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The Last Wrestlers: A Far Flung Journey In Search of a Manly Art
The Last Wrestler is the story of one man's rebellion against the office-bound constraints of the modern world. Vivid, comic and often moving, it reveals a testosterone-fuelled world you never knew existed.
Marcus Trower hated WWF. He hated Hulk Hogan, Big Daddy and all the other spandex-clad musclemen who over the years had made a mockery of his beloved sport. For him, wrestling - real wrestling - was a means of expression, both physical and mental. It was also, in Britain at least, a dying art.
Then tragedy struck. Chronic health problems prevented him doing what he loved most. Unwilling to let go, he travelled to India, Mongolia, Nigeria and Brazil in an attempt to uncover some deeper, perhaps spiritual, dimension to wrestling. Amid incredible scenery and a cast of colourful characters, Marcus discovered the true origins of wrestling appeared to have little to do with spirituality and everything to do with seduction...
Marcus Trower hated WWF. He hated Hulk Hogan, Big Daddy and all the other spandex-clad musclemen who over the years had made a mockery of his beloved sport. For him, wrestling - real wrestling - was a means of expression, both physical and mental. It was also, in Britain at least, a dying art.
Then tragedy struck. Chronic health problems prevented him doing what he loved most. Unwilling to let go, he travelled to India, Mongolia, Nigeria and Brazil in an attempt to uncover some deeper, perhaps spiritual, dimension to wrestling. Amid incredible scenery and a cast of colourful characters, Marcus discovered the true origins of wrestling appeared to have little to do with spirituality and everything to do with seduction...
- GenresSports
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 23, 2007
About the author
Marcus Trower
1 book3 followersI'm the author of The Last Wrestlers: A Far-Flung Journey in Search of a Manly Art.
"Fascinating, funny, tragic and inspiring." Arena
"This is a genuinely exciting and entertaining book, and if it doesn't win Trower a sports-writing gong of some sort, then I'll change my byline to Big Daddy." Dan Jones, the Literary Review
"For sheer ambition, The Last Wrestlers ought to be considered one of the sporting books of the year...cracking stuff...a triumph in both its aspiration and, in many respects, its execution." The Times
"Chatwinesque...anecdotal and poetic." Sunday Times
"An absolutely fascinating, heartfelt and original book that deserves a wide audience." Robert Twigger, author of Angry White Pyjamas
"Fascinating, funny, tragic and inspiring." Arena
"This is a genuinely exciting and entertaining book, and if it doesn't win Trower a sports-writing gong of some sort, then I'll change my byline to Big Daddy." Dan Jones, the Literary Review
"For sheer ambition, The Last Wrestlers ought to be considered one of the sporting books of the year...cracking stuff...a triumph in both its aspiration and, in many respects, its execution." The Times
"Chatwinesque...anecdotal and poetic." Sunday Times
"An absolutely fascinating, heartfelt and original book that deserves a wide audience." Robert Twigger, author of Angry White Pyjamas
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 5, 2023
Worth reading for the chapter where Indian wrestlers were showing the author their dicks and bragging about how small they are, which means they are excellent wrestlers in their culture.
September 27, 2026
Fantastic. Such a joy to read, I greedily devoured every page of this book. While reading any given section I was simultaneously jittery with excitement, wanting to skip ahead to get to the next section, and distraught that I had already finished the last section.
Trower writes lovingly about grappling. His single-minded obsession comes through and makes every page, every paragraph shine with his passion for the subject.
I would recommend this book to anybody interested in grappling. I picked it up for that reason and the book works on that level.
That said, quite a lot of this book is about masculinity.
For Trower, wrestling is a core part of what he think it is to be a man, or at least it inculcates the virtues a man should have - it is combat, but nobody gets hurt. Trower thinks boys and men are naturally, inevitably, biologically almost drawn towards physical combat. But through wrestling this urge can, crucially, be expressed without harm. Without a culture of wrestling, he worries, men are drawn to other, violent and non-consensual, forms of combat
There are certainly worse visions of masculinity knocking about these days (although that is admittedly a shamefully low bar).
Nevertheless, all the attempts to link wrestling to masculinity are by far the weakest parts of the book. At one point he comments on how there are so few women involved in the wrestling cultures he has visited, and how this is simply because men are, like, naturally, drawn to wrestling? Something like that. Overall, this is quite a weird take given that of the four main cultures he visits, three of them (as far as I can tell) have explicit policies which incredibly strictly and formally police wrestling as a men's-only activity. He does not discuss this fact at all.
There's also some stuff about wrestling as the human equivalent of stags rutting which is particularly weak. The point of men wrestling is - I don't know what the implication is exactly - that it's a healthy way to impress women, or that it would be in nature, or its evolutionary function is to do so - something like that? Anyway, all of that stuff is particularly weak.
The kind of tension running through a lot of this is that for so much of book he keeps on talking about how core wrestling is to masculinity, whilst himself being too unwell to really wrestle. It makes you really feel for him.
To be clear though, I don't want to overplay the masculinity stuff - most of the book is just him going around meeting wrestlers, seeing some really diverse wrestling forms, trying out wrestling from all around the world, and it rocks.
Trower writes lovingly about grappling. His single-minded obsession comes through and makes every page, every paragraph shine with his passion for the subject.
I would recommend this book to anybody interested in grappling. I picked it up for that reason and the book works on that level.
That said, quite a lot of this book is about masculinity.
For Trower, wrestling is a core part of what he think it is to be a man, or at least it inculcates the virtues a man should have - it is combat, but nobody gets hurt. Trower thinks boys and men are naturally, inevitably, biologically almost drawn towards physical combat. But through wrestling this urge can, crucially, be expressed without harm. Without a culture of wrestling, he worries, men are drawn to other, violent and non-consensual, forms of combat
There are certainly worse visions of masculinity knocking about these days (although that is admittedly a shamefully low bar).
Nevertheless, all the attempts to link wrestling to masculinity are by far the weakest parts of the book. At one point he comments on how there are so few women involved in the wrestling cultures he has visited, and how this is simply because men are, like, naturally, drawn to wrestling? Something like that. Overall, this is quite a weird take given that of the four main cultures he visits, three of them (as far as I can tell) have explicit policies which incredibly strictly and formally police wrestling as a men's-only activity. He does not discuss this fact at all.
There's also some stuff about wrestling as the human equivalent of stags rutting which is particularly weak. The point of men wrestling is - I don't know what the implication is exactly - that it's a healthy way to impress women, or that it would be in nature, or its evolutionary function is to do so - something like that? Anyway, all of that stuff is particularly weak.
The kind of tension running through a lot of this is that for so much of book he keeps on talking about how core wrestling is to masculinity, whilst himself being too unwell to really wrestle. It makes you really feel for him.
To be clear though, I don't want to overplay the masculinity stuff - most of the book is just him going around meeting wrestlers, seeing some really diverse wrestling forms, trying out wrestling from all around the world, and it rocks.
August 28, 2007
It really is a stunning piece of sports writing. I found myself learning a lot about various Asian cultures (Indian, Mongolian...) through the author's accounts of their wrestling practices. To be quite honest, it's summer, and I don't have the energy to read a book that teaches me as much as this book has already. So I didn't finish it. Which is why it only got 3 stars. But I'm sure it would be 4 if I had stuck it out.
March 10, 2010
Solid book about wrestling culture and history. Not terribly deep, and I think he oversells the anti-masculinity of modern culture somewhat, but definitely worth a read. It'll give you something to think about in between takedown attempts.
August 5, 2010
I really enjoyed this, even as I felt bad for the author's inability to practice the art he was reduced to preaching.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews