I am still writing about wrestling, and if that bores you then I imagine you stopped reading like ten words ago. So all that’s left are the rest of you, so eager to read about men in tights slapping each other that you’d come here to my humble little bespoke word servery. But there are way more places you can read about wrestling – in these things called books.
Yes, I have read far more books on wrestling than one might think, and tonight I come to make some recommendations for you.
First, let’s talk about autobiographies of wrestlers. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of autobiographies of wrestlers. They’re pretty much all terrible – and, since they’re mostly all written by the same small cabal of ghostwriters, pretty much all terrible in the same way. They give stories of coming from humble beginnings and overcoming adversity, vent a few frustrations with WWE management – but not so many as to damage the wrestler’s livelihood – and rival wrestlers, share some hilarious anecdotes and say that the best is yet to come. Rinse, lather, repeat. The worst I ever read being Goldberg’s, because he ran out of stories halfway through and the rest of the book was about football.
(I will admit that The Rock’s book has some interesting stuff about growing up in a Hawaiian wrestling family, and I kinda want to read William Regal’s autobio because, come on, William Regal… but other than that, they’re usually terrible.)
That said, there are three autobios that are really worth checking out, all for different reasons.
First is Mick Foley’s Have a Nice Day, which maps pretty closely to the formula above but is told with a distinct voice – Foley turned down the offer of a ghost and wrote the whole thing himself. It turned out that Foley’s image – a bearded, husky everyman with a weird sense of humour and a sentimental streak – was pretty much exactly who he was, and that he also had a decent ability to write genuine, engaging prose that didn’t aim too high and thus hit its mark. Have a Nice Day is readable, fun, remarkably bloody – Foley was the Hardcore Legend, after all – and paints a picture of late 90s WWE that is sanitised but not to the point of flavourlessness. Foley wrote two further autobios, with predictable diminishing returns, and there’s absolutely no reason to ever try reading his novel, but Have a Nice Day is worth checking out.
At around the same time Foley wrote his book, indie wrestler Mike Quackenbush wrote his own memoir, Headquarters, which is fascinating because it follows the same arc as all the other bios – until Quackenbush realises that he’s not going to make it to the same happy ending as all the big name wrestlers. Instead, his career has plateaued, his injuries are becoming more serious and his dreams are fading away. That sounds maudlin, but Headquarters is that rarest of things, a story of failure that doesn’t descend into self-pity; Quackenbush writes with good humour and nerdy flourish, and makes you feel sympathy for him rather than pity. Headquarters was self-pubbed and is difficult to find, but if you can dig it up it’s a really interesting read. And I’m keen to read the sequel, Secret Identity, and see how he turned his career around into founding and managing the popular, family- and nerd-friendly Chikara promotion.
Finally, there’s an autobio that seems written out of spite rather than self-aggrandisement – Pure Dynamite, the story of Tom Billington, aka The Dynamite Kid. Billington was one of the most skilled and ferocious wrestlers to ever come out of Britain, hugely influential in the 70s and 80s and a top draw in Japan. He was also arrogant, belligerent, petty and just plain mean – and he doesn’t back away from admitting to any of that in his book. He doesn’t apologise for it, but he doesn’t try to absolve himself either; he’s content to show himself, warts and all, and he’s too old and bitter to care about what anyone thinks of him now. As prose, Pure Dynamite is pretty lacklustre; as a peek at the 70s/80s wrestling industry, and into the head of a star who burned bright and then out, it’s fascinating. And damned hard to find nowadays, but so it goes.
Moving on from 15-year old autobiographies to newer material, I recently read and really enjoyed David Shoemaker’s The Squared Circle, which I know I mentioned a few posts ago. Shoemaker’s book is a modified collection of some of his ‘Dead Wrestler of the Week’ columns in Deadspin; he uses these stories to underline the events, changes and overaching themes of 20th-century wrestling. He’s a very skilled and clever writer – sometimes a little too clever, and too fond of quoting Barthes, but I like that kind of thing -and there’s genuine affection, scholarship and sadness in his stories of Owen Hart, Andre the Giant and Brian Pillman. I got pretty damn sad at the end when he talked about Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Speaking of Andre the Giant, there’s a graphic novel about his life that’s apparently pretty good; I have to get round to reading it sometime.)
And finally, I couldn’t discuss books about wrestling without covering the glory that is Big Apple Takedown, a novel in which the NSA recruit six WWE wrestlers to fight terrorism as undercover secret agents.
I shit you not.
December 2001: Vince McMahon steps out of a snowy night into a diner in upstate New York for a meeting with old friend Phil Thomson, now a highly placed government official. Thomson has a strange proposition: creating a new covert black-ops group using the Superstars of World Wrestling Entertainment.
March 2006: The Superstars have been handed their latest assignment — take down a commercial-grade methyl-amphetamine plant that is bankrolling terrorist activities in Europe. Their mission seems simple and straightforward, until a member of their team is taken prisoner. Now all that they’ve worked so hard for is in jeopardy, and one of their own might be killed…
Note how the cover has bosoms. Not sure why they don’t get mentioned in the blurb.
Obviously I am not saying you should read this; merely marvel that such a thing exists. If you’re curious enough to want to experience its deathless prose and poorly described action sequences, try listening to the I Don’t Even Own a Television podcast, which discusses it at hilarious length.
The best thing? This makes me happy that my YA wrestling-dream-warriors-versus-oni novel won’t be the weirdest thing written in the powerslam oeuvre.
More on that another time. Once John Cena takes out that meth plant.