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Books > Sport & Leisure > Sports & outdoor recreation > Combat sports & self-defence > Wrestling
You may have cheered for New Jack. You may have booed him out of
the building. You may have even feared him at times. But until now,
you've never really known The Most Dangerous Man in Wrestling. For
the first time, the man born Jerome Young opens up about how he
became one of the stars who enabled Extreme Championship Wrestling
to make a permanent mark on the professional landscape. His crazed
dives off balconies and scaffolds; his bloody, weapon-filled mat
wars that trampled the line between reality and entertainment-this
memoir reveals the perspective of the man at the center of them all
and includes new disclosures about the infamous incidents with Mass
Transit, Gypsy Joe, and the stabbing of a fellow wrestler in
Florida. Beyond the gimmicks that united white supremacists and the
NAACP against him and his fellow performers, New Jack candidly
discusses the violence in his youth that nearly led him to a career
in crime, his past as a bounty hunter, a near-fatal drug addiction,
the last months of ECW, and his place in wrestling history.
Few stones are left unturned in this account of the life of a
champion professional wrestler old-time fans and wrestling
historians remember well for his accomplishments in the ring, his
run-'em-over approach to wrestling, his growly demeanor, and a
razor-sharp wit he could unleash at will. Numerous people who knew
Gene Kiniski firsthand-including boyhood friends and acquaintances
in the Canadian prairie, fellow wrestlers and promoters who worked
with him or against him, and people who became Kiniski's friends
after he left the ring-recount touching stories and memories of an
athlete and entertainer who was known internationally to a
generation of wrestling fans and to Canadians everywhere as
Canada's Greatest Athlete. In these pages, those who knew Kiniski
best remember a giant of a man who impacted people around him even
more than he impacted wrestling audiences in major centers in the
United States, Canada, and Japan over the course of an outstanding
career spanning well over three decades.
Professional wrestling possesses a global appeal across national,
regional, racial, and gender boundaries. The essays collected in
this volume represent the most diverse array of topics and
contributors ever assembled for the academic study of pro
wrestling. Utilizing a wide variety of academic disciplines,
including communications, literary studies, history, kinesiology,
psychology the eighteen contributors deal with various issues of
national, regional, and gender identity in pro wrestling, from the
construction of a positive Iranian identity in the wake of the Iran
hostage crisis, to fan culture clashes between wrestling and MMA
fans, to Brazilian and French authorities' efforts to regulate the
sport at the turn of the twentieth century, among many others. This
volume is an important contribution to the growing body of academic
literature on professional wrestling, especially on the issues of
national, regional, racial, and gender identity.
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