Headlocks and Dropkicks
A Butt-Kicking Ride Through the World of Professional Wrestling
1st Edition
Published on 22. June 2009
172 pages
978-0-313-35482-3 (ISBN)
Description
Is it sport or is it entertainment? As presented by World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., the most well-known promoter of professional wrestling, it is hard for the uninitiated to tell. A refuge for the very athletic, and often a breeding ground for the highly dysfunctional, professional wrestling is, in the truest sense, life on the fringes.
Headlocks and Dropkicks: A Butt-Kicking Ride through the World of Professional Wrestling chronicles sportswriter Ted A. Kluck's effort to become a professional wrestler at a popular wrestling school in the suburbs of Chicago. In training to become a wrestler, Kluck was able to delve into the traveling-circus elements of the sport and talk to the people who make it work-promoters, bookers, and the wrestlers themselves.
Wrestling has weathered manifold changes in American taste to survive and thrive as it does today. Kluck examines the tension between the good vs. evil tales that permeated wrestling in the early to mid 1980s, along with the seamy soap opera storylines that seem to drive it today. He also takes time to catch up with the biggest stars the sport has produced-some of whom have parlayed their fame into financial security and others who are currently looking to reclaim their past glory.
Headlocks and Dropkicks: A Butt-Kicking Ride through the World of Professional Wrestling chronicles sportswriter Ted A. Kluck's effort to become a professional wrestler at a popular wrestling school in the suburbs of Chicago. In training to become a wrestler, Kluck was able to delve into the traveling-circus elements of the sport and talk to the people who make it work-promoters, bookers, and the wrestlers themselves.
Wrestling has weathered manifold changes in American taste to survive and thrive as it does today. Kluck examines the tension between the good vs. evil tales that permeated wrestling in the early to mid 1980s, along with the seamy soap opera storylines that seem to drive it today. He also takes time to catch up with the biggest stars the sport has produced-some of whom have parlayed their fame into financial security and others who are currently looking to reclaim their past glory.
More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Children/juvenile
ISBN-13
978-0-313-35482-3 (9780313354823)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
06/2009
Praeger Publishers Inc
€78.20
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Ted A. Kluck is the author of Facing Tyson: Fifteen Fighters, Fifteen Stories (2006), Paper Tiger: One Athlete's Journey to the Underbelly of Pro Football (2007), and Game Time: Inside College Football (2007). His work has appeared in many of the most prominent sports publications, including: ESPN the Magazine, Sports Spectrum Magazine, ESPN.com, and several small literary journals. A bi-monthly column for Sports Spectrum Magazine entitled Pro and Con won the Evangelical Press Association award for best standing column.
Content
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Genesis of Perhaps the Worst Idea I've Ever Had
- Chapter 1: Michigan Sports Camps and the Price of Glory
- Chapter 2: I Might as Well Be a Babyface: Leapin' Lanny Poffo
- Chapter 3: Office Calls (Pain School)
- Chapter 4: Baron Von Raschke on the Claw, Ethnic Heeling, and Middle School Teaching
- Chapter 5: Hulk Hogan (the Real American) as a Metaphor for Something
- Chapter 6: Meeting a Real, Live Diva: Pro Championship Wrestling's Winter Meltdown and "Sunny" Sytch
- Chapter 7: Nikita Koloff Is Minnesota's Best Angry Russian
- Chapter 8: Leveling Up: Training, Continued
- Chapter 9: The WWE Raw Wrestlemania Revenge House Show and the Strange Appeal of John Bradshaw Layfield
- Chapter 10: Wrestling Isn't Fun (or Why I Started the Literary Wrestling Alliance)
- Chapter 11: The One About Christian Cage (PCW's Dream Night 7)
- Chapter 12: The LWA Presents Pride and Prejudice Continued (or, the End of the Matter)
- Epilogue 1: Josh Abercrombie (Raymond), Dan Severn, and the Price of Glory
- Epilogue 2: Wrestling Magazines
- Appendix: Josh Abercrombie's Guide to Wrestling Terminology
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
