Fritz Von Erich: Master of the Iron Claw is the story about the life and times of Jack Adkisson, also known as pro wrestling legend Fritz Von Erich, and the famous Von Erich wrestling dynasty. "Not since the Kennedys of Massachusetts has an American family publicly suffered personal tragedy after personal tragedy like the Von Erichs of Denton County, Texas." While the Kennedy family became famous worldwide for their political accomplishments and the tragedies of their sons, the Von Erich family became famous worldwide for their athletic accomplishments and the tragedies in their family. Read how Fritz Von Erich and his five sons impacted the wrestling world with their family's show World Class Championship Wrestling, which at one time was syndicated in 66 U.S. television markets, Japan, Argentina, and the Middle East. The story, as told to Ron Mullinax by Jack Adkisson himself, follows his wrestling career and family tragedies beginning in the 1950s and continuing until his death in 1997.
Fritz Von Erich: Master of the Iron Claw is the story about the life and times of Jack Adkisson, also known as pro wrestling legend Fritz Von Erich, and the famous Von Erich wrestling dynasty. "Not since the Kennedys of Massachusetts has an American family publicly suffered personal tragedy after personal tragedy like the Von Erichs of Denton County, Texas." While the Kennedy family became famous worldwide for their political accomplishments and the tragedies of their sons, the Von Erich family became famous worldwide for their athletic accomplishments and the tragedies in their family. Read how Fritz Von Erich and his five sons impacted the wrestling world with their family's show World Class Championship Wrestling, which at one time was syndicated in 66 U.S. television markets, Japan, Argentina, and the Middle East. The story, as told to Ron Mullinax by Jack Adkisson himself, follows his wrestling career and family tragedies beginning in the 1950s and continuing until his death in 1997.
After 32 years, Montreal will soon lose its professional baseball team. The former president of the Expos explains how the team went from being one of major league baseball's most promising franchises to becoming a financial pariah, barely escaping extinction at the end of the 2001 season and now facing demise in 2002. This history of the team's troubled existence covers years of gradually declining revenue and attendance, the sale of the team to a consortium of business leaders in 1991, and the league's ongoing debate over eliminating the Expos once and for all.
In his own words, Bret Hart’s honest, perceptive, startling account of his life in and out of the pro wrestling ring. The sixth-born son of the pro wrestling dynasty founded by Stu Hart and his elegant wife, Helen, Bret Hart is a Canadian icon. As a teenager, he could have been an amateur wrestling Olympic contender, but instead he turned to the family business, climbing into the ring for his dad’s western circuit, Stampede Wrestling. From his early twenties until he retired at 43, Hart kept an audio diary, recording stories of the wrestling life, the relentless travel, the practical jokes, the sex and drugs, and the real rivalries (as opposed to the staged ones). The result is an intimate, no-holds-barred account that will keep readers, not just wrestling fans, riveted. Hart achieved superstardom in pink tights, and won multiple wrestling belts in multiple territories, for both the WWF (now the WWE) and WCW. But he also paid the price in betrayals (most famously by Vince McMahon, a man he had served loyally); in tragic deaths, including the loss of his brother Owen, who died when a stunt went terribly wrong; and in his own massive stroke, most likely resulting from a concussion he received in the ring, and from which, with the spirit of a true champion, he has battled back. Widely considered by his peers as one of the business’s best technicians and workers, Hart describes pro wrestling as part dancing, part acting, and part dangerous physical pursuit. He is proud that in all his years in the ring he never seriously hurt a single wrestler, yet did his utmost to deliver to his fans an experience as credible as it was exciting. He also records the incredible toll the business takes on its workhorses: he estimates that twenty or more of the wrestlers he was regularly matched with have died young, weakened by their own coping mechanisms, namely drugs, alcohol, and steroids. That toll included his own brother-in-law, Davey Boy Smith. No one has ever written about wrestling like Bret Hart. No one has ever lived a life like Bret Hart’s. For as long as I can remember, my world was filled with liars and bullshitters, losers and pretenders, but I also saw the good side of pro wrestling. To me there is something bordering on beautiful about a brotherhood of big tough men who pretended to hurt one another for a living instead of actually doing it. Any idiot can hurt someone. —from Hitman
Details the lives and careers of the best professional wrestling figures of the last one hundred fifty years, including Bruno Sammartino, The Undertaker, and John Cena.
Muchnick's Concussion Inc. blog exposed the decades-long cover-up of scientific research into sports concussions and the ongoing denial to radically reform football in North America. This compilation from Muchnick's no-holds-barred investigative website reveals the complete head injury story as it developed, from the doctor who played fast and loose with the facts about the efficacy of the state-mandated concussion management system for high school football players, to highly touted solutions that are more self-serving cottage industry than of any genuine benefit.
