"Wrestling, Issue Three" by What Culture

BOOK TITLE: Wrestling, Issue Three

AUTHORS: What Culture Staff

YEAR: 2017

GENRE: Nonfiction

SUBGENRE: Wrestling Bookazine

GRADE: Mixed

Ah yes, the third edition of What Culture’s Wrestling magazine, complete with a list of one hundred greatest wrestlers of all time, Adam Blampied’s creative take on how to do the anonymous Raw General Manager angle, an article on the hyperbolic WWE videogame All-Stars…and also…typos. Lots and lots of typos. It appears the second verse is the same as the first when it comes to these What Culture magazines and their typos: they’re so frequent that it’s hard to give them passing grades. Some readers can easily forgive these typos. I can be forgiving from time to time, but not when they happen so often that it’s painfully obvious. Please, What Culture, find a fresh pair of eyes to read over your material before publishing it.

And while we’re at it with the negative aspects of the magazine, I could have done without a certain interview question for ring attendant SoCal Val. Yes, the questions are supposed to be wild and crazy fun and not to be taken too seriously, I get that. But when the interviewer asked, “If you could punch any animal, what would it be?”, my heart just sank. The answer wasn’t any better; SoCal Val said she would gladly punch cats because they’re “entitled and lazy”. Even as I type this, I’m visualizing an ASPCA commercial with Sarah McLaughlin’s music playing in the background. Why would this question even be considered comical or silly? It’s neither. It’s psychotic.

But even with these glaring flaws, this magazine is actually fun to read in hindsight. I particularly enjoyed Stephanie McMahon’s Crimes Against Wrestling because it’s brutally honest when talking about someone like her who hates criticism. In short, Stephanie took up too much screen time on WWE television, condescended to wrestlers more deserving of the spotlight than her, and didn’t get any comeuppance for her sins. This isn’t just annoying villain work; it’s downright disgusting. This article was so well-written and so fleshed-out that I’m legitimately hoping Stephanie McMahon reads it and gets something out of it. She won’t, but I’m still holding out hope. Kudos to the author for calling her out like that. We need more of that in our wrestling literature.

Another article I enjoyed was the one that extensively talked about the art of blading, or drawing blood in a safe and believable way in a wrestling match. When done correctly, it can enhance the drama of any match and make the wrestlers look like a million books. When done stupidly and excessively, it can shorten careers and numb the audience. As a wrestling fan growing up in the 1990’s and 2000’s, I loved ECW and their ultra-violent matches where disqualifications didn’t apply. As an adult reading this article, I have a new perspective as to why such bloody wrestling isn’t sustainable. The litany of injuries caused by excessive blood loss was one of the many factors that led to ECW’s permanent closure in 2001. This article on blading was educational and fascinating at the same time. You learn something new every day. I know I did.

Just like Issues One and Two before it, Issue Three of What Culture’s Wrestling magazine can actually be an enjoyable read if you’re willing to overlook the typos. As an author myself, I try my best to avoid typos as often as possible and it gets to a point where even I need an unbiased editor to look at my writing for me. All in all, typos are easy to fix and I hope What Culture can learn something from this experience. A mixed grade will go to this fun, but flawed reading adventure.

"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.