Professional wrestling is not covered in the daily newspaper or on television news, and is officially “entertainment” rather than sport---yet it is a multi-billion dollar industry that has been the most watched show on cable television over the past two decades. Regardless of whether you like or hate professional wrestling, or have never watched it, one concludes after reading Irv Muchnick’s new book that one cannot understand America without understanding the massive popularity of wrestling. Wrestling foreshadowed baseball’s use of steroids, the NFL’s dangerous reliance on pain reducing drugs, and its matches often mirror American attitudes toward race, class and patriotism. Despite wrestling’s grip on American society, nobody had written a book clearly laying out this connection until Muchnick’s recently released, Wrestling Babylon.

Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1960’s, I attended baseball, football and basketball games but these events did not come close to the excitement of going to a professional wrestling show at the historic Olympic Auditorium. It was not simply the emotion of seeing such star wrestlers as Bobo Brazil, Mil Mascares and Freddie Blassie up close; rather, it was the fans attending these matches whose over-the-top freneticism bordered on hysteria, and made Dodger or Angel fans seem like they had taken vows of silence.

I vividly recall these matches nearly forty years later, and during my elementary school and junior high days I never missed watching the weekly televised wrestling show. I lost interest in wrestling by high school, but have followed its giant jump in national popularity with amazement.

Irv Muchnick grew up in the wrestling world of St. Louis, and was the nephew of Sam Muchnick, who ran pro wrestling in the Midwest. In the 1940’s-1960’s, wresting was decentralized so that each region had its own champion, its own cast of characters, and its own plots. But just as chain stores have taken over localized restaurant, hardware and other operations, Vince McMahon’s WWE (formerly WWF) has taken over the world of wrestling.

Unlike myself, Muchnick’s interest in wrestling extended into adulthood. I first contacted him after he wrote a piece on wrestling’s good old days for the original version of the SF Weekly in the early 1990’s. I soon realized that Muchnick knew more about wrestling than anyone I had ever met, and truly understood its broader social significance.

At the time, Muchnick was trying to get a publisher for a book on WWF owner Vince McMahon. He never got a publisher willing to back a book on the controversial McMahon, but Muchnick wrote many articles for national publications on subjects including McMahon’s corporatization of wrestling, his promotion of steroids long before Barry Bonds, and the early deaths and disabling injuries caused by the sport (a reality that pro football has covered up and denied until recently regarding NFL veterans).

Muchnick draws parallels between wresting and American culture and politics that are truly eerie. For example, consider his account of the wrestling Von Erich family, whose patriarch Fritz was the standard bearer for Dallas’ Christian community.

While George H.W. Bush set up his son George W. Bush in the political world, Fritz Von Erich led his sons to follow in his footsteps as professional wrestling stars. For a time, Kerry, Chris and Mike Von Erich succeeded in fulfilling the patriarch’s vision, and Kerry became a popular local chamption.

But whereas Bush’s inherent incompetence left thousands dead in Iraq, Fritz von Erich’s attempt to transform his sons into wrestling heroes like Dad only caused private sorrow: the three Von Erich’s three sons all ended their wrestling careers by committing suicide.

As demonstrated by its subtitle----“Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death and Scandal”---Muchnick does not avoid tawdry details. And with allegations of rapes, a wrestling “casting couch,” and widespread illegal drug abuse, the “underside” of pro wrestling is evoked. Nowhere is this tawdriness better captured than in the person of impresario Vince McMahon.

McMahon makes Donald Trump look modest and easygoing. As Muchnick describes, McMahon “became a showbiz baron, a Forbes 400 billionaire, and like his Connecticut forebear P.T. Barnum, and A-list exhibit to H.L. Mencken’s contention that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the masses.”

Many people want their children to follow them into the family business. But Muchnick shows how McMahon took this credo to twisted levels. How many billionaires would have their daughter marry a wrestler as part of the script? And French kiss her “husband” on national television?

The scriptwriter (McMahon) has placed himself and his family in the middle of his “soap opera” wrestling plots, including in events so humiliating and bizarre that the audience can hardly believe what they are witnessing.

It was not Survivor that spawned an endless number of “reality shows.” It was Vince McMahon’s pro wrestling.

In my day, there would be a Texas Death Match, or a cage match, maybe once a year. McMahon puts on such matches almost weekly, catering to the audience’s continual need to keep their adrenalin flowing. McMahon understands that people now have much shorter attention spans, and puts enough action and plots in each match to ensure that viewers do not switch channel, and attendees keep buying tickets.

Muchnick credits McMahon’s pro wrestling interviews as shaping the now common Sunday talk shows, with pundits making bold predictions and attacking the views of their fellow panelists. Many see contemporary politics in the Age of Bush as resembling a wrestling match, and given the machinations of Karl Rove & company, that analogy is closer than people may realize.

Muchnick ends the book on a sad note, listing the many wrestlers whose reliance on pain-numbing drugs brought them early deaths. Many wrestlers are mere cannon fodder for the McMahon empire, and while pro wrestling has always had its share of victims, the age of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs has caused too many wrestlers to jeopardize their lives.

Muchnick took a risk in providing an unhappy ending, but clearly felt that the truth had to be told. The media has looked the other way regarding McMahon’s empire-building strategies, just as it ignored George W. Bush’s drunk driving arrests, his failure to fulfill his military service, and his sweetheart deals with Harken Oil Co.

The only problem with this wonderful book is that it ends too soon. Given the publishing industry’s unwillingness to back books exposing the underside of wrestling, we can only hope that sales will be strong enough to enable Muchnick to write another book on the subject.

Note: Muchnick will be discussing Wrestling Babylon at Black Oak Books in Berkeley on Tuesday, March 27, at 7:30 pm.

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