Conquer

Conquer by Edward M. Erdelac
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Conquer collects seven short stories featuring John Conquer plus a preview of the Conquer novel, Fear of a Black Cat.

I'm a huge fan of Edward Erdelac's Merkabah Rider series so when I saw on Facebook that he was writing stories featuring John Conquer, described as Shaft meets Brother Voodoo, it was a no-brainer to grab this collection once it was released.

Much like The Merkabah Rider, Conquer is right in my wheelhouse. Part Blaxploitation, part supernatural, this hits all the right buttons for me. Conquer is a bad ass brother, a private detective people come to when strange shit is going on during the 1970s. In this book, he encounters a lot of weirdness, like a dead pimp haunting his old ride and a dead man shrunken to tiny size, floating inside a lava lamp.

Also like the Merkabah Rider, you can tell Erdelac did his homework. I'll have to pick his brain over what resources he use for the various magic techniques and creatures. You can feel Ed's love for the subject matter coming through. I don't usually get excited when a book I like gets adapted but I'd love if this was a TV show shot to look like it was from the 1970s.

Conquer gets all the stars. Now the wait for Fear of a Black Cat begins.


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Sabu: Scars, Silence, & Superglue

Sabu: Scars, Silence, & Superglue by Terry Brunk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sabu: Scars, Silence, & Superglue is the biography of professional wrestler Sabu.

Even before I ever saw him wrestle on TV, I was a Sabu fan. The maniacal daredevil captured my imagination in articles in the Apter wrestling mags. Hell, one of my first wrestling shirts was a Sabu shirt that I eventually wore to death. I even contributed to his GoFundMe when he needed surgery a few years ago. Anyway, my wife bought this for me a while back and I wolfed it down in two evenings while waiting for my son to fall asleep.

It's cliche to say a wrestling book pulls no punches but Sabu lays it all out there from the very beginning, from getting shot in the face as a teenager while hanging with the wrong crowd, to wetting the bed until he was 13, to not getting laid until he was 20. After the shooting, Sabu starts training the old school way with his uncle, The Sheik!

Sabu talks about his uncle working him like a dog with manual labor to try to get him to quit before taking him on the road, a road that would take him to Japan, ECW, WCW, the WWE, TNA, and various points between. Sabu's tone is pretty humble but he also isn't afraid to call people out on shitty behavior, like Ric Flair, Jim Ross, and Test, to name a few. He also puts over the people who treated him good, like Bret Hart and Terry Funk.

Unlike a lot of wrestling books, this books has tons of great road stories in it, like getting pulled over in his Winnebago with a bunch of Japanese wrestlers on the way to a show or pissing off the yakuza in Japan. Sabu also goes into depth about the backstage stuff everywhere he worked and gut churning details about his various injuries. He's honest about mistakes he made and things he should have done differently. He also doesn't go out of the way to put himself over, even though he was one of the most influential wrestlers of the 1990s. People are still stealing his stuff today.

For my money, Sabu: Scars, Silence, & Superglue is the epitome of what a wrestling book should be. Five out of five scars.

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It's Vader Time

It's Vader Time: The Story of a Modern Day Gladiator by Leon White
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's Vader Time is the biography of professional wrestler Big Van Vader.

I'm a wrestling fan from way back and Vader was the biggest monster of them all for me for a long time. I even had my picture taken with him about a year before he died.


Anyway, this was on my radar for a while and my wife bought it for me using slow shipping rewards points from Amazan.

Leon White, the boy would become Vader, was born in Compton, CA, two months early weighing in at an impressive 11 pounds. Leon grew up fatherless and wound up playing football with older boys because of his size, eventually gravitating toward wrestling after his NFL career was over.

Leon was wrestling as Baby Bull Leon White by the 11% mark, a positive in my book. The book takes Leon from the AWA to the CWA in Germany to New Japan, WCW, the WWF, and all the rest of the places he wrestled.

Vader comes off as surprisingly humble considering everything he accomplished in wrestling and what a legit bad ass he's presented as. He covers the good times and the bad, like working with Inoki, traveling with Harley Race, eye witness accounts of the Arn Anderson-Sid Vicious fight, and the fight he had with Paul Orndorff that led to his exit from WCW. There are some good road stories, most involving Harley Race. Vader gives his side of the infamous Stan Hansen match that had his eye hanging out of his head and various other incidents from overseas.

Unlike a lot of other wrestlers, Vader doesn't talk himself up all that much, admitting that he was a sensitive teddy bear at times and giving other wrestlers their due. He also doesn't shy away from talking about how Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan shut him out of the main event scene in WCW during their respective reigns of terror. He's also open about his drug and alcohol abuse.

The last couple chapters were hard to read as Vader's body broke down on him, leading to having his knees replaced three different times to a forty-day coma and eventually his death due to pneumonia and congestive heart failure.

Like a lot of wrestling biographies, I wish there were more road stories. I also wish I would have appreciated Vader more when I was younger and still watching wrestling on a regular basis.

It's Vader Time is one of the better wrestling books out there. Four out of five power bombs.

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Austin 3:16: 316 Facts & Stories about Stone Cold Steve Austin

Austin 3:16: 316 Facts & Stories about Stone Cold Steve Austin by Michael McAvennie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Austin 3:16: 316 Facts & Stories about Stone Cold Steve Austin is a collection of facts and trivia about wrestling's Steve Austin, as the title indicates.

