Read 3 Wrestling Books

With school done and not as much to do at my new apartment I've done a lot of wrestling reading. There are tons of books I haven't gotten to, but I'm sure I'm farther ahead than all but .0001 percent of wrestling fans as far as checking out every major book on wrestling. Anyway, none gets a recommendation, unfortunately. First was the WWE Legends book, which was very cheap in paperback. I think the writer went in with good intentions, and there is some good stuff there. He isn't trying to reinvent history, and it is a purposefully WWE oriented book so it isn't like you can accuse it of inaccuracy by ommission. The problem is it just doesn't offer much. It touches on a bunch of different wrestlers, but doesn't do any of them much justice. Few actual sources of information have been consulted, and it embellishes at times to be nice. It's not awful, but there's not much value to it. Second was Scott Williams' ECW book. The strength of the book is that he spoke to a bunch of different people and there are a few things you'll learn. But overall it feels a lot like Sex, Lies and Headlocks as a book that just repeats what you already knew if you've been following the industry and reading the Observer. The idea that there are a bunch of things that will surprise you are false. Those are few and far between. It's also poorly organized, jumping back and forth in time and never really crafting a story that builds. And it doesn't spend enough time on the key period of the promotion, which was 1995-1997. Plus, and this probably isn't the author's fault, the book feels rushed. There are errors that just shouldn't be there with a more careful read-through, such as Juventud Guerrera being labeled Psicosis, Buh Buh Ray Dudley being labeled D-Von, a .24 buy rate being said to equal almost a million buys and sentences here and there that don't make sense. I would say that's a definite avoid. And the third was the biggest disappointment, Larry Matysik's book. It's a decent book, but kind of boring. Matysik very well may be capable of writing a fascinating book about St. Louis, but this isn't it. His descriptions of wrestlers lack life and it feels like a collection of anecdotes rather than a cohesive story. This is probably the best of the three, but there is definitely better stuff out there to check out before any of these. Next on my list I think I'm going to check out Bill Watts' book and the Tag Team HOF book, both of which I'm very much looking forward to.