Customer Reviews

Gotch: An American Hero

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The book Gotch:An American Hero is extremely well-written.Chapman is VERY descriptive.His use of details puts the reader right in the middle of the action.He conveys emotions very well.Even though it is a historical novel,the book is full of information about the world of professional wrestling in the early 1900s. If I could have given it more than five stars,I certainly would.Mike Chapman has written a very impressive book. I urge all people interested in the history of wrestling to read this.

This is an excellent book that reads like a movie and should be a movie! Before the 1930s professional wrestling was actually a legitimate sport. It's been my observation that a lot of modern professional wrestlers and fans would like to believe that "worked" matches always existed so that they themselves and/or their heroes don't appear as con-artists and so forth. I think this is unfortunate because I think most top modern pro wrestlers are incredible athletes as well as incredible performers. Just look at Ken Shamrock and Brock Lesnar and so on. However, if you seriously research this subject you will find that pro wrestling was once real and so was Frank Gotch and a whole host of other great wrestlers from a very exciting bygone era.

this was an amazing piece on the life of frank gotch. you are completely transported back in time and are part of the action in every scenario. the book was extremely well written as it takes you on a journey WITH gotch and all that he endured. it is almost as if you are standing ring side at every match and every conversation. i was very impressed with the verbage as it seems very accurate to the time and place of the novel. it did leave me wondering if mike chapman is gotch reincarnated.....

Good grief.... reading the newspapers of the era shows how much the sportswriters DID buy into the fact that wrestling was NOT a work! Huge, front page stories, and move-by-move accounts of most of Gotch's biggest matches. When Gotch beat Tom Jenkins, the reporters were spellbound, calling it the most terrific sporting event ever seen in that state. Gotch's matches were huge for the day and President Roosevelt invited him to the White House where he made a Japanese martial arts expert tap out. In a new book coming out on Madea, called "The Tougehst Man Who Ever Lived," the authors go to great length to say a match between Gotch, a shooter, and Madea would have been the best showdown ever. How could that be if Gotch was a phoney worker? This reviewer needs to study the reports of the day and talk to some old-time hookers. Gotch was a hooker and a ferocious competitor. There is indisputable evidence that Hackenschmidt was still upset with the losses to Gotch 50 years later! Wow, was he still working the crowd? I spent 40 years researching this era and this man and have read everything I could and have talked to a dozen "old-timers," all of whom say Gotch was a pure shooter and the best ever. Thie previous reviewer is way off base.

It was extremely apparent that this book was well-researched, and thus, well-written. I've read many writings by Mike Chapman, and he never ceases to amaze or impress me. This book seems especially poignant and interesting at the present time as we begin Olympic trials and embark upon making history once more in areas of athleticism and sportsmanship.
-Jennifer (Smith) Martin
Stillwater, OK

If you like breaking people's limbs for fun, then Gotch was a hero. Yes he was good. He was also a brutal, petty, cheat who fixed matches against wrestlers he could have beaten anyhow. Please don't make a movie out of this subject.

The author seems to ignore some basic facts that any amateur researcher could easily discover. The most improtant being this: Gotch did works! He did them often. Wrestling was almost as worked then as it is now. Read the newspapers from that time for yourself and don't rely on the author. The reporters covering wrestling back then were in a position to know what was legit and what wasn't.

Chapman seems to have some agenda built around creating a mythology of legitimate professional wrestling from a bygone era. Unfortunately, he has resorted to stretching the truth, and that's putting it kindly.