Gotch vs. Hackenschmidt: The Matches That Made and Destroyed Legitimate American Professional Wrestling Paperback – 2 May 2016

As a wrestling fan, I had heard a lot about the story and was really looking forward to reading a comprehensive account of it. However, the sentence construction, grammar, spelling and the overall flow is so bad that it took me away from the story. Really disappointed about that as all I could think about what how the book was written rather than what it was saying.

Back from wrestling was the real deal. There was Gotch and there was Hackenschmidt.This book is disjointed and all over the place. If you are expecting a comprehensive telling of the story of the dirty, cheating Frank Gotch, and the peerless George Hackenschmidt, then this is not the book you are looking for.This is a bare bones retelling that repeats itself, is full of spelling errors, and even gives away the results of the fights instead of building the story to its climactic resolution.Sure, all readers know the result, but it felt cheap and lazy to constantly mention the result before he even talked about the actual fights. It may be based upon actual events, but he could have made an effort to create an interesting narrative that lead to discussion the fights.

Excellent book! I love history of wrestling and this book delivered that. Very educational and a fun read.

Like other monumental sports events like Ali vs Foreman, Billie Jean King vs Bobby Riggs, Ken Zimmerman Jr. recounts in detail the pro wrestling match still debated today. Frank Gotch vs. George Hackenschmidt, their matches. We're they genuine competitions or predetermined? Back then unlike today this was a serious allegation and big business not to mention egos. I've always been interested in Frank Hitch being a fellow Iowa boy. All I knew was he was from Humboldt, died too young and wrestled George Hackenschmidt. This short book fills in details so very well. The training, the planning, injuries, reporting. To top it off, their matches against other great wrestlers with some photos. The only name I knew was Lou Thesz. If you knew anything about these matches or not. Wrestling fan organ of historical events, you'll find this book fascinating.

Exceptional read

A few other reviews touched on the issue with the writing style and I concur. I really like the topic and I feel the author has a real passion for it; unfortunately, it's just not that well written. There is a lot of redundancy and I never felt like I really got a better impression of what made the sport or these matches/men popular.I will say it is a pretty fast read. I think there is still interesting information and may lead to someone wanting to look deeper into this era.

The book had great information, but it was hard to read at times because the writer was repetitive at times. In addition, there were some typos along the way (for example, saying “know” when he meant to say “now,” or that he was “interesting” rather than he was “interested” in wrestling).The author also seems to skip over the fact that Gotch lost the American championship to Tom Jenkins before he reclaimed the title and then challenged Hackenschmidt.Also, the print is very large, so the book is probably closer to 50-60 pages if it was published in smaller print.