Too Sweet: Inside the Indie Wrestling Revolution

Too Sweet: Inside the Indie Wrestling Revolution by Keith Elliot Greenberg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Too Sweet is Keith Elliot Greenberg's look at the rise of Independent Wrestling. Or is it?

After a hiatus of a few years, I started watching wrestling again in 2017, specifically independent wrestling. I've gone to more live shows in the last three years than the previous forty combined, all but one of those independent shows. When ECW press offered me an ARC of this, I jumped at it.

First off, I know the subtitle is "Inside the Indie Wrestling Revolution" but it should really be subtitled "All Roads Lead to AEW" or something of that nature. The book is geared toward telling about the All In pay per view and the resulting formation of AEW with other bits in between. Can I fault Keith Elliot Greenberg for not writing the book I was expecting to read?

A little, I guess. The book dedicates some pages to the formation of various bigger indie promotions from 2001 to present, like Ring of Honor, CZW, Chikara, Evolve, Pro Wrestling Guerilla, and the usual suspects, in addition to more material than one would expect about GCW, although that makes sense with the Janela-AEW connection.

Seriously, this is more about the paths various wrestlers took to AEW than anything else. Most of the material is based around Cody Rhodes, the Young Bucks, and the rest of the AEW crew. If it was REALLY about the rise of independent wrestling, it would have featured more than a mention of Homicide, Eddie Kingston, Low Ki, Bryan Danielson, and the other guys that kept the independent scene interesting when ECW folded.

If you're looking to read about the Rise of AEW, I'd give this a 5. If you're actually wanting to read about independent wrestling in the last twenty years, I'd give it a 3.

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