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Review of ?Shooters: the Toughest Men in Professional Wrestling?

Posted: Jul 12th 2012 By: CMBurnham

Ever wonder the real backstory on the legends of the wrestling business like Lou Thesz, Ed ?Strangler? Lewis, ?Nature Boy? Buddy Rogers & Frank Gotch?? You don?t know those names. How about Kurt Angle, Brock Lesnar, Danny Hodge or Ken Shamrock? You know them, great because author Jonathon Snowden talks about them plus tons of name you might not know in his new book Shooters: the Toughest Men in Professional Wrestling (ECW Press, $19.95, 309pp)

Mr. Snowden covers a huge time scope in this book going as far back as 1880?s New York City to the shooter days of William Muldoon & Evan ?Strangler? Lewis who laid the foundation to ever establishing a ?world? championship. Also covered are the genesis of ?Farmer? Burns who launched several Hall of Fame careers, George Hackenschmidt who went to war with Frank Gotch in 1911, while talking of the birth of MMA and martial arts meshing in wrestling via Mitsuyo Maeda & the Gracie family.

The book gets in depth to the legitimacy of ?world? championships before WWE, TNA, ROH and even the National Wrestling Alliance were dreams in promoters heads. So called ?policemen? in the sport run by promoters like Jack Curley, Tom Packs & Tex Rickard (who ran the original Madison Square Garden) who made the ?Montreal Screwjob? look like a 3rd grade playground spat. Also in depth is the emergence of the aforementioned NWA as a power that featured world champions like Mr. Thesz, Pat O?Connor & Buddy Rogers. While all this was going on in the USA, the legend of Rikidozan that led to Masahiko Kimura, Shohei ?Giant? Baba, Antonio Inoki & countless others getting their starts in Japan was underway.

The advent of television into professional wrestling in the 1950?s changed everything (ask your grandparents about prime time wrestling on the Dumont Network) and gets the historical coverage is deserves. Stars like Verne Gagne, Billy Robinson &?Big Thunder? Gene Kinsky were emerging with legitimate athletic backgrounds to draw people in while entertaining them. Today?s stars like Angle, Lesnar along with Danny Hodge who came from amateur wrestling get the full treatment here too plus the debacle that was the WWF Brawl for All of 1998.

This is a well done book but the problem is Mr. Snowden tends to go off track with mini tangents about stars like ?Bad News? Allen Coage, ?Judo? Gene LeBell when he could have stayed with other amateurs like former NWA World Heavyweight champion Jack Brisco who does get his own chapter. Mr. Snowden is a lover of MMA having done two books on the subject. But he didn?t need to interject so much MMA into this book. Talking about the initial birth of the UFC is fine, but covering its history in detail and how UWF in Japan molded things is not needed.

I hope this book finds its way into your hands and you enjoy it as much as I did. Log onto www.ecwpress.com to purchase it or head to your local book store. If you have questions or comments about this review, write mynameiswojcik@gmail.com.