Rating: 
Summary: Essential reading for fans of pro wrestling's history.
Review: We can go back and forth, argue and banter over the question "When was pro wrestling's golden age?" without coming to a consensus. One thing is certain: the golden age of pro wrestling literature is here and now. "Hooker" ranks on the top of the wrestling publication mountain, right alongside the autobiographies of Mick Foley and Dynamite Kid. What makes Lou Thesz's biography stand apart is his firsthand account of the pro wrestling industry during an era that has too little authentic historical coverage. Mr. Thesz gives us something that I doubt many others from that period (1930s onward) could: he eloquently tells of his fascinating journey as a wrestler, and gives the story greater depth since he tells us about the nature of pro wrestling as an industry. We get a bird's eye view of the cyclical rise and fall of several powerful wrestling promotions, the specifics of promotional wars, and the bartering between promoters. We see the profession through the eyes of a man who had to work simultaneously as the World's Heavyweight champion and a savvy man of business. If there is any weakness in this book, Mr. Thesz is upfront about it. He makes no pretenses that it is difficult to write a first hand account of promoters and fellow wrestlers objectively; no matter how hard one tries, prejudices and biases will show. Taking this into account, I have even greater admiration for the end result. He pulls no punches criticizing men he considered limited technical wrestlers (IE Antonino Rocca Baron Leone), yet he carefully points out their strengths as performers, and sounds genuinely sympathetic when such performers were exploited by greedy promoters. We read detailed accounts of Thesz's experiences with wrestling legends like Joe Stecher, Ad Santel, George Tragos, and Dara Singh. We learn about his lifelong friendship with mentor Ed "Strangler" Lewis; how if it weren't for one phone call Lewis made, the name Lou Thesz could have been absent from wrestling history. I am especially jazzed that Mr. Thesz wrote a detailed account of "The Iowa Cornstalk," Fred Grubmier, the wrestler who deceived people into thinking he was the village idiot, when in fact he was quite the sharp shooter! I have heard stories about Fred Grubmier before, and am glad Mr. Thesz chose to include him in this book. It would be a crime to let Fred Grubmier's name fade from wrestling history. Whether you are a fan of wrestling past or present, this book will give you a vivid picture of pro wrestling as an industry. If you are somebody who has aspirations to enter the pro wrestling business, I strongly urge you to read this book along with Foley's and Dynamite's; these works will give you fair warning before diving into a career that requires a clever sense of business, talent, and as Lou Thesz says in the beginning of the book, perhaps something in the way of a guardian angel!
Rating:
Summary: Hooker : An Authentic Wrestler's Adventures by Lou Thesz
Review: With a growing market of wrestling books by modern day performers and wrestling "historians", HOOKER is a much needed breath of fresh air. Lou Thesz has a unique perspective on the sport having been involved in it from the 1930s up until the present day, and did an excellent job of sharing it. I came away with not just a biography of Lou Thesz, but with a tremendous sense of the history of pro wrestling and the many personalities both in the ring and behind the scenes that shaped the sport. In no other publication, was I able to get a complete sense of the evolution of pro wrestling than with HOOKER. Lou Thesz does a masterful job of detaling the history of the sport in it's various forms of evoluion from the 1930s through the 1990s. And because the story is written from the perspective of not not just someone who knew the statistics on paper, but from someone who was there at the forefront, there was a greater sense of depth here than with other publications. Pulling no punches (even on himself at times), Lou Thesz is brutally honest with his opinions on many of the wrestlers and promoters that he worked with, as well as with the various states and perceptions of Pro Wrestling from his active days and before. This was a story that only someone with Mr. Thesz's experience could have told. He didn't dissapoint.
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