“Ladies and gentlemen, it is now time for your main event.”  So begins Patrick Jones’s 60 page chronological tour of the “sports entertainment” genre known as professional wrestling.  The first 16 pages offer up an interesting historical timeline of the key match ups over the 100+ years of “entertainment” wrestling.  The second chapter basically gives more detail about most of these bouts.  Overall the focus is on the evolution of the sport, though in 2011 Wrestling boss Vince McMahon even changed the name of his World Wresting Entertainment group to WWE because he “no longer wanted the word wrestling associated with his company, claiming there was no future for wrestling, only for “sports entertainment”. Readers will see that characters, personalities and back story play a lot into the full picture of professional wrestling.  As well as the action, of course.  No question, these men and women are athletes, but Jones freely admits that the bouts are scripted and staged.

What this is lacking is any critical commentary of the sport.  Nothing on in the way of early deaths of the wrestlers from drug use and physical abuse to the body.  Nothing about the violence and trash talk that goes on in the sport.  The future of wrestling is called into question, with more interest going to mixed martial arts fights that have back story and characters mixed with real competition.  One small error even the publisher let slide is the mention of the Kingdome, which would have been replaced with Century Link Field by the 2003 bout discussed.

Overall, the writing is fast paced and the voice is excited.  Every two-page spread has a picture to bring the entertainment value.  Definitely an additional purchase if for middle and high school audiences.