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Fighting Spirit Magazine
Review of Ring of Hell
By Luke Dormehl
In 1999, a book was published
about the film industry. Written by a journalist with an obvious
affection (although at the same time distaste) for Hollywood, it
detailed a ten year period in the lives of some of the 20th
century’s greatest directors, actors and producers; giving us a
behind-the-scenes look at one of the greatest decades in film
history. And the results weren't pretty. Raging drug problems and
cases of spousal abuse were exposed. Beloved directors were revealed
as near-psychotic megalomaniacs, and actors as narcissists of
circa-1993 Lex Luger stature. Every page turned revealed something
new about the films you grew up watching. Sometimes you didn't want
to read it, but morbid curiosity meant you had to continue. The book
was a massive success.
Ten years later, Ring of Hell
arrives. This is Easy Riders, Raging Bulls for the pro
wrestling industry -- And boy is it controversial!
The sensational story of the
beloved pro wrestler who murdered his wife and seven year old son
before hanging himself in their million-dollar home was always going
to get mainstream attention. Last year it did: blowing the roof off
a billion-dollar industry to reveal a bizarre and often grotesque
business stuck in the carnival environment it had crawled out of a
hundred years earlier; a farcical world populated by hustlers,
masochists and drug addicts that extended far beyond the 'isolated'
events of June 2007.
In keeping with this, Ring of
Hell is not a book solely about Chris Benoit. What author
Matthew Randazzo V has done instead is to cleverly use a chronology
of Benoit's career as a means of putting the entire pro wrestling
industry under the magnifying glass. The book takes us from the Hart
family Dungeon and Stampede Wrestling in Calgary, through to the
infamous New Japan Dojo, Mexico, ECW, WCW and, ultimately, WWE –
painting a picture of an antiquated and secretive industry where
extreme hazing is routine, and horrific bullying masquerades as
'respecting the business'.
Randazzo comes well qualified to
this project. A true crime writer, novelist and lifelong wrestling
fan (although after writing this book, you'd have to ask whether he
still is!) he is the perfect combination of industry insider and
outsider. His attitude to the Benoit suicide/murder case is the
complete opposite of the ways that both the wrestling industry and
the mainstream press reacted. While the wrestling industry was quick
to write Benoit off as a 'bad seed' and the mainstream media equally
speedy to blame steroids, Randazzo instead focuses on the wider
context to get his answers.
Never failing to note the
ridiculousness of a quote-unquote 'fake' sport that still manages to
claim more lives than practically any other industry, Randazzo
examines other wrestlers whose lives have been affected. In a strong
counterpoint to the 'one bad seed' theory, Chris Benoit's story is
shown to parallel that of numerous other wrestlers; not least his
self-professed idol: Tommy 'The Dynamite Kid' Billington. Like
Benoit, Billington was a smaller-than-average worker with a sadistic
streak to his character, who made up for his perceived lack of size
by taking massive amounts of punishment in the ring and pumping his
body full of drugs. Also like Benoit, Dynamite's story ends with a
shocking fall from grace!
Not all of the stories are by any
means about Benoit, but the stories Randazzo has unearthed about him
are among the most shocking. In one, Benoit threatened to mutilate
himself live on WCW television if he was forced to participate in a
storyline he didn't want to. In another, it is described how he
tortured and humiliated a referee in Japan for breaking one of the
many unwritten rules of the locker room. These stories are extremely
disturbing and a far cry from the usual 'road stories' told in
wrestling books.
As difficult as some of these are
to believe, Randazzo has clearly done his job thoroughly, and
everything herein is well-sourced, often from multiple people. The
level of access he has had is unprecedented, and the stories he has
managed to coax from his subjects are truly astounding, and already
causing waves of controversy across the industry.
Don't get us wrong, Ring of
Hell is more often than not NOT a fun read. More than a year's
worth of Randy Orton matches back-to-back, Ring of Hell is
the kind of book that will make you want to hand in your wrestling
fan credentials once and for all. For anyone thinking about starting
out in the industry however, or just for fans wanting an alternative
to WWE's sugar-coated and rose-tinted view of the wrestling
business, this is a MUST READ. Just be warned: after hearing all the
details of, to paraphrase Randazzo, this 'farcical industry that
destroys bodies, devastates souls, ravages families and kills
friends', you may never watch wrestling in the same way again.
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