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Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death, and Scandal
Ecw Press
April 2007
On Sale: April 1, 2007
200 pages
ISBN: 1550227610
EAN: 9781550227611
Paperback
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Non-Fiction
Irvin Muchnick — a widely published writer and nephew of the
late, legendary St. Louis wrestling promoter Sam Muchnick —
has produced a book unlike any other on the astonishing
growth of professional wrestling and its profound impact on
mainstream sports and society. In Wrestling Babylon, he
traces the demise of wrestling’s old Mafia-like territories
and the rise of a national marketing base thanks to cable
television, deregulation and a culture-wide nervous
breakdown. Naturally, the figure of WWE’s Vince McMahon
lurks throughout, but equally evident is the public’s
late-empire lust for bread, circuses, and blood. As this
book demonstrates, the more cartoonishly unreal wrestling
got, the more chillingly real it became. What truly distinguishes Wrestling Babylon, however, is
Muchnick’s ability to show how professional wrestling has
become the ur-carnival for a culture that feeds on escapist
displays of humiliation, revenge, fantasy characters, and
sex. His People magazine article on Hulk Hogan blew the lid
off the drug abuse of the sport’s signature superstar. His
award-winning Penthouse profile of the ill-starred Von Erich
clan was the first to connect the dots between wrestling,
televangelism, and MTV-style production values. His
never-before-published investigation of the death of Jimmy
“Superfly” Snuka’s girlfriend suggests the cover-up of a
murder. The book’s appendix — a comprehensive listing of the
dozens of wrestlers who died prematurely over the last
generation, with little or no attention — is both a valuable
resource for wrestling historians and a shocking document of
the ruthless way sports entertainment eats its own.
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