Posted on June 17th, 2013 by Tink Holloway.
The Hardcore Truth: The Bob Holly Story is the autobiography of Bob ‘Hardcore’ Holly who worked for the WWE for 16 years…
Posted on April 22nd, 2011 by Dante Spears.
Being Canadian I have something of a soft spot for Stampede Wrestling and the antics of the Hart Family. So when books relating to the Hart Family emerge I always try to get my hands on them at the first opportunity…
Posted on March 6th, 2011 by Dante Spears.
In 2007 Chris Jericho released his monolithically titled memoir ‘A Lion’s Tale; Around the World in Spandex’, a book that was responsible for yours truly becoming interested in wrestling autobiographies. That book recounted everything in his life up until his WWE debut and left the reader in suspense, as it literally finished the second before he debuted. Fans had to wait another four years for this equally monolithically titled sequel ‘Undisputed: How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps’ to arrive. Was it worth the wait?
Posted on January 23rd, 2011 by Dante Spears.
Goldust as a character was one of the most risqué characters of the early 90’s. This is one of those times that you can’t help but hope he would have dozens of stories to tell and would inevitably release a fascinating book.
Posted on January 1st, 2011 by Dante Spears.
‘The WWE Championship: A Look Back at The Rich History of the WWE Championship’ is, as I assume you can surmise, a history of the WWE’s top championship. It seems to be something of a follow up to the History of the WWE Championship DVD set that the WWE produced a few years ago. It seems weird to attempt to convert that idea into a book considering that the strength of that set was the chance to actually watch the matches from the title’s history, but whatever, we’ll run with it.
Posted on December 5th, 2010 by Dante Spears.
When Mick Foley first released his autobiography ‘Have a Nice Day’ the immense success created a mini trend when wrestlers realised they make a quick buck from writing out their life story. Even in its dying days WCW picked up on the potential of this market and who better than one of their biggest stars, Goldberg, to test the waters…
Posted on December 2nd, 2010 by Dante Spears.
So once again we come back to Mick Foley, the man who basically invented the genre of wrestling autobiographies. His newest memoir is titled ‘Countdown to Lockdown’ and is essentially that; a countdown of the days leading up to the 2009 Lockdown Pay-Per-View where he won the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. His first two books are seen as classics by most people, but his previous book, ‘The Hardcore Diaries’ met with some backlash from the fans. Where will ‘Countdown to Lockdown’ fall?
Posted on August 7th, 2010 by Dante Spears.
2005’s ‘Are We There Yet? Tales from the Never Ending Travels of WWE Superstars’ was a book that I rather enjoyed. Wrestling is of course famous for the rigorous travel schedule and the Superstars themselves have reputations of being a boisterous bunch so mixing the two elements together guaranteed a hit. What we got was exactly that – it wasn’t complex, long or even a thought provoking read but it was pretty enjoyable. Five years later we have ‘Rumble Road: Untold stories from Outside the Ring’ can it live up to its predecessor?
Posted on May 2nd, 2010 by Dante Spears.
When you hear the name Vince Russo, what do you think? There’s probably a good chance that you think of a writer who killed WCW with his booking. The man is notorious among the wrestling community as the man who brutalized WCW with his booking and is now doing the same to TNA. To be fair, the notion that he killed WCW is more accurate than the beginning of the book where “Vince Russo; The first man to actually make men in tights appealing” is written. I’m pretty sure that you can gather from the monolithic title of ‘Rope Opera: How WCW Killed Vince Russo’ that this book is spent trying to argue against the commonly held belief that Russo was to blame for WCW destruction rather, it was WCW that killed Vince Russo.
Posted on January 4th, 2010 by Dante Spears.
The problem with wrestling autobiographies is that time and time again wrestlers prove that they are not a reliable source when it comes to history. WWE in particular gets plenty of criticism with their books, mainly around their attempts at revising history or because the author is “compelled” to write the book in character. Of course on the other side of that coin you have the independently released autobiographies that tend to fall on the side of veteran wrestlers bitterly talking about how things were better in the past. To be honest, I have no idea what side to take because both sides have released some amazing books and both have released some absolute flops. This issue made me moderately interest in Hulk Hogan’s new book, ‘My Life Outside the Ring’, because to the best of my knowledge Hogan is the only wrestler who has both written an autobiography for the WWE and released one independently. Maybe by the end of this we’ll be able to see if the independently released books are better than the WWE released books.
Posted on December 19th, 2009 by Dante Spears.
In probably one of their most brilliant marketing moves this year, the WWE waited until just before Christmas to release ‘Behind the Mask’; the autobiography of none other than Rey Mysterio.
