there wasn't a blood relation, no matter what the NYT Obit wants to say. Joey being adopted is something I might have read but I didn't know before this.

[zendragon]

 

[Curt McGirt]

We need a Victor Quinones book. Hell we just need a Puerto Rico book. I suppose that depends on how much Carlos is willing to admit on the record about his business besides even Brody. There has to be some insane stories there.

EDIT: Nevermind, we'd probably get the straight dope from Hugo

Edited January 7 by Curt McGirt

[Curt McGirt]

This Gorilla talk made me think of what Bobby wrote about him in his book, and lo and behold, it shows up in my Facebook feed. Incredible. 

Might get a little dusty in the room when reading it. 

Spoiler

When Bobby Heenan's WWF contract was up in 1993, Vince McMahon presented The Brain with a new offer, but one week later, he couldn't honour it.

Vince asked if Bobby could take a 50% pay cut, which Bobby turned down.

During this period, Bobby grew tired of travelling to New York.

At the production meeting before his final WWF show, Vince asked Bobby how he would like to leave.

Bobby's response: "Have Gorilla Monsoon throw me out after going through my bags and finding stolen towels, light bulbs, ashtrays, and phonebooks. Everything from a hotel."

Vince agreed to the idea.

In his book, Bobby the Brain: Wrestling's Bad Boy Tells All, Heenan described his final evening in WWF with one of his best friends, Gorilla Monsoon:

"So Gorilla came to ringside where I was doing commentary. He threw me and my bag out of the building.

I gave my farewell and walked around the back. Gorilla was waiting for me in his car, and we drove to the LaGuardia Holiday Inn. We quietly stood in the elevator, which took us to the floor where our rooms were.

I turned to him and said, "Well, nine years together. Good luck, partner."

I shook his hand. He went his way. I went to mine.

I got into my room. There was a big basket of fruit in there, all bananas. I called Gorilla. "I have some bananas here. Do you want them?" He came down the hall, and I gave him his favorite fruit. We must have hugged and cried for an hour.

Gorilla Monsoon's real name was Robert Marella. Before he wrestled, he was a singer in Toronto called Gino Marella.

Doing Prime Time in a studio and voice-over work for Wrestling Challenge was repetitious since we were seeing the same match four to five times a week. But working with Gorilla Monsoon was a joy--the highlight of my career. He was the most honest, gentle, intelligent man I ever met.

We stayed in touch after I left. I would visit him, and we would talk on the phone every week. Gorilla is one of my best friends in life. He is dearly missed by me and my family. I love that man."

 

[twiztor]

i will always remember Heenan, in his Hall of Fame induction, saying "i wish my friend [Gorilla] was here." and the emotion in his voice. that broke me.

[Pete]

Heenan being stricken with cancer of the throat AND TONGUE has to be one of the cruelest ironies imaginable, particularly for a man with that specific gift of gab.

[Curt McGirt]

Tomas "Tompa" Lindberg from At the Gates/Grotesque/Disfear/The Crown/a million other bands just passed away last year from some kind of throat or mouth cancer. He was a singer (well, vocalist would be a better term). They rushed through vocals for the new At the Gates album, he went into the hospital, and they removed his palate -- the roof of his mouth. Yeah. You wanna talk Irony with a capital I...

[zendragon]

WWE Legends By Brian Solomon 241 pgs Foreward by Sgt. Slaughter

This is Brian's first book back in 2006 which came out under WWE's deal with Simon and Schuster (you may remember when a book a month was coming out from everybody from The Rock to The Fabulous Moolah to The Hardys To Freddie Blassie), the concept is brief histories of the personalities that shaped the pre national expansion years of Capitol Wrestling and the WWWF. 40 Chapters each dedicated to one person broken down in sections In the beginning : the Capitol years (Vince Senior, Toots Mont, Antonio Rocca, and Buddy Rogers), Introducing First: The Managers, And The Crowd goes Wild: Hero's of the Ring, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: The Folks you loved to hate, It's All About the Pride: Ethnic Idols, USA is not okay: The Foreign Menace, Tossing in tandem: The Tag Team Greats, Blame it on Rio: Early IC champs, and The Weird and The Wacky.

Obviously you are not going to get the level of detail that readers have come to expect in his later books with everyone getting ten or less pages, also the book tends to drift in and out of Kayfabe with Pat Patterson talking about working face and heel and references to Slaughters fictious military service. Still a fun look at those early semi- forgotten names that built the foundation of what became the world's largest wrestling promotion.

[zendragon]

DO YOU LIKE COMIC BOOKS? DO YOU LIKE PRO WRESTLING? THEN DO I HAVE A BOOK FOR YOU!

The Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling: A Hardcore, High-Flying, No-Holds-Barred History of the One True Sport

By Aubrey Sitterson and Chris Moreno 170 pgs

It's Exactly what is sounds like a graphic novel about this history of our favorite sport. Starts with the carnival origins and covers everything; Chapters on The golddust trio, the NWA, Mexico (even Lucha Underground gets a mention), World of Sport, Japan, the Golden age of WWF, MNW, and finishes with The New Millennium which covers the Benoit tragedy, ROH & TNA,  Bryan Danielson winning the world title, The Invasion, and one of the final panels is Kenny Omega winning the IWGP US title in Long Beach, basically ends right before AEW gets going.

and the art work I mean look at this

There's even a picture of Teddy Hart and his cats in here, so you know the people involved love wrestling. Can't recommend this enough