Customer Reviews

Inside Out: How Corporate America Destroyed Professional Wrestling

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This books should be called, "How Corporate America Ruins Everything." This isn't just a story about wrestling, it's a story about big money coming in and taking control of something it knows nothing about and running it into the ground. What I liked about this book is that Anderson is not just an athlete, he's a business school graduate, so he knows what he's talking about. I'm sure he's stretched the truth here and there, or left out certain details, but the circumstances and situations he describes are believeable and told with a degree of spit and vinegar that is sorely lacking from wrestling as we know it.

This book is interesting on a variety of levels: there's his relationship with Gene Anderson, the quiet thug who was happy to let Ole do all the talking and make all the decisions; his descriptions of the territories, and how they operated; and his portraits of some of my favorite wrestlers and storylines growing up. But what really sets this book apart is Anderson's analysis of wrestling "psychology" - what kept us glued to our TVs and got us into the stadiums and arenas.

I divided my time reading this book as well as John Irving's, (another wrestler), "Until I Find You," and I found "Inside Out," infinitely more interesting and captivating. When you read it, you feel like you're sitting on Anderson's porch over a beer listening to him tell you his story. There's a certain charm to the fact that for as much as he uses the word "Sh#!" he never actually spells it.

This book is for anyone who grew up watching the NWA and AWA on Saturday afternoons and for those who know nothing of wrestling but the WWE. It's nostalgic, insighful, and at times, poignant. It does get a little repititive near the end but I think has more to say about Anderson's passion for the sport than his regrets.

This is a truly American story, and a comment on our culture.

If you like formulaic tough guy talk common to old time wrasslers of the"I was always the straightest talking, toughest guy in the room, who never lost a fight" vein this book is for you.

Although one must admire OLE'S honesty in admitting that he was never in the same class as the likes of Thesz and the old shooters as far as wrestling was concerned. Anderson's description of how new wrestling prospects were treated is chilling in its brutality. Opens your eyes to another side of the wrasslin business that's for sure.

Worth the buy if you are interested in one person and one person only's viewpoint with no room for alernative opinions or reasoned analysis. Then again it is a book about OLE ANDERSON and apparently that is him, so as an autobiogrpahy it serves it's purpose. Worth the buy but not in the same class as top flight wrestling books like "Hooker" and "Wrestlers are like Seagulls" in my opinion.

The Rock had a career in the ring and as a booker that covered the years dominated by the territories that made up the NWA to the emergence of two national companies - WCW and WWF - and some minor regional promotions.

Trained by Verne Gagne, Anderson's tough-guy persona pushed his career to main events with his "brothers," Gene & Lars and later with Arn, as the Minnesota Wrecking Crew. He also was an original member of the Four Horsemen, with Ric Flair, Tully Blanchard, Arn and manager J.J. Dillon.

During his years in the ring, Anderson also worked booking matches for the promotions, which was a major way for top wrestlers to stay in the business as their careers wound down.

In the early 1990s, Anderson was part of the booking committee for WCW. He created The Black Scorpion and was the ominous voice that haunted Sting throughout the angle. In 1994, Anderson and his son - who was training to become a WCW grappler - were fired by Eric Bischoff. Since then, Anderson has mostly stayed away from the business.

This is where the book picks up Anderson's story and why the sub-title plays a major role throughout. The autobiographical material is outstanding and recommended for older fans or those wanting a history of pro wrestling as it evolved away from promoters having sliced up the country under the NWA monopoly.

The criticism Anderson dishes out - oftentimes aimed at Flair - gets as grating as The Black Scorpion's voice. Anderson has some good points, but only the biggest myopic would feel his outlook was the direction the business should have taken.

Overall, Anderson could not get out of character to deliver real solutions to the problems he saw in the office.

An interesting book, I loved Ole as one of the Four Horsemen, but to hear him denigrate Flair's wrestling skills taxed credulity.

If you've just seen Flair in WWE nowdays, you can be excused for buying Anderson's comments, but when you look at his classic matches with Ricky Steamboat, or Terry Funk (or Sting, back in the NWA days) you see a guy who could match (and exceed) each of these guys hold-for-hold. There are very few wrestlers nowdays (basically four: A.J. Styles, Shawn Michaels, Kurt ANgle and Chris Benoit) who could even hold their own with prime Flair.

Most of the rest are all products of Vince McMahon's sad circus that he passes off as Wrestling.

