This book was a wild ride of Arezzi's life. From his dad's association with the mob and his mom's battles with mental illness and his own various jobs, there was never a dull moment.

Mat Memories: My Wild Life in Pro Wrestling, Country Music, and with the Mets by John Arezzi
FEBRUARY 19, 2021


Wrestling fans will enjoy the relevant sections of this book but it may not be enough to recommend the whole thing.

Arezzi – also known as John Alexander and John Anthony as the book explains – has had a multi-faceted life. Largely a marketer and salesman, he’s worked in baseball, pro wrestling and country music.

The wrestling sections of his life story are fascinating. In the space of a few years he produced the one of the first broadcast show (Pro Wrestling Spotlight on radio) to cover the business in a non-kayfabed sense, coinciding with the WWF drugs and sex scandals. He was partially responsible for Vince Russo’s entry into the business. He helped broker AAA’s stunningly successful expansion into the US in the early 90s. And he was a key player in establishing the wrestling convention circuit.

All of this is covered in some detail, with honest and amusing recollections and a refreshing sense of perspective and reality on the ups and downs of the business. The most notable anecdote involves Arezzi’s two match “career” in the ring in the early 80s when he blagged his way into appearing as a jobber on a WWWF taping with awkward results.

Greg Oliver’s ghostwriting is particularly effective in this book: while the narrative remains focused and on track, the language feels authentic to Arezzi’s voice rather than unnaturally formal or cliched.

The detail and comprehensiveness continues into the rest of the book, which is where it may fall short for some. On the surface the country music years – which made up the bulk of Arezzi’s career chronologically – bring some interesting insight into how the business compares to pro wrestling and the way marketing and promotion changed with the media landscape.

However, the sheer length and detail of this section can get tiring if you aren’t familiar with country music and thus don’t recognise the significance of the names involved.

This isn’t a criticism of what the book is meant to be: Arezzi is clear that wrestling was a brief period of his life, albeit one that still has a hold over him. But if you do buy this solely for the wrestling content, bear in mind that the final third or so of the book is largely wrestling-free.

A must read for any wrestling history fan and an enjoyable biography for everyone else. Though it drags a bit at times I found the book interesting and can't wait to read mode.

A tremendous story. I felt like every page or 2 I had a "holy shit" moment where someone totally unexpected popped into the story. Obviously I highly recommend this book to fans of pro wrestling and/or country music, but anyone that enjoys a highly entertaining memoir and an engaging story will love this book.

Mat Memories is the story of the life and many careers of John “Alexander” Arezzi, former host of the pioneering radio show, Pro Wrestling Spotlight.

I’m going to be completely honest here. I am not familiar with John Arezzi outside of his recent appearance on the Herb Abrams episode of Dark Side of the Ring, so this is one of the few times I’m going into a memoir completely blind. So when I received an advanced copy from the fine folks at ECW Press, I looked forward to reading about John’s contributions to the landscape of wrestling media.

Let’s get this right out of the way before we begin – this isn’t strictly a memoir from someone who has spent a lifetime in and around the wrestling business. I mean, it says it right on the cover (My Wild Life in Pro Wrestling, Country Music and with the Mets.) I’d say maybe just under half of the book is about John’s wrestling days while the other half details his time working in both the baseball and music industries. This leads to my main problem. I didn’t really find his life outside of wrestling particularly interesting. I don’t mean that to be a knock at John and I hope that isn’t too harsh as this is his life story after all but I just didn’t get much out of his other careers. Sure, there were a few funny stories here and there with the looseness of both industries (baseball and music) explaining how quickly John could be successful, given his seemingly endless ambition and positive attitude when looking at his work ethic.

When it comes to looking at his life both inside and outside the ring, John managed to carve out quite a name for himself. Getting his start as the manager of Freddie Blassie’s fan club as a teenager, John would wear many hats in the coming years as a photographer, media personality, promoter (both of shows and fan conventions) and even an in-ring competitor (albeit short-lived). John finding his way into the ring is the book’s true stand-out story, so I wouldn’t want to spoil that here but let’s just say that things were a little less organized back then than they are now.

What John is most likely known for was his radio show, Pro Wrestling Spotlight, which he began on a college radio station years before taking it onto the public airwaves in the Northeastern United States. After a failed start in the mid-80s, John would cement his footprint in the early 90s by closely covering both the WWF’s steroid trial as well as a sex-scandal that would rock the industry. Unfortunately, this would lead to a shaky on-again-off-again relationship with Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation that would ultimate hamper John’s ability to book big names on his show.

John also admits to being the one to open the door for Vince Russo in the mid-90s by working with him as both an advertiser for John’s show and an on-air personality/writer for his accompanying newsletter. John details their contentious relationship and nasty break-up that leads John to addressing some of Russo’s comments made about him in Russo’s own book.