ECW Press hit me up with a review copy of this. At the time, Steve Austin wasn't my favorite wrestler but as time passes, I see he was one of the last important personalities in wrestling so I agreed to read it.

As the title indicates, this book contains 316 facts and very short stories about Steve Austin. It's mostly trivia, like Steve Austin's mom going to the same high school as Virgil "Dusty Rhodes" Runnels. Others are stats, like how many times Steve Austin won the Royal Rumble, the combined number of days he was WWE champion, and things of that nature. The longest sections were given to transcripts of some of the god awful WHAT? promo segments. Seriously, fuck the WHAT? chant.

This is a pretty breezy book with as many as three segments on a page, meaning the 316 facts and stories fit into much fewer than 316 pages. It's a fun book for the most part, like reliving the best bits of the Attitude era without being subjected to the more cringe inducing moments. My main gripe is that the segments aren't in chronological order.

Austin 3:16: 316 Facts & Stories about Stone Cold Steve Austin is more fun that getting hit with a five pound metal bed pan. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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Nitro: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW

NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW by Guy Evans
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Nitro is the story of the creation of Monday Nitro, the spark that set the Monday Night Wars ablaze, and its downfall.

As I've said before, I'm a wrestling fan from way back. Some of my earliest memories are of watching Wrestling at the Chase on Sunday mornings after church with my dad. Aside from the occasional indie show within a reasonable driving distance, I don't watch wrestling anymore but I'm up for pretty much any wrestling book that comes along so I was glad when my wife nabbed this one for me.

I was never a huge WCW fan when I was young. Even though the in-ring action was frequently better than the WWF's, the production always looked bush league and half assed to me. When Nitro premiered, I was skeptical but pleasantly surprised.

Anyway, this book deals with the creation of Nitro, the weeks it beat WWF in the ratings, and everything in the downward spiral after that. A lot of it has already been told in documentaries and other books. This one has statements from prominent people who were involved and paints a picture of constant chaos and backstabbing behind the scenes.

That's all well and good but this is a long ass book and a lot of it deals with behind the scenes dealings at Turner. I like the business side of wrestling but this is the business side of the business side of wrestling and I didn't find the corporate stuff terribly interesting. Part of it may be that I spend my working hours in a corporate setting and don't much care to read about meetings where they discuss wrestling using inane buzzwords.

Another part of my dislike for this book was the timing. We're so far removed from the death of WCW that most of the stories have already been told over and over. Nitro adds some wrinkles but I would have been more interested ten or fifteen years ago, when the wounds were still fresh. By the end, it was like being at my high school reunion for longer than I planned on and just wanting to go home.

All that being said, I did enjoy the wrestling bits quite a bit and the downfall of Vince Russo was enjoyable / infurating. Infuriating because an asshat was given the golden ticket and proceed to wipe his ass with it and enjoyable because he failed so spectacularly. WCW fans didn't want the WWF. That's why they were WCW fans. If the suits would have grasped that, WCW might still be around today. Bischoff is also a sleaze but at least he had some grasp of what wrestling fans wanted.

Even though it's a decade and a half past it's expiration date, I still found Nitro to be a pretty good read. Three out of five stars.



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The World According to Dutch

The World According To Dutch by Dutch Mantell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The World According to Dutch is a collection of mostly true stories by wrestler Dirty Dutch Mantell.

This has been on my radar for years despite my being able to count the number of Dutch Mantell matches I've seen on one hand. My wife grabbed this for me for the anniversary of our first date.

Dutch Mantell has a reputation for being a great storyteller and this book proves it. Dutch muses on his life in the wrestling business, wrestling a bear, working and booking in Puerto Rico, and mentoring future superstars like Steve Austin and The Undertaker. The book also covers some 3000 mile weeks working for Bill Watts, having the shit kicked out of him by Akira Maeda in UWFI, and various other wrestling misadventures.

Dutch's writing feels like sitting on the porch, listening to a disreputable uncle's stories over the cheapest beer imaginable. The 270 pages went by in a blur. Fortunately, there's a second volume to look forward to.

The World According to Dutch is a fun wrestling book from one of wrestling's last great storytellers. Four out of five bullwhips.

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North American Lake Monsters

North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

North American Lake Monsters is a collection of nine short stories by Nathan Ballingrud.

I'm not a short story fan and whatever made me throw this on my wishlist is lost in the Swiss cheese that is the mind of a father of a toddler. My wife bought me this for Christmas and I have now read it.

These stories are heavy on atmosphere and there are feelings of desperation and loss in all of them. I wouldn't exactly call them horror stories, more like human stories that are horror adjacent. A man deals with the aftermath of werewolf attack and the destruction of his business, a man fresh out of jail deals with his home life while there's a dead lake monster not far away. A man blames himself for his son's kidnapping even as he's gazing upon the corpse of an angel. I could go on.

The writing reminds me of Laird Barron's with some very poetic descriptions amidst the horror. I imagine they have some of the same influences. "... her hangover as heavy as a mantle of chains" was my favorite simile but there were countless others.

I'm not normally a fan of short story collections but I enjoyed the hell out of North American Lake Monsters. Four out of five angel carcasses.

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