CHOKEHOLD: Pro Wrestling's Real Mayhem Outside the Ring

by Jim Wilson, Weldon T. Johnson

This meticulously crafted and searing critique of pro wrestling is unlike any wrestling book published: Chokehold is a penetrating description of pro wrestling's dark side, a secret underworld of deception, exploitation and greed. The storyteller is "Big Jim" Wilson, All-American football player and survivor of seven years in the NFL, who was promised wealth and the world championship as pro wrestler. Instead, Jim Wilson found a surprisingly lucrative sports entertainment industry built on a pyramid of secrets that included abusive control of its performers and a long history of illegal business practices and corruption of politicians and state athletic commissions. Chokehold describes and documents the abuses that Jim Wilson witnessed and endured - blacklisting, strong-arm tactics, homosexual blackmail, defiance of the U.S. Justice Department and bribery of TV executives and arena managers. Chokehold is an explosive indictment of the pro wrestling industry's business practices as well as a thoughtful proposal for pro wrestling's reform. This book is not a conventional expos' of pro wrestling's orchestrated stunts, gimmicks and blade jobs. Instead, it is an unprecedented examination of pro wrestling's less visible cons outside the ring -- its hidden manipulation of wrestlers with broken promises and broken bones and a backstage power of the pencil that writes scripts for wrestler stardom or extinction. Chokehold describes a secret slice of the wrestling life where traveling troupes of heels and babyfaces understand how they got into the game, but cannot find a way up or out. This is the story of why and how the big guys almost always lose. Chokehold is part autobiography and part pro wrestling history. Written in wrestlespeak (the industry's insider argot), it is dedicated to the memory of "the older boys whose broken bodies and shattered lives should have taught us something." In addition to Jim Wilson's experiences in The Bus

Genres: History, Sports, Nonfiction

556 pages, Paperback

First published September 2, 2003

About the author

Jim Wilson could have simply dismissed himself as a competent piano tuner-technician, even an exceptional one. But he was and is so much more, and it took the sudden death of a dear friend and the encouragement of a legendary singer/songwriter to prove it to him.

From a broken home in Amarillo, Texas to a multi-award-winning recording artist, Jim Wilson’s journey is a captivating tale of showbiz glamour, personal tragedy, self-discovery, and dogged determination. And, as is typical of Jim Wilson, he’s turned out to be a pretty good wordsmith.

Tuned-In: Memoirs of a Piano Man is a page-turner and a life-changer. It’s a self-help book in the form of an autobiography. It is entertaining, revealing and full of lessons for musicians, fans, and all readers.

Jim Wilson’s life direction was set when he was given a guitar at age 7, then began composing songs at age 9. Soon after moving from West Texas to LA in his early 20’s, he gained a reputation as a respected piano technician, catering to the highest echelon of the music industry. Jim helped develop the first MIDI-adapter for acoustic piano in the 80’s, which became an instant hit with artists and studios around the world.

It was the shocking, untimely death of his closest friend that forced Jim to question the whole purpose of his life. With the love and support of his musical heroes – most significantly his friend and mentor, Dan Fogelberg -- Jim set out on a solo career, composing, recording and performing his signature style of piano-featured instrumentals.

Four of Jim’s ten recordings have hit the Billboard Top-20, he’s had two PBS specials, and his music has been streamed over 75 million times by fans around the globe. He was recently made a “Lifetime Member” of the Recording Academy. He enjoys scuba diving, skiing, pilot lessons, and mountain biking. Tuned In is Jim’s first book.

Reviews

[Nelson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I very rarely review books but since this one has so very few I thought it would be good to add mine.
This book actually reads like 3 separate books and it is very possible that is due to the fact that there are two authors.
I also state admit that I had no idea who Jim Wilson was and picked up this book on basis of his premise of wanting to create a wrestlers union and exposing how the NWA ruined many wrestlers lives.

The first section of the book is a sort of autobiography of Jim Wilson. It tends to be a self aggrandizing narrative of his football career, his overall awesomeness, being an All American, his families great history and the fact that he was not racist because he had a black nanny. It covers his 1985 appearance on 20/20 and it is there where we start to notice a trend that anything that does not go as he would have liked there is always someone who is responsible for that, just not Jim Wilson.

