Parts Unknown: Wrestling Gimmicks and Other Works

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta. He is
the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

The performances of professional wrestling belong to show business
rather than to sports, as any but the most naive television viewer
knows. Michael Holmes, author of the brilliant collection Got No Flag at
All, has applied his talents to this meretricious world, not, of course,
naively, but to bring out its colour and oddity. The book could pass as
cultural studies, the new academic catchall that permits educated people
to go slumming in popular culture.

In most of the book, Holmes writes about this shabby world with
meticulously crafted stanzas, an amusing incongruity. At the end, he
uses a staccato delivery to describe “finishing moves,” the
strategies that end a match. One of the most amusing touches is the
inclusion of a glossary of the slang or argot of the wrestlers and the
promoters. Such terms, especially of the less legitimate professions
(pocket-picking, for example) are always bracing. This is not a book
that will appeal to everyone: some people will just turn off the set, so
to speak. Others will fall for the shill and enjoy the performance.