English Wrestling

SHE DOMINATED MEN IN THE RING… AND WROTE THE RULES OF #METOO 80 YEARS BEFORE THE HASHTAG The explosive sport biography reveals how Mildred Burke, the forgotten pioneer of girl wrestling, women wrestling, and pro-wrestling, invented sports feminism… and gives you the tools to smash your own limits. Step into vintage 1930s America, where a 5'2" waitress defied gender stereotypes, dominated male wrestlers twice her size in mixed wrestling (woman wrestling man) and catch wrestling (catch-as-catch-can), and became the first million-dollar female athlete. She built the first all-female ...

I've given up a lot to pursue a career in professional wrestling, and I'm not going to have it all derailed by an uncouth ghoul with a huge chip on his shoulder, who decided he disliked me for no reason on his very first day at Goliaths. Vince Burke has been the thorn in my side for five long years, but things have taken a turn for the worse. Management is threatening to get involved. I refuse to let Burke take the life I've worked so hard to build from me, so I try to be on my best behaviour at work, but something about him just gets to me. He consumes my thoughts. I can't stand him.

After a lifetime of putting his body on the line to entertain his dozens (and dozens!) of fans, the Hardcore Legend is paying the price - physically and emotionally. When the final bell on Mick's career tolls, not in the ring, but in a neurologist's office, his future seems far from merry and bright. Until Mick is given the chance to become Santa Claus - not dress up, not pretend, but become Santa - allowing him to rediscover the joy of performing. Fully committing to his new mission, Mick details the drastic measures he takes to keep the Christmas magic alive.

Written without collaborators and based on decades of tape recordings he made throughout his career, Hitman is Bret Hart's brutally honest, perceptive and startling account of his life in and out of the ring that proves once and for all that great things come in pink tights.

For wrestling fans, Jim Ross’ voice is the soundtrack of an era. This book is your ringside ticket to wrestling’s most unforgettable moments—from the announcer who made them iconic. In the last 50 years, professional wrestling has risen up from a collection of regional territories to become a global phenomenon—and Jim Ross has been there for it all. From the grit and glory days of the 1970s with NWA, to the rise of WCW and the heyday of WWF and WWE, to signing on as on-air talent and senior advisor for wrestling’s newest chapter at AEW, Jim Ross has long had the best seat in the house.

In early 2015, Roderick Toombs, aka Rowdy Roddy Piper, began researching his own autobiography with a trip through Western Canada. He was rediscovering his youth, a part of his life he never discussed during his sixty-one years, many spent as one of the greatest talents in the history of pro wrestling. Following his death due to a heart attack that July, two of his children took on the job of telling Roddy's story, separating fact from fiction in the extraordinary life of their father.

There are few people who have been in the wrestling business longer than Jim Ross. Slobberknocker is the story of how an Oklahoman farm kid with a vivid imagination and seemingly unattainable dreams became "The Voice of Wrestling" to record TV audiences and millions of fans around the world. Jim opens up about his life as an only child on a working farm, who became obsessed with professional wrestling having first seen it on his grandparents' TV.

This volume is a practical and comprehensive compendium of traditional English bare-knuckle boxing. It brings together extracts from 31 historical treatises, selected through meticulous research and edited for clarity, coherence, and thematic consistency, featuring 300 original images. The material is distilled and reorganized by subject, allowing readers to trace the development of English boxing and to understand each technique within its historical context. Divided into four distinct parts: The pugilism of the Broughton era and earlier; The London Prize Ring era; Grappling techniques ...

The Royal Rumble has fascinated and enthralled wrestling fans around the world for over 30 years, captivating the imagination in a way that few other wrestling PPV concepts ever could. In the first volume of Retro Pro Wrestling's Complete History of The Royal Rumble, journalist and wrestling fan CJ Scholes relive every match, every angle, and every interview from the annual every-man-for-himself extravaganza. From Hacksaw Jim Duggan's victory in the inaugural TV special to The Rock's triumph at the 2000 event via back-to-back wins for Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold Steve Austin, the ...