When it comes to his wrestling career he explains he decided to do so because the NFL pay was not good and he could make more wrestling. His training consisted in nothing yet he swears he was promised the highest prize in the wrestling business at that point the NWA Heavyweight Title. He never does state who promised him it but does go on throughout the book saying he was blackballed for not giving in to a homosexual blackmail by promoter Jim Barnett. This despite him going on in the book about arguing about losing and his payment. At one point saying he counted the audience and decided he should be paid more. Something that lead to him being fired. Of course it was a shady promoters fault he was fired and not his.

He continues about the fact that losing is bad for a wrestlers perceived value and goes on to give a factually erroneous version of the Montreal Screw job where he claims Bret Hart had a secret agreement to join WCW, when in fact Vince McMahon had to release Bret Hart from a 20 year contract that existed.

He continues to go into a very detailed section where he covers other wrestler complaints over payments and placement on wrestling cards and name drops dozens of wrestlers in the process.
He continues his factual errors when he goes on to give his version of the death of Bruiser Brody which to this day is an unresolved mystery as to what actually happened, except the tragic fact the Brody was stabbed by Jose Huertas and died. He bases his version on a handwritten letter he claims someone sent the judge after the trail.

After these first 5 chapter are finished and about a quarter of the book as well we get a very well written and well researched view on the NWA,. How it began and how the rose and held on to power for decades. And their eventual demise and the rise of WCW and WWE. This part of the book strays away from Jim Wilsons putting himself over and is if it were a stand alone book would be a 4.5 star read on the history of the NWA despite a few factual errors.
An interesting tidbit is that he sues the NWA and when Jim Barnett asked him what he wanted to drop the lawsuit he defaults to me, me, me and asks to be a main eventer at between $1,200 and 1,500 a week (between $5000 and 6175 in 2018 dollars).

Jim Wilson does mention trying his hand as a promoter himself with the seemingly noble intention of having a wrestlers union and healthcare and how he failed and eventually lost him home due to his failures at promoting. Including setting himself up in the Main Event of The Summer Wrestling Spectacular of 1983 that failed to sell a single ticket, about this he says "we never did find an explanation for why no tickets were sold, but we really didn't really need one".

As we near the end the tone shifts again to Jim Wilson superhero wrestler emerges again. But this round we get the bitter fan hating version who is a mark for himself.
In this section these gems can be found"
"Wrestling fans might not have known the difference between the Sherman Act and a Sherman tank" & "Without one MBA among them, wrestlers deduced the most important line item....low business cost".
Because he was one of the few truly smart people who understood wrestling.

"Hogan started to believe his own hype and he complained about his match finishes when he was old to lose"
Wonder who he reminds me of.

When he gets fired from his real estate job he concludes Jim Barnett pulled strings to get him fired so he would drop his lawsuit.

He continues with an onslaught if topics like steroid use, drug use, wrestler deaths (many not even related to wrestling and including several guys who never wrestled anywhere more important than a backyard).

In sum he deviated from his original topic and the reason I picked this book up which was one mans attempt to create a wrestlers union and strays into tabloid style reporting of what is wrong with the WWE.

The best way to sum up this book is with a quote he should have applied to himself, "Mnay wrestlers believe everyone is a mark to be worked except themselves; in many ways this makes them the biggest marks of all, since they are marks for themselves".
Jim Wilson was a mark for himself, over estimated his skill and appeal and eventually lost his family, his house and 35 years of his life all trying to get himself over/

[Lucas · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was in Todd Martin’s top tier of wrestling books at https://www.pwtorch.com/site/toddmart... so I went in with some excitement. Unfortunately this book was just not for me. While I believe Jim Wilson for the most part, and some of his accusations, he paints a picture of himself as someone with far more potential than he really had. Just because one promoter told him he could be World Champion one day doesn’t mean it was inevitable, or his destiny. Never once in this book did Wilson ever express any actual passion for wrestling. He just viewed it as a way to make more money than pro football, and since he was big and from football, thought it was his right to be Champion. The history of the industry is littered with guys like that who didn’t realize there might be more to being a World Champion than being big.

He blames basically everything on others, including being blackballed from the NWA as the reason his family left him. The book would be better if he could take some responsibility, or acknowledge how being arrogant about his potential, refusing to lose to people, and stirring up stuff about payments, might have contributed to his downfall.

