Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
LOTS OF INFO & A LITTLE B.S., December 27, 2003
Chokehold is a very well researched work. In fact there has been nothing preceeding it that has even come close to the details that Wilson has in this book. I commend and thank him for that. I found it very interesting indeed.
The only problem with this work is Wilson's view of his own pro wrestling career, as well as the careers of Ron Pope AKA The Magnificent Zulu and Claude "Thunderbolt" Patterson.
Wilson starts out the book by claiming he was a fan of pro wrestling while he was growing up, saying that he watched it on TV sometimes and went to the live matches twice. TWICE!!! Big deal. A true fan in that era watched the TV wrestling every week and went to many live shows. Wilson was never a serious fan judging by his statements (which was actually a failed attempt to prove otherwise).
Wilson also says that he got into wrestling in the early 1970s to "make money" during the off season from the NFL.He also claims that Atlanta promoter Ray Gunkle basically promised him the NWA world title. Both of these statements are more or less outrageous, to say the least.
First of all, every rookie breaking into the business, including NFL former All-Americans, were always told over & over again how they'd never make any real money in wrestling and most never did. The pay scale for newcomers was low. Read Ole Anderson's new book "Inside Out" for a real look at how things ran and how pay was figured.You had to be a top main event star, usually in more than one territory, to ever make real good money. The promoters were the ones who got the richest and Wilson more than acknowledges that in his book, so I don't see where he got the idea that he was going to accumulate great wealth from working in pro wrestling.
Secondly, Jim Wilson was NEVER a big name in the business. I am a wrestling historian and fanatic, and an ex-wrestler myself (from the same period that Wilson tried working in the business) and to be honest, if it hadn't been for Wilson's lawsuits and TV expose of wrestling, I don't think that I'd have ever heard of him.
He wasn't a main event star and from those I've talked to that saw him work matches, he didn't have the ability to ever be one. He didn't draw any money at the gate (and his book more or less proves that point as he himself admits that an outlaw show he tried to promote didn't draw a single fan). I'm not holding that against him as far as Chokehold goes, as it's a very good book overall.
The other problem I have with this book is Wilson's slant on racism in the business. Sure, it was prevelant and even blatant at times, but Wilson's examples to prove that point fall flat.
He mainly uses Pope & Patterson as his examples. Now Thunderbolt Patterson was a big name in the business throughout the 60s & 70s. He worked on top in numerous territories and he was great on interviews, but his ring work was just average.He was a decent and very entertaining performer, but was NEVER of world championship caliber.Wilson doesn't see that because he is unable to judge who is talented & who is not.
Wilson proves this by using Ron Pope as his next example. Pope was not talented or entertaining and couldn't even do a decent interview. The only thing that Pope had going for him was his tremendous look. He was huge and muscular but that's it. He never knew how to work.
If Pope had been white he'd never even been given a chance in the business, but Detroit promoter Ed Farhat AKA The Sheik gave Ron his start and the gimmick as Zulu, but even that gimmick didn't save him from being exposed in every single match he had as a horrible worker.Pope was a real nice guy with a great personality & body, but he was never able to transfer that personality to the ring and his muscular build kept him in the business far longer than he would have lasted had he been white.
So realizing that, I have to take just about everything Wilson writes with a grain of salt.
Had Wilson cut out the continual whining about himself, Patterson & Pope, I would have given this book 5 stars, because it's that good otherwise.
This book should hold the interest of any fan of wrestling's "Golden Era" as well as anyone who wants to learn about the NWA and how it ran. Even a know it all like me learned a lot from Chokehold. I was surprised just how much I really did learn by reading it.
I strongly reccomend this book and I strongly suggest reading Inside Out right after finishing Chokehold. They go well together. This book gives you a lot of information while Ole Anderson's book give you the straight, hard facts.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wrestling Game Exposed!!!, October 26, 2003
This is simply the best book on pro wrestling ever published, and I've read virtually all of them. Chokehold is not another wrestling comic and picture book of fluff and puff, but a beautifully written and documented history of the pro wrestling industry from the late 1940s to the present. It's no accident that wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer called this book "the most important book on pro wrestling covering the second half of the 20th century."
Chokehold is very much an insider account of the wrestling industry's shoddy business practices and labor relations. The book deals honestly with pro wrestling's "unromantic underside," the authors call it "a secret world of exploitation, abuse and illegality." In telling pro wresting's fascinating history, the authors present countless stories that cast light on the industry's long tradition of conducting its business in secrecy where there isn't much public notice or attention. The book's viewpoint is that of a former NFL player turned pro wrestler who was later blacklisted, Jim Wilson, one of the book's co-authors, and it is a compelling viewpoint that conveys the pain and pathos of all those wrestlers, past and present, who left the wrestling business with only broken bodies and shattered lives. Chokehold, unlike other wrestling books I've read, describes in detail the backstabbing wrestling life backstage, after the arena lights and TV cameras are turned off each night.
Serious wrestling fans are going to love this book and the wrestling promoters will hate it. And all the old, retired wrestlers living in poverty and pain and the widows of dead wrestlers will be grateful that somebody finally had the courage to tell the whole story about pro wrestling.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Required Reading For Wrestling Fans, November 20, 2003
"Chokehold" is no ordinary wrestling biography. It is the story of one man's attempt to challenge the Powers-That-Be for fair wages and benefits. He could have been a superstar of the mat world, and I remember him distinctly being pushed for such a position, but his integrity and ethics prevented such a future. They also may have saved him from an early death from the wrestling lifestyle that has left so many other victims in its wake. Along the way, not only is the story of Jim Wilson told, but the seamy world of professional wrestling is exposed in all its faded notoriety. The fact that shady and illegal shenanigans happen from time to time in sports is nothing new to most readers, but the fact that these very same doings have been part and parcel of the way professional wrestling has been doing business since its inception should give readers cause for concern. Behind the glitz of the television camera and the character angles is a business that sees many of its most talented performers pass away at relatively early ages; a business that treats its workers like serfs on a feudal estate, telling them to win or lose, how to win or lose and where to appear, all the while calling them "independent contractors." This, of course, to deny them health and pension benefits available to most other workers. And, most astonishing of all, while Congress and the Justice Department have vetted boxing and other sports over the years, the image of pro wrestling as an unbelievable sham has kept it protected, except for a brief period in the 50's, when pro wrestling was convicted of Antitrust misdeeds, which were quickly forgotten by all parties concerned a few years later. Instead of wasting your money on prefabricated biographies of WWE superstars, where the only things you really learn is that wrestling is wonderful and Vince McMahon the most wonderful of all, read this book, for it is the closest wrestling fans will get to the truth that underlies the circus-style atmosphere of that strange hybrid of athletics and entertainment.
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