Gamely grappling with a pseudo-sport’s social and political reverberations.
Fake fights, real cultural impact.
Pro wrestling is “a simulated sport”—and an art form with an influence on matters of global consequence, Raimondi writes. The ESPN reporter focuses on the 1990s rivalry between the industry-leading World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) and World Championship Wrestling, a regional outfit seeking more fans. His key figure is Hulk Hogan, a beloved former WWF champion who joined WCW in 1994 and later staged a “heel turn,” portraying a villain in the New World Order, a group of wrestlers purportedly at war with WCW corporate brass. As orchestrated by WCW executive Eric Bischoff, the NWO expanded pro wrestling’s canvas, staging parking lot brawls and road-rage incidents meant to “manipulate people into thinking certain things they are seeing are indeed real, even if wrestling itself is not.” NWO wrestlers staged scripted attacks on Bischoff and “babyfaces”—the industry term for fan favorites—and spray-painted the group’s initials on vanquished foes. WCW’s TV ratings, ticket sales, and pay-per-view buys hit new highs before the storyline foundered and WWF bought WCW in 2001. To Raimondi, the WCW broke new ground, demonstrating how to “manipulate the masses” by playing with the boundary between fiction and truth. More broadly, pro wrestling helped clear a path for Donald Trump, who appeared in wrestling performances, has threatened political adversaries, and appointed a wrestling promoter to his cabinet. Raimondi’s thesis makes sense in a limited way, though blending fact and fiction is as old as storytelling itself. His overarching idea is that wrestling’s fakeness shouldn’t prevent it from being taken seriously. Like any “art,” he contends, its top practitioners’ work make a lasting impact. Readers who agree will enjoy his many blow-by-blow accounts of in-the-ring matches and backstage scuffles.
Gamely grappling with a pseudo-sport’s social and political reverberations.Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9781668013755
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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