For whatever reason, Memorial Day weekend makes me think of pro wrestling. When I think of pro wrestling, I think of the WWF from the mid-80s to the mid-90s. This time frame coincides with my childhood and young adolescence, so you might think I have left behind the viewing of pro wrestling as one of those “childish things” that I had to “put aside” as I matured. It basically is, but I also think it’s still cool and my understanding and appreciation for it has only increased over the years as I’ve learned more about the industry and the performers and the labor that goes into making such a spectacle happen.
Balukjian does a lot to demystify that spectacle from the perspective of someone who also grew up obsessing and idolizing these grapplers. He brings a journalist’s and scientist’s level of analysis to the whole process, too, which makes for very interesting reading. It’s not some kind of exposé on the industry, or even the WWF / WWE either. As much as Balukjian is a reporter looking for a lead and a story, he also knows the value of engaging with the topic of his research. He does get in the ring to get trained as a wrestler fairly early on the book. It lasts one day and he confirms the reality of the physical pain that this brand of “sports entertainment” can bring to its participants.
He also directly addresses the arguments that pro wrestling is fake or staged or somehow not a real sport. You’ve probably gone through these same arguments before and have used them to convince yourself to stay away from wrestling at all costs. I know I was a bit confused as a kid when my older brother asked me, “If it’s a real sport, why isn’t it in the sports pages?” That was too much for my young brain to handle. He then followed up with “Well, maybe it should be in the drama section.” As much as he was correct, I still wanted to enjoy the thing I enjoyed—possibly even more, as a way to spite him. (He’d never know I was spiting him; I knew it, and that’s all that mattered.) To give a more thoughtful response to a similar question in the future, you can now arm yourself with Balukjian’s sketch of the history of pro wrestling, which dates back to the late 1800s. One issue with “real” wrestling, as practiced at county fairs or other traveling exhibitions, is that it can be boring and matches can last too long. There’s no national governing body to substantiate a claim about someone’s championship status either. Also, given the way news spread at the time, there was no need to have ongoing feuds or storylines; the same matches could be re-contested all along the traveling circuit. To make all of these disparate parts of the industry work, Balukjian writes, “wrestling discovered storytelling” (p. 57). This phrase is essential to understanding pro wrestling as a whole. It’s been described as “soap operas for men,” in its emphasis on drama and spectacle and long-running plot arcs. (Let’s note and ignore for now the sexism in the “for men” or “for women” branding, as well as the social circumstances that led soap companies to sponsor television dramas aimed at women in the first place; this is a topic ripe for exploration, but I’m already losing the plot of this post as it is.)
The focus on storytelling, on drama, is important to me when I think about wrestling. A former colleague was explaining to me how she and her husband (who were in their 60s) would always see productions of Romeo & Juliet when they were traveling or when a different theater group put one on closer to home. I thought this was a cool thing for a long-married couple to have, and figured she was giving that to me as advice as someone who (at the time) had been married for about six years. I was wrong. She was telling me that because there was a version of Romeo & Juliet that a Seattle outfit put on that was so engrossing that her husband had to physically restrain her from getting on stage to prevent Romeo from drinking the apothecary’s poison at the play’s end. She said she felt silly afterward, but that the acting was just that good that she also couldn’t help herself in the moment. She knew the plot had to happen that way but it didn’t matter. I think of that story when I hear people complain that wrestling isn’t real. It doesn’t matter if the ending is predetermined. How the players get there, whether in a single match or over the course of weeks or months of feuding, provides plenty of entertainment. In other words, it would be weird for the actors playing Romeo and Juliet to have to maintain kayfabe after pretending to die by suicide each night.
Each chapter in the book is positioned as a bout between a wrestler’s given name and the character(s) they played during their career. The whole story begins in 2005, with a younger Balukjian attempting to write the biography of Khosrow Vaziri (a.k.a. the Iron Sheik). His plans are foiled when the Sheik threatens his life. Some 17 years later, he returns to the idea and adds the twist of trying to find what has become of some of the WWF stars from the early 1980s. The stories about the Sheik are interwoven throughout the book as Balukjian tries to track down Terry Bollea (a.k.a. Hulk Hogan), Bob Remus (a.k.a. Sgt. Slaughter), Mr. USA Tony Atlas (a.k.a. Anthony White), Merced Solis (a.k.a. Tito Santana), and even Vince McMahon to talk about where they are now. I know, it sounds almost like a tabloid gossip rag when I lay it out like that, but true to the importance of a book about storytelling, Balukjian does a great job of keeping us engaged and informed with each new chapter. It’s not just about getting the scoop on what these men are doing now. The journey (all 12,525 miles of it, by car) is key to the book’s narrative. After all, it would have been “easier” to just try to set up video calls with these folks through their agents or families or whatever, right? Well, maybe, but the persistent way that Balukjian follows up on leads while also respecting boundaries generates an intriguing tension throughout. Even though I wasn’t as familiar with some of these names as those I watched when I was younger, the stories are still incredible and the writing strong enough to make this book hard to put down.
So I lied above when I mentioned how Memorial Day makes me think of pro wrestling “for whatever reason.” There’s a specific reason and it has to do with my childhood best friend, Grant Nelson. We were drawn to each other in Kindergarten and stayed close friends until the end of 5th grade, which is something I can’t say is true of other friends who came and went through those years. Sometime in 4th grade, we became obsessed with the WWF. We’d have sleepovers at each other’s houses and we’d rent the VHS versions of the Pay-Per-View events that Blockbuster had on offer. Our quest spanned Wrestlemania IX (the most recent event) all the way to the 1988 Royal Rumble, if I remember correctly. When I think of wrestling, I think of watching these shows and the weekly TV broadcasts with Grant. I think of us foolishly trying out moves against each other in our basements. I think of Grant and I pretending to be satisfied with wrestling video games on Super Nintendo. We loved wrestling and also had received the idea that this kind of entertainment wasn’t cool or for everyone, which made it feel like a secret, fun thing for us. We lost touch in junior high as we got older and our friend circles expanded and no longer overlapped.
Grant is the kind of person I would have loved to reconnect with when I moved back to our hometown in my 30s. That’s not possible. On May 30, 2017, Grant left his family’s Memorial Day dinner to drive for Uber for the evening. He never made it home. One of his passengers that night was a teenage girl who shoplifted a knife and a machete from Walmart and stabbed him in the car. He died in distress while trying to get help for his wounds. At his funeral, his father called him “a kind soul in a cruel world… and that should have been enough” and I don’t think there’s a better way of describing him as a person. He’s gone, but the impact he had on my life is indelible. It breaks my heart that I can’t talk about this book with him.