Ballyhoo!

Watching the Olympics? This week’s review tracks the formation of professional wrestling, revealing the role of promoters and how the sport maintains its huckster roots.

Posted on July 29, 2024 in Reviews of the Month

Ballyhoo!: The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling

Langmead, Jon. Missouri, 2024
316p bibl index, 9780826222992 $36.95, 9780826274953

Jon Langmead’s Ballyhoo! examines professional wrestling’s origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries within a cultural milieu of carnivals, con artists, criminality, hucksters, and anyone who fooled, swindled, or cheated people to make money. Langmead argues that when wrestling became “worked” (choreographed), it became more popular and mainstream. However, professional wrestling never shed its huckster and carnival past because it was compelled to preserve the most important trade secrets of the industry’s worked performances. Promoter Jack Curley is featured as the influential figure who created the first forms of worked wrestling. The business created several economic cartels run by strongman promoters who increasingly competed for markets, talent, and the benefit of promoting the world heavyweight champion. The author points out that wrestling became “real” when worked contests became shoot (legitimate) fights over which promoters would get the booking rights to the world heavyweight champion. The infamous “double-cross” came into wrestling parlance when worked matches became legitimate fights. Ballyhoo! outlines the beginnings of staples in modern wrestling, including the advent of baby faces (good wrestlers) and heels (bad wrestlers), personal story lines, and the role of women wrestlers in a hyper-masculine business. Superbly written and cited, Ballyhoo! is a wonderful addition to the growing historiography of professional wrestling.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.
Reviewer: C. L. Stacey, Louisiana State University at Alexandria
Subject: Science & Technology – Sports & Recreation
Choice Issue: Sep 2024

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