SGM Book Club: "The Death Of WCW" by Reynolds & Alvarez

There's a soft spot in my heart for wrestling books, even when considering the most cheesy and unnecessary books on the shelf. For every "Have A Nice Day," there's a "Foley Is Good." For every "If They Only Knew," there's a "Pure Dynamite." Unfortunately, for every "Sex, Lies & Headlocks," there's a "Death Of WCW."

R.D. Reynolds is by no means a poor writer. Writer, not author, because after reading his missives on Wrestlecrap, I'm convinced that he's just recycling his online style for the print medium. His humor & observations are relevant and to the point, but his narrative is so non-linear that my head hurt sometimes trying to tie in some of his logical jumps. Example: In the first chapter, clearly marked "1988 - 1996," he makes repeated references to events that would happen in 1997 onward. And, for the most part, given that this man is the brains behind Wrestlecrap, why does he leave some of the greatest missteps of the company (Arachnaman, Shockmaster, Dungeon of Doom) unexplored? Yeah, it could be argued that those subjects had been covered in the Wrestlecrap book, but they're still just as relevant an issue to discuss when covering the rise & fall of the second greatest wrestling organization in the United States and their impact thereof.

As for the subject matter, there are some things that were surprisingly left underexplored. WCW's connection with ECW's Todd Gordon to raid the latter's talent would have been nice to know more about. It mentions so little about the last Nitro that you would have thought that the only two players on it were Vince and Shane McMahon; it doesn't even note that this would be the last time that Flair and Sting would wrestle each other ... hell, it doesn't even mention that they showed up at all.

And as good a writer (again, not an author) as Reynolds is, he tries overly hard to be ironic at every opportunity. While he blasts WCW in the later days for going the Russo route of being too "shoot" for mainstream audiences, he spends a lot of time winking at the reader, writing sophomoric shit like, "But fear not! Russo had a plan." This is what Elmore Leonard referred to as "the author letting himself be known," when I should just read on and be surprised by WCW's lack of foresight, instead of some ersatz wizard behind the curtain nudging at me that, yes, WCW made some bad mistakes, and yes, despite being told that Russo in fact had a plan, in reality he didn't. And sure enough, as I read further on, his plan was ill conceived at best. Thanks for the warning, R.D.

For a glimpse behind the scenes of a wrestling organization that was instrumental in making wrestling what it is today, it's fair to good. For a book on how not to run a company, it's great. However, if I wanted that kind of book, I'd have been in the business section. As a story of a sport whose athletes I admired, and whose directions I'd followed, it's passable, but only just.

Retail price: $18.95; subjective worth: $12.00.