Deciding to go with Mat Memories as the title was absolutely a conscious choice to attract what will ultimately be the book’s biggest audience. However, I felt this was ultimately detrimental to my experience as a reader. Focusing so heavily on the country and music industry in the last half of the book sort of makes the title of Mat Memories seem more like a marketing ploy rather than what reflects the true content of the book and John’s career. Being a veteran of wrestling memoirs and biographies, I would certainly struggle to recommend this to anyone looking for a wrestling book – especially when topics like the steroid trial and the sex scandal seem to have been covered endlessly in so many other wrestling memoirs.

What a rich and varied life he has had.
John Arezzi has had such an interesting life that he had three forewords from the different parts of his life, one from his time in baseball, one from professional wrestling and one from country music.

This book details his rise from his dad being an associate of the mob and his mum sadly suffering from long periods of mental illness.

His time in baseball was only a brief period so if you're expecting a lot of stories then this isn't for you but his passion for the sport shines through. Where this book really excels is his time in country music and professional wrestling.

He had a number of roles in wrestling from photography to a radio talk show host to setting up conventions. At one point, he got in the ring and had a couple of matches. Arezzi really was the first one to set up conventions with wrestler autograph signings for fans and now there are lots of them. There was a good story about he brought Vince Russo into wrestling.

I didn't know a massive amount about country music and its internal workings but really enjoyed learning about it. It seemed a little bit of a cutthroat business at times but then professional wrestling seemed like that as well in the book with performers seeing what they could get.

Strongly recommended.

John Arezzi has led a very interesting and varied life. He has held jobs in three very different entertainment industries – baseball, country music and professional wrestling. He has also had three different names he used at various times in these professions. His story is told in this very entertainment memoir written with Greg Oliver, a respected author on professional wrestling.

Arezzi grew up with two loves: professional wrestling and the New York Mets. As a teenager, he started a fan club for his favorite wrestler, "Classy" Freddie Blassie and even wrote a regular newsletter about the heel. While he remained a wrestling fan, the pull of getting a chance to work in the Mets organization was too strong and in 1981, he worked for one of the Mets' minor league teams. However, the wrestling bug had bitten him too much and he ended up going back to that business. He even appeared in the ring as John Anthony. In a book filled with entertaining stories, that one is probably the funniest and most entertaining of them all as he flubbed some of his parts but somehow was able to finish two matches.

After that, he hung up the tights for good and settled in for various jobs in the industry. Whether it was hosting a radio show, writing newsletters and articles, managing wrestlers – you name it, Arezzi was involved. His most notable accomplishment was organizing the first wrestling conventions in which fans could meet their favorite wrestlers and purchase pictures and autographs. His time in wrestling was filled with conflict as well as success and Arezzi pulls no punches when he describes the difficult times as well as the good times.

In an unusual switch, when he had reached the end of his rope in the wrestling business, he took a job selling advertising time for a country music radio station. From here, he started a successful stint in that music genre in which he was responsible for the discovery and start of three women who went on to successful country music careers: Patty Loveless, Sarah Darling and Kelsea Ballerini. Through this, he went by the name of John Alexander, mainly to have a more "conventional" name upon advice from another woman in the business, Suzanne Alexander. While it was hard for him to give up the wrestling, it is clear from his writing that he was very grateful for the success and relative calm that country music gave him compared to wrestling.

Whether his story is about wrestling, music or baseball, Arezzi drops a lot of names and doesn't hold back anything. The stories are plentiful and entertaining. The worst that can be said about the book is that at times, the details in some of the wrestling accounts get bogged down that it is difficult to follow and has so many names that a casual fan may not understand the full picture. What keeps them going is Arezzi's enthusiasm and honesty about everything, making for a good read that anyone who follows wrestling or country music will enjoy.

I wish to thank ECW Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

In John Arezzi aka John Alexander aka John Anthony's memoir Mat Memories: My Wild Life in Pro Wrestling, Country Music and with the Mets, the man with many hats shares his experiences across a variety of entertainment fields. Known to most for his past popular radio show and current podcast, Pro Wrestling Spotlight, John has had an almost Zelig-like career rising and falling with three different industries, but learning and surviving with many funny stories along the way, which he shares warts and all. Wrestling fans might come for the ringside tales, which are interesting but might be a little broad and not well explained for the casual fan. More prominent is his many years in Country music, starting as an admin for one of New York City's largest Country radio stations. The story continues in Nashville working for Great American Country channel on television and finally ending in the management and producing business. A very interesting memoir from a man not too proud to admit when mistakes were made, and who learned and thrived in some very difficult workplaces.