Wrestling Books

Two of my favorite subjects:

I’m currently shopping around and seeing which are the best wrestling books out there. So, which books are good to read? One from a wrestling personnel (i.e. wrestler, manager, announcer, producer, etc) and one from a non wrestling personnel (i.e. you of course) would be good.

Also, which is the worst book out there and clearly should be avoided by all means necessary?

For non-wrestling personnel, anything by Tim Hornbaker. He’s one of the best wrestling historians I’ve ever seen and has written three books: one on the NWA, one on the Capitol Wrestling Corporation and one on the Death of the Territories. Outstanding stuff with some of the most detailed looks at any promotions I’ve ever seen. If you want history that is entertaining but not the most unbiased (to put it mildly), the Death of WCW (though there are some factual errors). For a specific promotion, Heath McCoy’s Pain and Passion is an outstanding one on Stampede Wrestling.

For wrestling personnel, Foley’s first book (Have A Nice Day) is pretty much the gold standard. Bret Hart’s book is great, as are Chris Jericho’s. I was fascinated by AJ Lee’s book, though it gets very rough when she’s talking about her mental health issues and it’s written in a very quirky style. Finally, if you can sit through it, William Regal’s is incredible but he goes into the most details I’ve ever seen about drug abuse and it’s honestly hard to take.

The worst ones for me are Goldust (I read it in a few hours and got very little out of it) and Jimmy Snuka’s (Which is just….I’m not sure how to put it. It’s short and a chunk of it is a glossary of his own lingo.). Roddy Piper’s is the definition of full of himself and I was rolling my eyes more every page. Brock Lesnar’s isn’t worth your time either.

What’s on your list?

PDFPrint