"Titan Screwed" by James Dixon and Justin Henry

BOOK TITLE: Titan Screwed: Lost Smiles, Stunners, and Screwjobs

AUTHORS: James Dixon and Justin Henry

YEAR: 2016

GENRE: Nonfiction

SUBGENRE: Wrestling Biography

GRADE: Mixed

From the mid to late 1990’s, World Wrestling Federation engaged in a television ratings war with World Championship Wrestling. While WCW had an overloaded roster with high-ranking superstars, WWF had to desperately change direction if they were going to stay in business. Backstage drama between WWF’s top wrestlers Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart led to the infamous Montreal Screwjob, which sewed the seeds for Mr. McMahon’s tyrannical character, which sewed the seeds for WWF’s Attitude Era, a TV-14-rated period in wrestling where edginess and shades of gray characters eclipsed the cartoonish storytelling of the 80’s and early 90’s. By hook or crook, the WWF won the Monday night ratings wars and became the juggernaut we know as WWE today.

The amount of detail and research that went into this biography is amazing. Not one piece of information in this book comes off as slanderous, just simple brutal honesty. I’ve always wondered what it meant when Shawn Michaels “lost his smile” and why it was considered disgusting at the time. It turns out he faked a knee injury so that he wouldn’t have to lose his WWF World Championship to his backstage rival Bret Hart in a credible wrestling match. I’ve also wondered what it was about the Melanie Pillman interview that made it win Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic of 1997 in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards. Turns out nobody wants to see a crying widow falling apart on TV while Vince McMahon tries to wash his hands of drug-related controversy. Accurately told stories like these prove that the wrestling business never was and never will be rainbows and skittles. So much anger and toughness runs deep in the veins of everybody who goes out to the ring to put on a show.

The reason I mentioned not knowing much about lost smiles or Melanie Pillman’s interview days after her husband Brian’s death is because there was a period in my life where my mother wouldn’t allow me to watch wrestling (because of its “trashy” content). So when I read about certain things in Titan Screwed that I missed all of those years, I’m suddenly in the mood to watch them. Apparently, Bret Hart vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin at Wrestlemania 13 in a submission match is a five-star classic with hard-hitting moves, a splattering of blood, and a match ending that made both wrestlers look strong. The planning that went into the Montreal Screwjob months later at Survivor Series made me empathetic towards Bret Hart’s seething anger and his physical outbursts, which had to be contained by an entire locker room full of wrestlers. The way these two particular parts of wrestling history were written made the whole story seem novel-like. So intricately detailed, so much dialogue, and so much emotion went into writing this book that I might as well have been reading a classic novel.

As much as I praise the picturesque details of some of the scenes in this book, there’s something about the writing style in general that slows the whole thing down for me. Maybe there’s too much detail. Maybe it’s the dry writing style of the minor parts of the biography. Maybe there’s too much verbiage and not enough action. Maybe it’s the fact that this is in its basic form a biography and not a tried and true memoir. Whatever the case may be, the slow reading pace put a huge strain on my eyes to the point where reading almost became a chore for me. Yes, this book is rich with information I’ve been longing to have since my mother forced me to stop watching wrestling as a teen. But just like with assigned college reading, the pace of the book can make or break the whole thing. In this case, the snail-like reading pace makes me want to downgrade this book to three stars instead of my usual four or five.

While some parts of this book read like a novel, others read like a Plain Jane biography. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that as long as you know what you’re getting into. James Dixon and Justin Henry are two wrestling columnists I trust when it comes to analyzing this particular form of entertainment. They’ve done amazing work with websites like What Culture and Wrestle Crap. If you enjoy their work outside of Titan Screwed, you’ll probably get a good read out of this book. If you’re as anal about a book’s reading pace as I am, you might struggle with this one, but I urge you to make it until the end of the book. You can do it. I believe in you. A mixed grade goes to this simple and clean piece of wrestling literature.