"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.