In Tod is God—so named for a chant the ECW fans created to honor the founder—Gordon chronicles each step of the company's meteoric rise to prominence, as well as the elements that led to his removing himself from the company before its demise. Gordon's former partnership with ECW booker Paul Heyman made for magical TV and in-ring moments. The friendship between Gordon and Heyman, both a blessing and curse, was the once-in-a-lifetime bond responsible for so many of history's greatest teams, bands, and partners.

Ride alongside Jon Moxley as he retraces some of the highways traveled on his remarkable journey. Revel in the never-before-told stories about his early life in Cincinnati, Ohio; the gritty independent wrestling scene where he cut his teeth; the complicated corporate landscape of the WWE where he bucked against authority; and the rebellious upstart AEW, where he won the championship in 2020 and was finally free to achieve the vision of the wrestler he'd always wanted to be. With plenty of pitstops and revelatory insights, MOX is the riveting account of the life of a brawler.

On an overcast day in 1987, the pro wrestling landscape was altered forever when a reported 93,173 fans converged on the Pontiac Silverdome outside Detroit to see Hulk Hogan defend his championship against André the Giant. For several years, Vincent Kennedy McMahon had been transforming old-time rasslin' into mainstream "sports entertainment," incorporating A-list celebrities into storylines and forcing even cynics to follow the proceedings.

Ballyhoo! The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling is a history of professional wrestling’s formative period in the U.S., from roughly 1874 to 1941, and the contested interplay of wrestlers and promoters who built the “sport” as we know it. During this period, the major conventions that would define wrestling to the present day were perfected and codified, as wrestling morphed from a rough sport practiced on farms and at town gatherings to melodramatic mass entertainment that reliably drew large crowds in cities across the nation.

"It sounded at first like something out of an old horror movie. I thought maybe someone was just playing around, but then I heard it again and again, a loud piercing cry, and less like Hollywood every time. The windows were down in my police cruiser on that warm fall day, but I still couldn’t tell where the sounds came from. I began looking around for the unlikely sight of someone being disemboweled in a mall parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. Seeing nothing, and still hearing the screams, I called in a “disturbance”.... Around the next corner I found the source of the commotion.

Who’s on the mic? It’s John Cena, of course! This rapping pro wrestler gets his attitude across with words and big-time wrestling moves. From his music to his famous feuds, get the inside scoop about all things Cena.

Principles are the reasons why techniques work... or don't. There are hundreds of thousands of techniques from dozens of martial arts, but they all rely on a relatively small set of principles: Breaking the balance, distributing your weight, conserving energy, applying leverage... Once you know and understand the major principles behind grappling techniques, new techniques become easier to learn, all techniques become clearer, and your ability to make the techniques work for you will increase as well. Understanding HOW, WHY, and WHEN the moves work will bring your Judo, BJJ, Sambo or ...

The past thirty years of the wrestling business have been a very tumultuous time, as what was once a regional business grew into a national, and eventually global, entertainment industry. That history is loaded with pivotal moments where one slight change could have had a massive ripple effect that completely changed the landscape of wrestling as we know it today. This collecting of Wrestling History Revisited titles looks at many such pivotal moments in the history of WCW. How would things have been different if Hulk Hogan had never gone to WCW? What if the NWO invasion never happened? ...

Music is my life. At least, it would be if my father's politics didn't dictate every minute of my day. When I sneak out to live my dream for the night, consequences follow. Papá's second, Eliel, challenges him for the throne, putting me at risk of being forcibly claimed by the devious, disgusting male.

Nitro is a story about much more than WCW and the Monday Night Wars. It is a story of an era, a time in which the media and cultural landscape precipitated - and later supported - pro wrestling's mainstream popularity. It is a story of how a company made in the image of an intuitively brilliant risk-taker betrayed its original promise. It is a story of how a handful of men, each struggling with their own limitations, facilitated a public obsession that changed television forever.

Flowers for Adrian is a detailed and engaging look at the life, death and legacy of professional wrestler Keith Franke, who competed as “Gorgeous” Keith Franks and “Adorable” Adrian Adonis during the 1970s and 1980s before his untimely death in 1988. This biography, the first of its kind, takes the reader through Franke’s start in life as an orphan, through to achieving his childhood dream of becoming a pro wrestler. The tale plays out across the colourful background of wrestling’s territories era, where Franke learned his trade the 'old-fashioned' way in Vancouver, the ...