C.S. Posted May 11, 2021 Report Share Posted May 11, 2021 On 5/9/2021 at 5:51 PM, C.S. said: I am reading Bruno Laurer (Harvey Wippleman)'s book Wrestling with the Truth right now. Spoiler The rasslin' aspect of it is fine and interesting, but holy shit, what a judgmental, homophobic prick he comes across as. He somehow conned Rock into writing the forward, only to call Rock's grandmother a total bitch in the book. I guess Rock never actually read the thing he wrote the foreword for. Great sign for Rock's upcoming Presidential campaign, and something Baron Trump will definitely nail him on during the debate. Downtown Bruno/Harvey Wippleman is so blatantly, embarrassingly, uncomfortably homophobic to the point where you're cringing while reading this. He drops the homophobic f-slur casually, seems obsessed with who is and isn't gay, who is and isn't a "closet queer," and he apparently laments that none of the gay wrestlers he ran into ever showed any interest in him - even though he is 100%, he promises, he swears, he insists, really, completely straight. I just got to the WWF portion, so we'll see what he says, if anything, about Pat Patterson. Another "gem": Bruno is Catholic - great, no problem - but then he says he knows Johnathan Boyd (one of the Sheepherders and one of his mentors) is in Hell because he never found Jesus. Really, Bruno?! Like I said, the rasslin' portion is great - especially the chapter about what an abuse psychopath asshole Sid is - but everything else about this guy's personality makes me regret spending $10. I get the sense he's probably funny in real life, or at least funny to a wrestling locker room - where you're considered a genius if someone saw you with a book in your hand once - but his "humor" (if you can call it that) definitely doesn't work on the page. At some points, his ranting style comes across as a bootleg of Jim Cornette. Must be something they both picked up in Memphis. The second half of the book is much better... All he has to say about Pat Patterson is that he's a great guy, etc. It's a very brief mention. Nothing about Pat being the homophobic f-word, a "closet queer," etc. I guess Harvey knew whose asses he still had to kiss. (This was written in 2002 or thereabouts.) The chapter about Joey Marella is a very tough read. For those of you don't know, they were in a car accident together and Joey didn't make it. With that said, he pulls no punches on his opinion of Joey. Ouch! He also goes into the Montreal Screwjob, Benoit, and 9/11 a little bit. Bruce Prichard comes across as a severe headcase so stuck in the rasslin' bubble (and probably so stuck up Vince's ass) that stupid and cruel pranks are funny to him. Bruno has nothing but good things to say about the McMahons, Triple H, Undertaker, and Shawn Michaels but very little good to say about most of the people he managed. Overall, it's an interesting read for the wrestling portions. Just be warned that Bruno/Harvey's homophobic, judgmental, toxic personality gets very grating very quickly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted June 12, 2021 Report Share Posted June 12, 2021 Found this free book through Reddit: Professional Wrestling - The Theatre of the Absurd: I Never Wanted to be a Big Star by Tom Rocky Stone, aka Steve Hall Quote Are you a fan of old school professional wrestling? Want to know more life in the territories? Then this is the perfect book for you! Professional Wrestling - The Theatre of the Absurd is a superb collection of stories showing a glimpse into the AWA, WWF, Mid-South and Central States Wrestling, If you want to know what it was really like to be a wrestler. Tom “Rocky” Stone, aka Steve Hall has been a member of the wrestling world for decades. He will show you how he began his professional wrestling journey, his career, and his memories from driving the highways of America and so much more… From different wrestlers he’s faced to incredible personal anecdotes, this book will give you the ultimate insight into Stone’s life and the lives around him. With this book, he hopes to share his experiences inside and outside of the squared circle in what was a circus atmosphere during the 1970s, 80s and 90s. I've never heard of this book or the author, but it sounds interesting - and free is free! https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B096YBR7FF/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted July 2, 2021 Report Share Posted July 2, 2021 The Bertrand Hébert-Pat Laprade book about Andre, The Eighth Wonder of the World: The True Story of André the Giant, is back down to $4.99 on Kindle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blehschmidt Posted July 2, 2021 Report Share Posted July 2, 2021 I just finished the Tom "Rocky" Stone book, and I'm not really sure how to rate it. Formatting wise it is a disaster. There is no time line, it jumps all over the place, the editing is the shits. At one point he is talking about how nice Owen Hart is, and how big of an asshole Bret was in 1994, then he was saying how sorry he was Owen died, like it happened days after Bret was a dick to him in 94. If you can get past that, tt is your typical wrestling book with some stuff that will have you laughing out loud, and some stuff that will have you going "No way in hell that happened." He thinks very highly of himself, but at the same time realizes he was a jobber. it is a very strange dichotomy. But, if you are reading it on Kindle, you really can't beat the price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted July 5, 2021 Report Share Posted July 5, 2021 Pat Laprade's Sisterhood of the Squared Circle is $2.99 on Kindle. On 7/2/2021 at 6:17 AM, Blehschmidt said: I just finished the Tom "Rocky" Stone book, and I'm not really sure how to rate it. Formatting wise it is a disaster. There is no time line, it jumps all over the place, the editing is the shits. At one point he is talking about