Ballyhoo!: The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional WrestlingBy JonLangmead, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2023. 296 pp. $36.95 (bk). ISBN: 978‐0826222992.
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: JonLangmead's study of the history of professional wrestling's formative period in America, 1874 to 1941, brought this reader directly back to a childhood spent arguing with siblings about whether what we were watching on WWF (the World Wrestling Federation) every Sunday morning in the 1980s was or wasn't an elaborate fake-out.Impassioned arguments about whether or not the matches were totally bogus evolved into more nuanced discussions of how the characters and framing may have been scripted, but the bouts themselves had to have been real.Did you see that flying elbow?No way that was fake!
Source: The Journal of Popular Culture
DOI: 10.1111/jpcu.70043
Author: Jessica L. Williams
Institution: SUNY Old Westbury
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4415780834
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