A fun look into the industry

I have always been a few fan of professional wrestling having grown up watching WCW and WWE when I was just a wee babe with a lucha obsessed uncle. Since then I’ve flown around the world to watch professional wrestling shows and I’ve been to five Wrestlemania’s so I think of myself as a pretty good authority on talking about wrestling related media.

The Young Bucks are, without question, two of the most popular wrestlers in the world. If you’re a wrestling fan, even one who exclusively watches WWE, you have heard of the Young Bucks at one time or another. They are fantastic wrestlers and have a flair for the dramatic which makes them both brilliantly and overly obnoxious depending on what a show needs, and they always manage to deliver.

In terms of this book, it’s pretty much what you’d imagine as a wrestling life story. I don’t know why you’d bother to read this unless you were a fan of the Young Bucks, so the fact that it’s written in a style that caters to wrestling fans makes a lot of sense. While they do explain who certain people are, they assume you know what certain companies and moves which are is perfectly fine in my eyes. The first half of the book is centered around their early lives from birth to becoming backyard wrestlers and the duo trying to figure out how you break into the wrestling business. The second part of the book (after the break for photos) centers around how they became the phenomenon’s they are today, from wrestling in Chikara to their lengthy stint in Ring of Honor, as well as being signed to New Japan Pro Wrestling and talks with the WWE. The very end of the book is where they begin to discuss how their current company, All Elite Wrestling, came to be, which was fun to read about even though I’ve heard interviews about it before.

If you’re a wrestling fan, you’ll enjoy this book. Sure, it’s not overly well written but it’s not bad at all, and Matt and Nick alternate chapters which helps it move along. A lot of Matt’s chapters discuss how he deals with traveling around the world for wrestling while having a wife and children at home, and Matt really comes across as being the most family centric man on Earth and I believe it. He talks a lot about the struggles both faced when dealing with wrestling in relation to their loved ones, especially their wives and the girlfriends who couldn’t handle the traveling early on, which I found to be a very honest take on what their lives look like.

I also enjoyed learning about how different promotions run and who on the indie scene was kind to them when they needed it. Scorpio Sky always seems to be the greatest dude in stories so many wrestlers have told, so that is lovely. It was fun to read their perspectives in terms of getting booked on shows, bargaining for more pay or flights and how Colt Cabana and some others helped them really learn how to make big money by using merch.

All in all a good read. If you like wrestling, you’ll enjoy this I think.

Title:  Young Bucks: Killing the Business from Backyards to the Big Leagues
Author:  Matt & Nick Jackson (The Young Bucks)
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 304
ISBN:   9780062937834

Three Descriptors: Conversational; Engaging; Fresh Perspective

Read Alikes:
Under the Black Hat: My Life in the WWE and Beyond by Jim Ross
Yes: My Improbable Journey to the Main Event of Wrestlemania by Daniel Bryan
A Lion’s Tale: Around the World in Spandex by Chris Jericho
Have a Nice Day by Mick Foley
Walking the Golden Mile by William Regal