Like the collapse of Enron, WCW went from the king of the mountain to a body buried in a shallow grave. Wrestling is a business, just like any other. It is entertainment, but it is indeed a business. Not only do you have the wrestlers performing on TV, but you also have the backstage. You have the people writing the shows, marketing, hiring and firing, etc. And like any other poorly run business hemorrhaging money, WCW went out of business.
The Death of WCW, written by R.D. Reynolds of Wrestlecrap.com and Bryan Alvarez of Figure Four Weekly, is the story of WCW, told from the beginning to the bitter end. It tells the story of how WCW went from losing $6 million dollars a year to making over $55 million to being sold to Vince McMahon and the WWF for a measly $3 million (measly being a relative term, I don’t have $3 million to spare, but Vince did and keep in mind that the original offer was $500 million).
The book is extremely well written, especially for an independent title about pro-wrestling. Reynolds and Alvarez do a superb job of telling the WCW story, at times even telling the events as they happened on a week-to-week basis. Obviously these guys know their wrestling stuff, but they also realize that not everyone does and they go out of their way to explain the wrestling jargon (the wrestling world is filled with its own language and it would definitely be confusing if you didn’t know it). They let you know that job means to lose a match, heel is the bad guy and babyface or simply face is the good guy. They tell you what WCW, WWE, ECW, JCP and all the promotion acronyms stand for. They tell you the difference between work and shoot, and they do it in such a way that it doesn’t sound like a monotone encyclopedia but instead comes off as listening to a friend tell you an interesting story over beer. In short, you don’t have to know a thing about wrestling to enjoy this book. It’s humorous, fascinating, and at times even a little sad as you realize that trapped in all the shenanigans are real people with real families to feed doing everything they can to stay employed while the monkeys running the show run it straight into the ground.
As I said wrestling is a business, and the successes and mistakes of WCW are really any that could be made in some form or other in any business large or small. This is a bold statement but I stand by it when I say that The Death of WCW is almost like the Art of War in that what says and how it says it can and does able to many different situations, be it war, school, or business. I know fans of wrestling will appreciate this book the most, but almost anyone will enjoy to story. Believe me, what happens backstage is more interesting, and at times more ludicrous, than anything on TMZ or in the National Enquirer and it’s all true!
The Death of WCW is an absolute MUST read for every single wrestling fan and I highly recommend it for even those that despise pro-wrasslin’.
5 Nokies. |
