There's that old adage that one should never judge a book by its cover and I tried very hard not too concerning this book. After all, what could be more hilarious than a front cover consisting of a grumpy looking Big Show on the back of a bike with Rey Mysterio driving it in a posed picture?!? Yep, almost everything up to and including Larry the Cable Guy and he makes me wish television had never been invented. Being a WWE fan however I felt the need to persevere into the unknown and actually give this book a try...for how bad could it actually be?
First off, I should mention this was first printed back in 2005 so a lot of the superstars whose stories appear in the book have either moved on to other wrestling organizations or have left wrestling altogether. For a lifelong fan like me that's no problem but if you're fairly new to wrestling, and think the PG era is how the WWE has always been, then you may not know many of the wrestlers who appear in this anthology of true tales of life on the road...Jazz, Chris Nowinski, Rico, Ivory??? They were all on the WWE roster back in 2005 but only the die hard fans like myself would probably be familiar with them nowadays.
The content of the book is broken down into ten individual chapters each of which showcases a certain aspect of life on the road which is something the WWE wrestlers are very familiar with. According to this book they spend over 240 days a year on the road travelling from one place to the next just to entertain us fans so you just know there's lots of stories to tell. These stories range from very funny (Rico comes to mind as does the story told by Coach), to amusing (three divas in a bed anyone?!?), to "why the hell was that included" (A-Train had me falling asleep) but I was pleased that last category was in the minority. I would have preferred the stories being told been to have been limited to a couple per superstar but, unfortunately, it's very top heavy in certain contributers which means a plethora of memories from Dr Tom Prichard (who I don't believe was actually on the active roster at the time but was working behind the scenes...in my mind that doesn't really qualify him as a superstar) and Al Snow but very few, sometimes none at all, from the real superstars of 2005 such as Undertaker, Kurt Angle, Shawn Michaels, HHH, Batista etc.
Scattered throughout the pages are candid photographs, taken on the road, of WWE superstars of the day. It was a cool concept and I only wish there had been more of them...particularly the divas but that's just a personal preference of mine.
Let me mention, if I may, the final chapter of this book. It deals exclusively with...erm, how do I put this? Let me just lay it out there! The whole of the final chapter is about Big Show's escapades taking a shit. Yes, an individual chapter devoted solely to a 7ft tall 485lb guy and his experiences of pinching a load in various places where the bathroom/toilet was too small to accommodate him. I will say no more.
I was fully expecting to grapple with this book but it surprised me and it turned out to be an enjoyable read and an interesting look behind the scenes of the the lives of WWE wrestlers. I learned a little more about the wrestlers real life personalities - for instance Randy Orton visits out of the way strip clubs just to have a laugh at how ugly the strippers are - and what it must be like constantly travelling from one city to the next on an almost daily basis. It seems far less glamorous than I would expect it to be. ( )