how nice Owen Hart is, and how big of an asshole Bret was in 1994, then he was saying how sorry he was Owen died, like it happened days after Bret was a dick to him in 94. If you can get past that, tt is your typical wrestling book with some stuff that will have you laughing out loud, and some stuff that will have you going "No way in hell that happened." He thinks very highly of himself, but at the same time realizes he was a jobber. it is a very strange dichotomy. But, if you are reading it on Kindle, you really can't beat the price. I got it when it was free too, but holy shit, you weren't kidding about the poor structure. It reads like an ADHD fever dream. I had to eventually give up on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted July 10, 2021 Report Share Posted July 10, 2021 Bump: A Wrestling Novel - Free on Kindle https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07WQMP41C/ Never heard of it and no idea how good it is, but free is free. The author also has a couple of non-wrestling freebies that I grabbed too, because why not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted August 2, 2021 Report Share Posted August 2, 2021 Pat Laprade and Dan Murphy's Sisterhood of the Squared Circle: The History and Rise of Women's Wrestling has dropped to $2.99 on Kindle. I believe I paid $4.99 for it, so this is a great deal! (Edit: I thankfully got it at $2.99 when it was that price before.) https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01M5IK3DQ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JRH Posted November 10, 2021 Report Share Posted November 10, 2021 Hoopla (certain libraries support it) just added some more wrestling titles, including The Periodic Table of Pro Wrestling (wha?), Benoit: Wrestling With the Horror That Destroyed A Family and Crippled A Sport, Between The Ropes: Wrestlings Greatest Triumphs and Failures, Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling, Wrestlecrap the Book and the Wrestlecrap Book of Lists, World Wrestling Insanity, and Wrestling Babylon. Most of these books are from the mid-2000s, which is kind of strange. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricky Jackson Posted November 10, 2021 Report Share Posted November 10, 2021 Pain and Passion is an all-time great territory history book, and I'm not just saying that because I grew up in Calgary Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted November 27, 2021 Report Share Posted November 27, 2021 On 7/1/2021 at 10:59 PM, C.S. said: The Bertrand Hébert-Pat Laprade book about Andre, The Eighth Wonder of the World: The True Story of André the Giant, is back down to $4.99 on Kindle. Back at $4.99 again. This seems to drop every few months. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warbotter Posted December 28, 2021 Report Share Posted December 28, 2021 On 11/10/2021 at 1:16 AM, Ricky Jackson said: Pain and Passion is an all-time great territory history book, and I'm not just saying that because I grew up in Calgary Second this big time. Great read and even a huge wrestling fan will most likely learn something. Don Fargo book can be funny but it's miss-able. Just got harder and harder to laugh at some of the behavior Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JRH Posted December 29, 2021 Report Share Posted December 29, 2021 So has anyone taken the plunge and picked up that Jericho book that lists all his matches yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted January 4, 2022 Report Share Posted January 4, 2022 On 12/29/2021 at 4:51 PM, JRH said: So has anyone taken the plunge and picked up that Jericho book that lists all his matches yet? Is that still only available through his website and not anywhere else or digitally? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweet Brown Koko Posted January 11, 2022 Report Share Posted January 11, 2022 I just heard about this book on the All Japan split. It’s called Ganbaru : How All Japan Pro Wrestling Survived the Year 2000 Roster Split $5.39 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09PRN4NMG/ref=as_li_tl_nodl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B09PRN4NMG&linkCode=as2&tag=voicofwres0f-20&linkId=459951d15cfa4fb70285b10eb764e2fe https://www.voicesofwrestling.com/2022/01/10/book-review-ganbaru-how-all-japan-pro-wrestling-survived-the-year-2000-roster-split/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted January 16, 2022 Report Share Posted January 16, 2022 Here's an odd one: Did you know Tony Schiavone has a book? But it's a graphic novel, for some reason. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09NP9TKQV/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Migs Posted January 16, 2022 Report Share Posted January 16, 2022 10 minutes ago, C.S. said: Here's an odd one: Did you know Tony Schiavone has a book? But it's a graphic novel, for some reason. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09NP9TKQV/ I picked the up the previews at the All Out fan fest. I enjoyed them, but given the forma, doubt we'll learn anything we didn't know already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JRH Posted February 11, 2022 Report Share Posted February 11, 2022 Dont know if I've asked this yet, but has anyone read this book? https://smile.amazon.com/Promised-You-Great-Main-Event-ebook/dp/B083SN46B8/?pf_rd_r=AWH366EH5W618AECE6KR&pf_rd_p=d354a71e-4af2-4a8e-9056-a9aaf2f0328b&pd_rd_r=806dae71-3ce9-4e92-ba8b-deb3e8667e76&pd_rd_w=Q6PYT&pd_rd_wg=Cl1ma&ref_=pd_gw_ci_mcx_mr_hp_atf_m The only other "history of WWF/E" book I've read was Sex, Lies, and Headlocks (well, that, and the Titan Sinking/Shattered/Screwed trilogy), is this similar, superior, or inferior? (and on a side note, has James Dixon ever considered doing any more books in his Titan series? A series on the WWF during the attitude era would be interesting) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMJ Posted February 