"Wrestling, Issue One" by What Culture

BOOK TITLE: Wrestling, Issue One

AUTHORS: What Culture Staff

YEAR: 2016

GENRE: Nonfiction

SUBGENRE: Pro-Wrestling Bookazine

GRADE: Mixed

The articles can be fascinating to any hardcore wrestling fan, but not if they suffer from the same typographical errors as the next volume in the series. Vince McMahon’s first name was spelled without an N, the word match had its A capitalized, the word to was all-caps for no apparent reason, need I name more? This wouldn’t be too big of an issue if the typos were few and far between, but they occur so frequently that I can’t give this bookazine a passing grade. A reputable editor with a fresh set of eyes could have easily pinpointed these glaring mistakes and polished this otherwise fine piece of reading material to higher standards.

Typos aside, the articles were actually fun to read, with the glaring exception of WWE vs. Internet Fans. To me, that just sounded like a bitter old man ranting and raving about the inevitable emergence of the internet, as if this new technology is somehow to blame for wrestling being as bad as it can be sometimes. It seems uncharacteristic of What Culture’s writing staff to put out such an article considering they themselves are wrestling critics and employ a mostly millennial workforce. Maybe this particular article author was an outsider from the beginning, I don’t know.

But enough about the negativity. Let’s talk about my two favorite articles in this whole bookazine. Let’s begin with Britney Pillman’s story about how her father, Brian, died of a heart attack while preparing for a WWF pay-per-view. To hear the author describe Britney’s pain as she grew up with a drug-addicted stepmother and without a loving father, it tugs at the heartstrings and makes the reader want to legitimately root for her life to improve. While Britney is in a better place since the tragic incident, she did miss out on royalty payments from the WWF that instead went to the drug-addicted stepmother Melanie Pillman. I wouldn’t wish such poverty and heartache on my worst enemy. We’ve all had to deal with toxic people at one point or another, but I think any reader can agree that Britney and her siblings need a permanent vacation from them. That’s what the author of the article did for me as a reader: put me in the role of cheerleader.

And of course, Adam Blampied’s undying creativity will always be my favorite part of What Culture’s past. Although his recent sex scandal puts me in a tough position with regards to his fandom, I can at least enjoy his vision for how he would book Rey Mysterio’s first World Championship run in WWE. No more will the lovable luchador be jobbed out to everybody and their uncle. He’ll win matches by the skin of his teeth, like a true underdog hero is supposed to. He’ll have credible opponents to put him over the moon. He’ll have blood-curdling storylines that aren’t nearly as despicable with Eddie Guerrero’s legacy as real life was. If Rey Mysterio had been booked under Adam Blampied’s guidance, I would have been a bigger believer in this ultimate underdog. But as it is…

The negatives of this bookazine shouldn’t turn you away from what is ultimately a fun read for all wrestling fans. Typos are easy to fix and even if they wanted to keep the anti-internet fan article, readers could just skip over it. There’s a top 100 wrestling match list,  a fantasy world cup tournament, a nice juxtaposition between Bray Wyatt and his eerie theme song, too many wonderful articles to name. Though not perfect, this work of nonfiction will get a respectable mixed grade out of me.

"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.