Posted on November 24th, 2009 by Dante Spears.
The Unauthorized History of D-Generation X is the first WWE autobiography released in a PG environment despite the subject matter extensively being marred in so much un-PG rated material. DX, as you probably know – if you’ve had any sort of knowledge of the WWE in the past decade or so – are a group that originally formed from remnants of the Kliq, a backstage group that consisted of Shawn Michaels, Triple H, Scott Hall, Sean Waltman and Kevin Nash. Its current incarnation consists of Triple H and Shawn Michaels and more often than not they equal a huge payoff to the WWE with merchandise whenever they are around. Now it was time for them to break into another medium by writing a book, and with a group like DX who made such an impact on the WWE at the turn of the century, this book had the potential to be quite the interesting read.
Posted on October 18th, 2009 by Dante Spears.
And so once again I grace you’re computer screens to retrospectively review an old wrestling autobiography that seems to have largely fallen into obscurity with wrestling fans. This pick is “It’s True, It’s True!” by none other than Kurt Angle, everyone’s favourite American hero/braggart. On paper this sounded like a great read – Kurt Angle has certainly had a stellar life. He rose to the top of the athletic world with a Gold Medal at the 1996 Olympics and then rose to the top of the professional wrestling world by becoming one of the most hated heels of the new Millennium. Surely someone who’s done so much must have a thousand interesting stories that they could put into their autobiography?
Posted on August 30th, 2009 by Dante Spears.
Bret Hart: The best there is, the best there was and the best there’ll ever be…words that Bret Hart proclaimed about himself throughout his career. On paper it appeared to be nothing more than a wrestling gimmick, but when Bret Hart allowed the WWE to release a DVD documentary about his career it became rather apparent that this man really believed that moniker. The weird foible was that we finally had a look into his career only for it to be ruined by the very man we wanted to know more about. A few years later he released his autobiography – entitled “Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling” – in what was possibly one of the most anticipated wrestling books of all time. Did Bret Hart once again taint his own product with his own pride, or did he truly attempt to be fair when writing his autobiography?
Posted on July 25th, 2009 by Dante Spears.
Wrestlers like Lita, William Regal and (for reasons I’ve never understood) Mick Foley have set a bar of excellence with their autobiographies. Unfortunately you also have wrestlers like Hulk Hogan who have set a bar of mediocrity in wrestling autobiographies. So for the benefit of Wrestling 101’s undernourished book section and because I actually want to talk about this book, I decided to take a crack at reviewing Chris Jericho’s opus, ‘A Lion’s Tale: Around the World in Spandex. Chris Jericho is one of the few top Superstars who doesn’t have a wrestling DVD release, be it documentary or match collection. This meant I knew little about his personal life going into the book so everything that I would read about in this book would be new to me, which is a nice change from wrestlers whose personal life is plastered all over the public domain.
Posted on June 7th, 2009 by Dante Spears.
After the success of Mick Foley’s autobiography ‘Have a Nice Day’ the wrestling industry saw the production of a plethora of wrestling autobiographies released including Matt and Jeff Hardy’s entitled ‘Exist 2 Inspire’ in 2003. Chances are you have already heard numerous stories about the Hardy’s personal lives if you’ve been remotely connected to WWE in the last 7 years or so. Their rise in the WWE to the top of the Tag Team Division, their fall and eventual return with flourishing individual careers.
Posted on April 9th, 2009 by Saz.
You know, one thing that WWF/E always stood for in my mind was quality, quality wrestlers, quality shows and quality nights in watching your favourite wrestlers battle it out.
Posted on March 30th, 2009 by Paul Kelly.
Andre the Giant, one of the few true legends of professional wrestling. The first wrestler to truly cross into the mainstream, could there be a better person for the WWE to release a biography about? Is it even possible to write this book and for it to be less than astounding? It turns out yes.
Posted on December 6th, 2007 by Clarkey.
How long did it take you in your life to decide what you were put on this world for, and which profession you would undertake upon leaving the security of the family nest? Some would wager they still haven’t found the job to suit them and are still running on empty, toiling through their office job or flipping burgers at the nearest fast food joint until it comes along. Hard work and graft obviously plays a part and one must seek what they wish rather than sitting waiting for it, but sometimes that role does just bite you on the rear at the right moment. This leads to it dawning that the role was your true calling, leaving the rest of your time in the working world pretty much redundant. Batista Unleashed can be surmised in this vain, and is the candidly honest tale of the path that resulted in Dave Bautista finding himself within the wrestling world at the age of 30; coming into the industry late after a eventful life up until his big break.
Posted on January 4th, 2007 by Tony Cottam.
They say if you can remember the 80s, you’re old.
