Book Review: The Buzz on Professional Wrestling by Scott Keith

The Buzz on Professional Wrestling by Scott Keith
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Coming in at roughly 217 pages in an oversized format, The Buzz on Professional Wrestling was published just weeks before the 90s Wrestling Boom ended and began a slow declined thanks to the WWE monopoly. After spending a little time on “wrestling 101” and a “history of wrestling” (up to 1984), author Scott Keith then dedicated the rest of the book to look at pro wrestling from 1984—and the start of the WWF Golden Age—to sometime in 2000, covering both WWF (now WWE) and WCW through biographical sketches of Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Sting, Steve Austin, Goldberg, and many others. The first time I read this book all the way back in 2001, I thought this book was pretty good, however after 20+ years during which I learned a lot more from other sources I can say this book is awful. There are a lot of issues from poor editing and basically lying about things people supposedly did, namely Hulk Hogan—who has done a lot of shady stuff in the business and in real life not covered in this book—who it turns out did not do everything Keith accused him of. Basically, this book was a cash grab in The Buzz on series to get in on the wrestling boom but given how bad it was written I’m happy that it was published just before the wrestling business cooled off and no one was interested anymore.

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