by Al Marquette

One of them kicked my legs from underneath me and sat on my head. The other one dived over the ropes, landing full length on me. I went berserk. I grabbed one, tied his arms around the top rope with my speciality armlock, then chased the other across the ring and tied him fast on the other side. The promoter had to come to my dressing room to ask me to untie them so the other bouts could continue. The sixties, seventies and eighties were the heyday of professional wrestling. Men and women flocked in their thousands to see bizarrely-named and exotically-costumed warriors thumping, throwing and slamming each other around the canvas, while the television audience could be counted in millions. Fearsome or funny, larger than life or stranger than fiction, the characters of that era remain unforgettable. Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Kendo Nagasaki, Jackie 'Mr TV' Pallo - Al Marquette knew and fought them all. In this book he brings back all the atmosphere and adrenalin as he recalls the feuds and the friendships, the thrills and the triumphs, the camp and the camaraderie, the egos and the aggression that brought crowds to their feet in a frenzy week in, week out. Here at last is a fair and balanced insider's view of the wrestling world that reveals what really went on. Al Marquette has filled his memoir with anecdotes that are as evocative as they are entertaining, and he gives the definitive answer to the question most often asked by fans: were those epic contests carefully choreographed theatre, or were those guys beating each other up for real?