The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

The best book on the history of wrestling I have yet to read. I've only read about 5 or 6 of the most recommend books here on Amazon at this time, but this one is so head and shoulders over the others that I feel it must be one of the classics of wrestling literature. It may seem strange to tell the history of Wrestling mostly through the lives of those who died early deaths, but that that IS the history for most of wrestling. Read this book and you will see it is a perfectly valid approach.Well written and researched, this is the book to buy if you want to know how all this started (goes all the way back to the early 1900s) and read about some incredible people involved over the years.Yes. Wrestling is scripted...yet it's not fake! A match must be set and the finish must also be set (unless a wrestler looses his temper and goes off script) in order to have the high entertainment we have gotten over the years. Most of the winners are selected by the response of us, the fans. Responses like how much we hate the grappler or love him (or her). Tell the truth, a well hated bad guy wrestler is a lot of fun to watch!In the early days, when wrestling was not scripted, a match could take a good part of the day and would be boring as hell! Two guys on the floor with headlocks for hours on end. The drama, comedy and plot development of the story lines are very well done for most of the wrestling saga.However, what goes on between the start and finish, is at least 90% the real deal. As one astute wrestler has said recently, YOU CAN'T FAKE GRAVITY!These guys do put their bodies on the line every night sometimes. Boxers do it a couple of times a year.This the telling of the wrestling saga through the early deaths of some of the most famous wrestlers really does work.This book may make a lot of new wrestling fans. I just recently got hooked on it when a friend got me to watch a Monday Night Raw a few months back. This book helps me not to feel like a bum for loving this line of entertainment. I watched it as a kid with my brother back in the late '50s and at 67 I am a fan again. It feels good!!Read this book and watch THE WRESTLER with Mickey Roarke and you too will be in on it and see what it is a legitimate form of entertainment.

When it comes to writing about professional wrestling, it’s hard to come by truly great writers of the craft. David Shoemaker is one such writer. He’s eloquent and his book “The Squared Circle” reads like a Greek play, a battle between Gods in a, well, squared circle. It’s a book that spun out of his column chronicling the deaths of wrestlers and came to encompass the history of professional wrestling.And professional wrestling’s history is also the history of American spectator events, television, cable, PPV, and everything in between. As one example, how many great sports athletes, entertainers and other figures cite Gorgeous George, a prominent wrestler in the 1950s timed with the explosion of television, as an influence? Muhammad Ali, for one.“The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived,” is a quote Shoemaker has from Petronius toward the start of his book and right there is the catch. That quote perfectly encapsulates the magic of art, of fiction and of entertainment. That’s the rub. When I go to the movies, I don’t want Brad Pitt winking at me that he’s an actor and all of this is fake. I want to “buy in” to the fictional presentation. When I read Stephen King, I don’t want an interlude from the author winking at me. I want to “buy in.” Professional wrestling is no different. I’m not here to convince people that professional wrestling is vastly under-credited and under-analyzed and under-respected, which it is, but it’s worth stressing the rub. And it’s just a good quote.As Shoemaker opens the book, he gets at what’s really “fake” about professional wrestling and to which says something larger about other sports and life and idolatry, “It’s the story of a mythology populated not by gods, but by real men, fallible mortals who served as vessels for a larger truth, men who lived the lives of kings and who suffered to be our idols. This is the ultimate fakery of wrestling — that the emperor has no clothes, that the gods are mortals. But in reliving their lives, what became clear is that the mythology is what matters the most. We make our own gods for our own purposes. And we love them, and that’s the whole point.”Right. We don’t want to know the story of Joe Montana having a concussion, not remembering where or who he is. We want to “buy in” to their godliness, their feats that seem beyond human abilities on the gridiron, in the squared circle, on the stage, wherever. Even if you’re not a wrestling fan, the idolatry that wrestling fans bestow on professional wrestlers is one other fans of other sports and entertainment products can relate to. Moreover, they can relate to watching (and anguishing) over the fall of their gods.Which is why I think even a non-wrestling fan could enjoy this book. It’s a familiar story of the highs, lows, drugs, sex, deception and tragedy associated with the searing heat of the spotlight, the desire to maintain the spotlight and the pitfalls of an elusive spotlight.Perhaps the worst tragedy of it all is the “ignoble existence” of a wrestler in the real world, a “painful and deadly one,” as Shoemaker says toward the end of the book. That a wrestler punishes themselves in the ring, punishes themselves going up and down the roads that transverse the world, and they do so under the bizarre suffocating blanket of wrestling’s “fakery.” Sure, the wrestling fans give them idol-status, if they’re good enough, if they punish themselves enough and even then, we always beg for that “one last match,” but beyond that niche? They’re like the gods of the sewers.Reading this book gives you the most comprehensive, well-written expose and homage into the lives of those that lived this ignoble existence and died for it. Sacrificial lambs to the altar of their dreams.

'Life, Death...' less a cohesive read than initially expected, but I do think that actually works to its benefit. As it is presented - a series of articles about wrestlers and their eventual deaths, connected only by the shared details of them being wrestlers and, well, dying - it lends itself to being picked up every now and then, chipped away at, read in fits and spurts as and when you see fit.The connecting tissue about the history of wrestling and how its ridiculous traditions, parlance and everything else came to be is equally fantastic, it's worth pointing out, way more than mere filler between tales of excess, glory and eventual downfall. I genuinely learned things I did not know about pro wrestling, and I pride myself on knowing a lot about pro wrestling. My parents aren't so proud of that, but there you go.A thoroughly enjoyable, illuminating and damn interesting collection of articles masquerading as a book, 'Life, Death...' is a perfect read for any wrestling fan - as well as a great read for even those who have no interest in the art of greased up large men in pants pretending to hit each other. Lovely stuff.

Even though I knew about most of the deaths and the simple reason they died, it was interesting to read about the nuances and side stories to wrestling. This is the complete story of the deaths in wrestling and has not hidden from the truth

I heard about this on the art of wrestling podcast with Colt cabana and I must say I wasn't disappointed it really covers all bases of pro wrestling mixing in history with characters and stories, the author is definitely a wrestling fan and it shows.I would recommend this to any wrestling fans it's one of the best wrestling based books I've read so far.

David Shoemaker is one of the best pro-wrestling journalists working today and this book is a fun read for the pro-wrestling fan. It isn't overlong and is interesting, although I personally knew a lot of the facts and stories recounted within.

A fantastic book that covers a vast array of the history of the most important aspect of this business, the wrestlers.