Bryan Alvarez – he of Figure Four Weekly, F4WOnline, Bryan & Vinny, and MINUS FIVE STARS fame – wrote another book. This time, he wrote one on his own, as opposed to sharing the spotlight with R.D. Reynolds and taking all the credit, as was the case with the previous literary endeavor, The Death Of WCW.
Just kidding, Bryan.
100 Things WWE Fans Should Know And Do Before They Die is essentially one of those list-type things, where you have 100 different topics of relative importance and each topic has a number of paragraphs dedicated to it. Some entries in the book have more space dedicated to it than others, while others have little more than short blurbs dedicated to it. In the case of the short blurbs, you sometimes wish there was more that could be expanded upon, but then again, some of these topics could very well be subjects for their own books in and of themselves.
The book opens with a forward from Lance Storm, who is something of a literary connoisseur in addition to be a former wrestler and trainer of future wrestlers. Once you somehow get past that without falling asleep, you get the rest of the book, which hits you with all the basic historical bits to bring a newcomer to the WWE bubble up to speed. And that’s pretty much the whole aim of the book; it’s essentially something that you can give to a newcomer to get them up to speed on what this whole thing is about. The topics aren’t delved into deeply – though some topics have more pages dedicated to them than others, which merely get a paragraph’s mention at most – but this is less a deep dive and more into a refresher of things.
There’s nothing in this book that longtime fans of the genre doesn’t already know before, but serves as a nice reference and Bryan’s wit is more or less on full display here. There’s even a couple entries written by other people who know more about certain bits than he does, which shows some level of humbleness that is normally lacking. The overall format of the book is convenient for those wanting a quick read; each entry typically has a page or two dedicated to them, so you can read an entry or two before calling it a day.
100 Things… does what it does well enough. It’s not the deepest look into the WWE inner workings nor does it try to be. It’s just a primer for newcomers to get themselves acquainted with the WWE universe and a little beyond that. If you’re looking for something more in-depth, you’re not going to get that here. But if you just want something that’s good for a quick read before dozing off, this gets the job done.
dtm666 