Ole was the most arrogant man that I had ever met and that is what I liked the most about him. His point of view on EVERYTHING was written just as I expected when I ordered this book. 21 years later I still laugh when I talk about those years to others. Some of the book surprised me and some of it didn't! I especially got a laugh about the guy who held a gun to the back of his head while he walked away and Stan Hansen and others stood and watched and then told him later. Ole asking why they didn't tell him, they replied "we wanted to see if he would do it". You would have to actually have a conversation with Ole to understand that point of view. Well worth reading. He is a very intelligent man, despite his overwhelming personality!

Having grown up watching Ole Anderson in the ring since I was about 12, I looked forward to this book. It is a fast read and full of inside information about the wrestling business. At times I shook my head in amazement at the utter mismanagement at WCW and how Anderson tried, in vain, to show The Suits how they were killing this once heralded federation.

The book could have done without some of the minutiae about the wrestling business, but it does give a great overview of the strategizing and politicking that goes on backstage. Anderson shows his passion for the business, and his honesty about the wrestling stars of today only reinforced my opinion of the cartoonish soap opera that wrestling has become. Anderson may have tooted his own horn a lot in the book, but he has every right to do so.

I highly recommend this book for any wrestling fan that wants to know the true backroom story of the wrestling business. Unlike a lot of the coporate shills writing wrestling books today, this book is brutal in its honesty, much like the Ole Anderson of old.

This book still needs to be in print. Ole discusses some of the reasons that wcw went out of business. He gives some guidelines on how to be a good wrestling booker. Ole tells about his days in the Carolina and Georgia territories as a wrestler and booker. I will be keeping this book in my collection.

Overall the book is good. But, I have several problems with it. The overall theme seems not to be how the corporate world ruined professional wrestling but rather Ole trying to convince the reader of his rightful place in wrestling history.This is evidenced by a lot of honest and not so honest self evaluations. Reading between the lines he seems to be much higher of his booking ability than his wrestling ability and I would agree. A lot of the points he makes are often repeated to the point of redundancy. He is correct in how corporate America ruined professional. It is painful to hear how people who knew nothing about professional wrestling were given the authority to split from the NWA leaving it a shell of it's former self then run WCW into the ground. Overall this book was worth reading but not good enough to keep in my collection.

i read this entire book the day i received it. ole is our link with a part of wrestling history that is important if you want to understand the real workings of the business. the stories in this book are great, and they include his vast experience with ALL of the top guys. i believe his criticism of flair is 100% justified and accurate, and it's finally time that someone tells the truth about him. ole pulls no punches, and i admire him for his courage. he didn't write this book to make friends; he wrote it to tell his side of the story truthfully, which he does impressively.

This is an excellent book. Ole Anderson--while perhaps a bit self-absorbed--demonstrates that he was a class act in the world of pro wrestling. He pulls no punches. He exposes a lot of the modern wrestling world and the "stars" in it as what they truly are--a sham.

Another reviewer criticized this book as just being about how the past was better than today--well, no kidding! That's his point. Read the subtitle of the book: "How Corporate America Desroyed Professional Wrestling." Ole sums it up perfectly. He says that before Vince McMahon took control of the wrestling world, pro wrestling as a business was a champion thoroughbred race horse. It was a business that routinely, week-in, week-out drew thousands of fans to arenas all over the country. Vince McMahon has now beaten down that race horse to where now it's nothing but an old nag pulling a wooden cart. And to win viewers McMahon's dressed up the old nag by parading naked women and midgets all around it. How better can the state of wrestling today be described than that?

If you never experienced pro wrestling before McMahon monopolized it, you missed out on something very special. Read Ole's book and find out.

Also Ole's book is a great primer for anyone considering becoming a pro wrestler or a pro wrestling promoter. And he's funny as hell too. He had me in stitches.

Oh, and yes, Ole does expose the myth that Flair is a great wrestler. I admit it--for the longest time I was a HUGE Flair fan, but over the years, in the back of my mind I kept asking myself, "Why does he do that stupid flip over the turnbuckle in every match? Why does he do the Flair flop in every match? Why does he fall on his ass every time he shoves the ref and the ref shoves him back?" Why? Because that's all he's got! He's like a rock band with only one or two songs in its set that just keeps playing those same songs over and over and over because they don't know any others!

Again, read this book. You won't regret it. You can buy it used for cheap.