Legends of Pro Wrestling: 150 Years of Headlocks, Body Slams, and Piledrivers

by Tim Hornbaker

Legends of Pro Wrestling offers the first comprehensive look at the entire world of wrestling. With detailed biographies and never-before-seen statistics of some of the greatest athletes in the sport, you will be able to read about hundreds of wrestlers, dating back to the mid-1800s. As the first of its kind, this centralized reference book offers wrestling enthusiasts a range of information at their fingertips and stands alone as the ultimate wrestling resource.

This book offers readers a link between what happened a century ago to what is currently happening today. An older fan of Bruno Sammartino or “The Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers can enjoy this book as much as someone who follows John Cena or The Undertaker today. This collection is a never-ending source of facts, figures, and other entertaining data.

Professional wrestling is a world of accomplishment, legacy, and, most importantly, fate. Through injuries, sickness, and family tribulations, many wrestlers have given everything they have to give in the ring, and true fans of the sport love every single second of it. No matter your age, if you’re a fan of professional wrestling, Legends of Pro Wrestling is the book for you to own and cherish.

Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team.

In addition to books on popular team sports, we also publish books for a wide variety of athletes and sports enthusiasts, including books on running, cycling, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, martial arts, golf, camping, hiking, aviation, boating, and so much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction

568 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2012

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great resource for wrestlers past and present, going back to the 19 century. It has pictures of every wrestler, and a short bio. The only quibble I have is that they left some fairly major wrestlers out: Bobby Roope and Tatanka off the top of my head, but there will be other editions, I'm sure.

Required reading for any wrestling fan.

[Arthur O'dell · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are interested in the history of professional wrestling, this is a decent reference book. Because it groups wrestler by time periods, it is annoying that it lacks a fully alphabetical index. An index of alternate names would have also been useful. There is also no standard criteria for which wrestlers are included and which ones aren't, leaving some unexplainable gaps in coverage. The statistics are not really useful, and are also annoyingly incomplete. But the mini biographies give more information than I expected, and for the most part Tim Hornbaker has done his homework.

[jersey9000 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a great, informative book to have around if you are a wrestling fan. Pretty much any wrestler who ever did anything on a large scale has an entry here, with an accompanying photo. What makes it work it to me is it starts with guys from the 1880s, a period of wrestling I know almost nothing about, minus a few names here and there. I found it to be informative and interesting. It is a pretty dry read, but this is more an encyclopedia than anything else. A good coffee table "flip through" book.

[Meghann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book in a Goodreads.com giveaway. This book is a must have for any major pro-wrestling fan. It's a complete registry of all professional wrestlers from the last 150 years. Each page is packed with info. It includes every detail you could ever imagine: from their signature moves to titles won to family members affiliated with wrestling.