Booker T.

Booker T.

My Rise to Wrestling Royalty

By Booker T. Huffman  and John ‘Bradshaw’ Layfield.

Once upon a time in history of Wrestling Federation tickets were hard to come and the producers for lack of audience and wrestling entourage take the place of actors. Booker T. Huffman shares his experience as a wrestling professional struggling to meet the demands of an amateur and then a professional exposed to all kinds of opponents. The book reflects the experience with many Wrestling Champions – many of them retired and some of them still struggling with torn foundations whereas others will be forgotten. The role of exceptional actors; Macho Man Salvage, Dusty Rhodes, and Hulk Hogan who helped to transform the sports to a worldwide entertainment is article of history but from personal experience there are unsung heroes.

It will too hard to suggest that the stories we read from Booker T. are perhaps regular wrestling experience, perhaps with a twist but in terms of how he embodies the past, there is a lack of Wrestling and its road travels. Wrestling has always been a road travel and from his book, we read his range of experience coasting from Houston to Georgia and to other ends of Wrestling Television centers. We may argue that it is first half of the book that show Booker t. Huffman as a historian – perhaps a class ahead of a recent by Derek Jeter – but lacking certain burnish and production aptitude free from stated Wrestling experience. There are no expectations for the future as the author spared himself the contagion of public exercise on the altar on his vistas for WCW as Chairman.  

I for one can mention that the book does no wrong for the stories it shares in Wrestling, that it augurs well – perhaps well enough to spy for the earlier years of production for television and the nature and nurture of entertainment – with or without the blessing of a standing audience. All of these does and does not matter when a career that spans two active wrestling years and another in side-lines merits a 35 championship ring. We benefit with easy some of the forgotten trends in the early 80’s on the origins and enduring legacies of video games – the War Games for a start as a brain child of Dusty Rhodes. The lingering legacies of Ancient Wrestling is served a reasonable dish in the book reflecting the poor light of wrestling under $70 thousand to better budget and advertising.