The Queen of the Ring--#29 finished

The Queen of the Ring is about women's wrestling champion Mildred Burke from back in the 1930s & into the 1950s. It is a book written by Jeff Leen, a graduate of Ritenour High School here in Overland, where I live. It is also the same school district that my kids are going to. I read a review & interview by the Post Dispatch of Jeff Leen last summer right before the book came out and I immediately put it on my WL, I was the first.

I watched some wrestling or maybe all star wrestling when I was growing up and basically liked it. Since I wrestled in junior high & high school, I came to really dislike the all star wrestling because it was fake. People seemed to get confused because they didn't know it was fake or couldn't understand why high school wrestling wasn't as exciting as all star wrestling. Oh well, so all that to basically say, this was not really a topic that interested me much, but with the local connection I had to get it and read it.

I really enjoyed the book and was really impressed with research that went into it. While there were some of the female wrestlers still around when he was writing the book, the two main characters--Mildred Burke & her one time husband, promoter and business manager Billy Wolfe--were deceased. Billy in the 1960s and Mildred in the 1980s. Mildred did/does have an unpublished biography that the author used extensively as a source, but even that he seems to have had to walk a fine line since things seemed to be "misremembered"(thanks Roger Clemons--I hope that was his word) or possibly written to keep Mildred in a better light.

I find it almost amazing that all of this went on for almost 20 years and that I had no knowledge of it prior to reading this book. I knew there were some women wrestlers but I had no idea of the origins or how large it was at one time. I also found it interesting all the backroom deals and how matches got setup, stuff that I had not really thought of before hand.

I really have to recommend this book to almost anyone. It is easy to read with very interesting characters and goings on. It is a book that I have thought about keeping but will probably pass along on PBS since that is how I got it & I would like to see others enjoy the book as well. I will probably do a book review on PBS first as well.