I’ve also never seen the use of italics ruin a book as thoroughly as this one.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Regarding this strange, wonderful book:

1) First, it should be stated that Jim Wilson was indeed a football hero, and probably as good as he claims he was (the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia confirms that he was on four All-America teams, including the AP team). As was the case with my father and his seemingly obsessive need to repeat that he was "two times All-Southern Conference," Wilson failed to live up to his own lofty expectations for himself after a series of injuries robbed him of his speed and left him trying to make his way through a series of less-than-successful ventures.

2) Wilson was, by all accounts, a pretty mediocre wrestler. He wasn't on a par with the era's genuinely great workers--Ole Anderson (Al Rogowski), Jack Brisco, Harley Race--but as Wilson correctly points out, a wrestler's "workrate" has little bearing on whether he gets over (to quote Eddie Einhorn: "If one of those blond superstars gets hurt or retires, you can create another one: get a bottle of peroxide, come up with a name for him, and the crowds love him"). Nevertheless, the motivation for this book--for Wilson's longtime and thoroughly admirable struggle against the admittedly sleazy and terrible world of professional wrestling promotion--is sour grapes. He wasn't the first pro footballer to fail at sham wrestling, and he won't be the last.

3) Setting aside Wilson's incessant trumpeting of his bona fides, most of what's in here is fantastic. Sure, it's blandly written (although Wilson's decisions to put wrestling argot in italics and to provide the real names of each wrestler mentioned are inspired), but it's a well-researched record of the manifold abuses of the old NWA territorial system and Vince McMahon, Jr.'s subsequent monopolistic malfeasance. In this regard, it's a truly astonishing resource, constructed by Wilson and a team of associates out of the depositions and other detritus related to nearly all of the significant pro wrestling lawsuits of the past half-century (many of which were funded by Wilson himself). The appendix, with its citations to every one of these casefiles, could form the basis for a brilliant scholarly monograph on this lurid subject.

4) You're left with the impression that this has always been and still is the scummiest "legitimate" form of professional athletics. As Wilson notes over and over again (so many times that you're liable to skip through the book, although I read every single word of this massive tome), wrestlers (always classified as independent contractors, even in this age of McMahon and his written contracts of adhesion) have never been able to unionize (because their fates are entirely dictated by their bosses, who decide the winners and losers--skills don't matter), have no health care, have been subject to the vilest abuses (unsanitary "blading" or "gigging," heterosexual harassment, homosexual harassment (legendary WWF wrestler/booker Pat Patterson even propositioned a male midget!), bogus payoffs, and so much more)...and still the public doesn't care, even in the face of the Justice Department investigations, because IT'S ALL FAKE, RIGHT?

5) The story of Jim Barnett--the homosexual kingmaker of wrestling (and notorious for his numerous 'for-pay' sex scandals, including one involving both Rock Hudson and a good percentage of the Kentucky Wildcats football team)--that unfolds within these pages is worthy of its own monograph, too. He, as much as McMahon (whom he aided in the early 80s before attempting suicide after McMahon forced him out, and who employs him still), modernized professional wrestling by means of television (cutting important deals with WGN in the 50s, Ted Turner in the 70s, etc.).

In short, reading this book was a terrible chore--and yet it's the best book on pro wrestling that's out there, partly because it's so nasty and unflinching and partly because it's almost completely true. Even tell-all works by Dave Meltzer, Ole Anderson, Dewey Robertson et al. retain some of the old "kayfabe" desire to "protect" this absurd spectacle. This isn't the case with CHOKEHOLD, because "Big" Jim Wilson is bitter as all hell.

[Dany Mercury · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has valuable information, but many spelling and grammatical errors, as well as too many italicized words. It becomes distracting, and it brings nothing to the conversation.

On a page, you could see the same word, such as "booker," be italicized four or five times.

There is no doubt that Jim Wilson knew the subject, however. He was there, lived it, and saw too many things that should never happen in any business.

Despite its flaws - which book has none? - I do recommend it.

It feels like he was writing this book for a non-fan, because of the many explanations - he explained this and that so often that I felt like he was teaching the business to a child - but long-time fans will still be able to enjoy it, and even love it.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read. I would guess that your decision on if you like this book or not depends upon just how much you buy into Jim Wilson's take of history. I think if read with a proper grain of salt, ultimately Chokehold is worth the read.

[Mark James · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had a lot of hype and I found the information interesting, but the main character, Jim Wilson, just wasn't completely believible. I am glad I read it though.