Awesome Truth: A Wrestling Book Club

The Royal Rumble is one of the most wonderful events on the pro wrestling calendar, and with good reason: you can't help but anticipate what Vince McMahon and WWE will do next. Hot on the heels of the 2018 Royal Rumble, the Awesome Truth boys use this WWE documentary to revisit the history of this legendary match and relive their favorite Rumble moments, from Stone Cold Steve Austin and Ric Flair...

Do any wrestling stars, even the great Chris Jericho, need to have authored four books? Jericho's latest tome is the first we're covering on Awesome Truth; luckily for us, Y2J makes  No Is a Four-Letter Word into a motivational self-help book, as opposed to another recap of his time in and out of the ring. And given that Walt and Steve just got back from Tokyo for Wrestle Kingdom 12 and Alpha vs O...

WWE has taken another step into the documentary business, as its recent retrospective on Kevin Owens did excellent numbers on the WWE Network. But what does it mean to watch a WWE documentary? Is it an additional chance for Vince McMahon and Triple H to work us, or are we actually getting a peek behind the curtain? And why was Kevin Owens chosen for this particular opportunity? Rather than break d...

AJ Mendez Brooks, known in WWE as AJ Lee, truly changed the face of women's wrestling. She also went through childhood hardships and emotional trauma that would've crippled many others. In her memoir, Crazy Is My Superpower , AJ talks not only about her time in pro wrestling—and her marriage to CM Punk—but how she overcame her struggles with mental illness. This week on Awesome Truth, we pore over...

By now, almost everyone has seen ESPN's new 30 for 30 on Ric Flair, entitled Nature Boy . But how did director Rory Karpf do in capturing the unique magic of Flair, not to mention the peaks and valleys of being a pro wrestler? Our wrestling book club moves beyond the written word for the second time to examine the rare sports documentary that probes professional wrestling; this week, we're talking...

When Dave Bautista released his autobiography in 2007, he couldn't have realized that by 2017 he'd be starring in some of the biggest movies in the world. Yet here we are, with "The Animal" now more widely known as Drax the Destroyer. Before Dave was a movie star, however, he was a pro wrestler trying to make it in Vince McMahon's "ruthless aggression" era of WWE. On this episode of Awesome Truth,...

We try to celebrate the best of the best here on Awesome Truth, but sometimes you have to embrace the crap. Lucky for us, there's a book fully dedicated to all the garbage pro wrestling has offered us over the years. WrestleCrap has been a staple of pro wrestling since the internet came to be, documenting the worst offenses of WWF, WCW, Vince McMahon, and Eric Bischoff, but does its short, snarky...

Knowing what we know about Hollywood Hulk Hogan, it's no surprise he'd title his autobiography with just his name. The biggest icon in pro wrestling likely has more great stories than anyone, but the Hulk Hogan mythos too often gets in the way of reality. On the latest episode of Awesome Truth, we try to separate Hulk fact from Hogan fiction as we delve into the life of Terry Bollea, the man who p...

Bret "The Hitman" Hart is defined by his matches: Davey Boy Smith at SummerSlam 1992, Owen Hart at WrestleMania X, Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XII, Stone Cold Steve Austin at WrestleMania XIII. In part two of Awesome Truth's dissection of Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling , we dive into Bret's best matches and the angles that made him a pro wrestling legend, along with the...

When it comes to wrestling literature, it doesn't get much better than Hitman by Bret Hart, a 593-page journey into the seamy underbelly of professional wrestling. From Stu Hart's Stampede Wrestling to Vince McMahon's WWF and finally the depressing downfall of WCW, Bret saw it all and lived to tell about it. In between talking about Davey Boy, Owen, Hogan, Andre, and Jim the Anvil, he's also not a...

Of all the shows Netflix offers on its service, you would not assume a lightly fictionalized retelling of women's wrestling in the 1980s would be a major hit. But critics and wrestling fans everywhere loved GLOW , the story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling as told by Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, Marc Maron, and a bunch of other wonderful women (plus Brodus Clay and Alex Riley cameos). In Awesome...

From the early 1980s on, every story about professional wrestling is a story about Vince McMahon. So what are the boys to do with a book that is, by its title, all about Vince? On this episode of Awesome Truth, we discuss Sex, Lies, and Headlocks , an attempt by Shaun Assael and Mike Mooneyham to tell both the story of Mr. McMahon and of pro wrestling in one swoop. They may not succeed entirely, b...

Daniel Bryan is one of the most beloved wrestlers of all time; surprisingly, he also might be the best author. On this episode of Awesome Truth, we discuss  Yes: My Improbable Journey to the Main Event of WrestleMania , a fun and detailed recap of Bryan's career through New Japan, Ring of Honor, the armories and carnivals of England, and finally the WWE and WrestleMania XXX glory. Along the way, w...

Justin Roberts spent over a decade as the ring announcer for Raw, Smackdown, and ECW; now he's written a tell-all book that reveals what it's like to be a forgotten, mistreated WWE employee. But is his exposé a worthwhile piece of wrestling literature? On this episode of Awesome Truth, we discuss Best Seat in the House , the Roberts autobiography that lit up the dirtsheets, tore into Vince McMahon...

Welcome to Awesome Truth, a wrestling book club in podcast form. On this introductory episode, we will be discussing Ric Flair: To Be the Man by Ric Flair and Keith Elliot Greenberg. Flair has long been one of the most provocative and outrageous people in professional wrestling, and his stories in this book are only matched by his remarkable honesty in discussing the many trials and tribulations o...