11, 2022 Report Share Posted February 11, 2022 I've been trying to get through the XPW book ("Bleeding Was Only Half the Job") but I'm not really loving it. The author clearly wrote it as a passion project and, I'm assuming, is not a professional journalist or author but rather a fan who took on a Herculean task of trying to tell the story of XPW through many interviews and watching/listening to countless shoot interviews and podcasts. The work put in is undeniably admirable, but, to be perfectly honest, the episode about XPW from Dark Side of the Ring is likely all anyone like me will ever need to watch and you can get through it in under an hour. The minutiae and details in the book might be interesting to an XPW fan but to someone like me, it's been a bit of a chore to get through despite being well under 100 pages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted March 3, 2022 Report Share Posted March 3, 2022 I've been reading Sabu's book. I'm about halfway through, maybe a bit more. One of the pleasant surprises is that it also functions as a mini-biography of The Sheik. Another pleasant surprise: My BS Meter hasn't really gone off while reading this. Sabu seems very honest and forthcoming. He even admitted to being a drug addict, for example. While this autobiography is obviously designed to paint him in the best light, as most are, it really is a shame that he doesn't get the credit he deserves for how innovative and influential he was in his career - and never really got the big money contract he should have, because of Heyman and his fuckery. This has served as a reminder to me of why everyone loved Sabu in the first place. It sucks that he's presumably too old and broke down now to benefit from a run in AEW, ROH, or even something like Impact or the NWA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotJayTabb Posted March 8, 2022 Report Share Posted March 8, 2022 On 2/11/2022 at 7:32 PM, DMJ said: I've been trying to get through the XPW book ("Bleeding Was Only Half the Job") but I'm not really loving it. The author clearly wrote it as a passion project and, I'm assuming, is not a professional journalist or author but rather a fan who took on a Herculean task of trying to tell the story of XPW through many interviews and watching/listening to countless shoot interviews and podcasts. The work put in is undeniably admirable, but, to be perfectly honest, the episode about XPW from Dark Side of the Ring is likely all anyone like me will ever need to watch and you can get through it in under an hour. The minutiae and details in the book might be interesting to an XPW fan but to someone like me, it's been a bit of a chore to get through despite being well under 100 pages. I remember the guy who wrote this was working on it nearly 20 years ago, and was sharing it chapter by chapter on The Smart Marks forums. He'd been sharing it for a few weeks by the time I moved out of my parents house and didn't have the internet for several month, so I never finished it, but I don't think we'd even got to the first XPW show by that point. Yeah, it was 100% a passion piece, the guy was a huge XPW fan and would post excitedly about getting a new interview with a random XPW guy that most people hadn't heard of. As I recall, he later became a CHIKARA ref and I think sadly passed a year or two ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweet Brown Koko Posted March 8, 2022 Report Share Posted March 8, 2022 I am reading Bob Backland’s book and it is utterly amazing! I’m way late to the game on this book but it is well worth the read! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khawk20 Posted March 8, 2022 Report Share Posted March 8, 2022 1 hour ago, Sweet Brown Koko said: I am reading Bob Backland’s book and it is utterly amazing! I’m way late to the game on this book but it is well worth the read! Excellent read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricky Jackson Posted March 8, 2022 Report Share Posted March 8, 2022 Yeah, definitely one of the best wrestler autobiographies as far as deep diving on their career goes (well, at least his career up to 1984) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted June 11, 2022 Report Share Posted June 11, 2022 After reading a review on SlamWrestling.net, I took a chance on this because it's only $5 on Kindle. Living the Gimmick by Bobby Mathews https://smile.amazon.com/Living-Gimmick-Bobby-Mathews-ebook/dp/B09XFDLRQK/ It's a murder mystery novel that takes place in the world of wrestling. Basically, imagine if Ric Flair was shot dead, and Arn Anderson had to investigate. There are endless references and fan-service galore, so much so that it's almost distracting at times (not in a bad way), because you're constantly trying to piece together like a jigsaw puzzle which real-life personalities these characters are fictional versions of. In some cases, you'll recognize the characters and situations being referenced, but there will be a curveball or two thrown in to make them just different enough. For example: There's someone resembling Bret Hart - but he's gay. There's an Undertaker-type character - but he's a stooge, kiss-ass, and coward. There's a bloody fight with scissors used as a weapon - but more than two people are involved. About my only real criticism is that fictional characters clearly based on real people get mixed in with references to actual wrestlers and territories. It should have been one or the other IMO. Overall, this is a really fun read. I recommend it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted August 27, 2022 Report Share Posted August 27, 2022 https://b-ok.cc/book/22350180/cdfff6 Brian Gewirtz wrote a book about his time in WWE. If you like stories about Vince's insanity and the stupidity of Wrestler's Court, this is the book for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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