For someone that had (and has) a passing interest in the WWE, and can remember voting on her grandparent's computer in the WWE's Taboo Tuesday PPV, it was such and interesting read. Balukijan takes you along on his road trip to interview six of the WWF's biggest stars to understand where the person underneath the character begins and stops.

If you have ever had an interest in the history of the WWF/WWE this is a fantastic read,

What a fun ride! Wrestling loyalists, add this to your list

The Six Pack takes us alongside author Balukjian as he tracks down wrestlers from a specific Madison Square Garden card. While the cast of characters wasn’t something you’d typically picture in one book alongside one another, it works. Where else would you get Tony Atlas, half of Demolition and Tito Santana all in one book? Not to mention the many other wrestlers covered.

It’s like getting several mini biographies in one! Can we get another?!

Overall, I enjoyed this book. His writing style is like a great conversationalist telling you endless stories at the end of a bar. His love of wrestling is very clear from the outset and he treats the topics and subjects with reverence and care. I loved reading the stories of some of these wrestlers, their family stories and personal struggles.

For a book about wrestling, Balukjian has a very elegant prose that sometimes takes me out of the main objective of the story. Additionally, from the outset, I thought this book was going to focus in on the first WrestleMania, but I stead just went through a random assortment of 80's wrestlers...which is fine by the way! I just didn't understand the overarching objective very well, but this was an enjoyable read, especially as a diehard pro-wrestling fan.

Vivid storytelling. I'm so intrigued by the opening! Balukjian knows how to paint characters and how to chase a story. I look forward to reading more! Thanks to the author & Netgalley for the ARC.

This is an outstanding addition to the glut of professional wrestling themed books. What makes this book stand out is it goes beyond a traditional biography as the author shows us what professional wrestling meant to him in his younger years, while also balancing the question of where does the man who entered professional wrestling end and the character they portray begin.

With stories which give you a peek behind the curtain and are not retreads you have heard before, this book offers professional wrestling fans from yesterday and today the ability to get lost in a trip down memory lane while also giving them new information which give a new perspective of our favorites from yesteryear.

This book hooked me right from the start with its intense opening of the Iron Sheik confrontation. As a professional wrestling fanatic, I pride myself in behind the scenes of the lives of wrestlers especially of legends past. With his strict WWE is with their image and how their characters are portrayed, the behind the scenes looks are usually third party and from indie writers or videographers who capture the things that WWE doesn’t want you to see. This book delves into the underbelly of professional wrestling. I am not going to spoil anything. Just read it. Now!!! Cause Stone Cold said so! Well, I wish he said that.

I found this road trip book to be engaging and interesting; I looked up the things Balukjian recommended and then some. I learned, I remembered, I mourned. If you're a current or former wrestling fan, I think this book is for you. Brad doesn't shy away from the real and raw, and the history nuggets throughout I felt were necessary for context and expansion.

Told in four parts, with the chapters named "Match (x)", plus an unexpected epilogue that addresses the death of Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri, A.K.A. the Iron Sheik. It was touching and well done. There's an author's note, a Kayfabe glossary, and a list of sources. My only complaint is that sometimes the writing/format is jarring, since it holds hints of the journalist style (Balukjian being just that, so maybe habitual?) and deviates from a consistent style.


P.S. Bonus love for a fellow Armenian!

A fun, deeply researched dive into the wacky world of professional wrestling. The writer clearly knows his stuff and put in plenty of time researching details surrounding the six wrestlers he profiles in the book. Great read.

After a failed attempt to help write the memoir of The Iron Sheik just under two decades ago, author Brad Balukjian still had the itch to pen something about his boyhood hero. With the elusive biography out of reach, Brad looks to wrestling's past for a truly transformative card to examine. The date in question: December 26, 1983.

On that night, WWF booked a show at Madison Square Garden that featured the crowning of a new World Champion in the Iron Sheik. While a crowning achievement for Sheik, this essentially paved the way for Vince McMahon to anoint his new toy, Hulk Hogan, just a few weeks later (just nine short days after I was born).

Brad had the idea to track down several of the performers on the card that night and see where their lives took them. Of the twenty-three grapplers, Brad focused on just a few - Tony Atlas, Tito Santana, Sgt. Slaughter, Bill Eadie, and Marcelino Rivera. He also profiles Hulk Hogan, Vince McMahon, and his hero, The Iron Sheik.

I appreciated Brad's approach here; treating the book like a travelogue, documenting the miles traveled in his car as he moved from city to city for interviews with his subjects. It allowed him to get a better feel for the lives that the performers were living. Especially in the case of Sgt Slaughter, one who did not have any interest in sitting down with Brad. One has to think it may have had something to do with the sea of accusations surrounding Slaughter's (Bob Remus) false claims about serving in Iraq. In that case, Balukjian was able to meet with friends, neighbors and colleagues of Slaughter, and the other wrestlers, thus opening up a richer portrait of their lives.

Most of the men profiled here managed to come out on the other side of wrestling's tumultuous 1980s living comfortable lives, but it certainly wasn't an easy journey to get there given that the statistics were not in their favor, men like Tony Atlas, who hit rock bottom after his initial release from WWF, or Iron Sheik, whose daughter was tragically murdered. They had to push through when so many others couldn't find the strength to do so.

Balukjian examines the problems of the system in which they worked - no union, no healthcare, no job guarantee or considerable time off to be with their families. The chapter examining Vince McMahon helps to put this into perspective. Hopefully for those who came to this book after reading Brad's first release, THE WAX PACK, will take something away from how their childhood heroes were treated. In his discussions with Bill Eadie, Brad touches on the long-running lawsuit where Bill and over fifty other wrestlers came together to sue the WWF with claims that the company ignored the dangers of concussions. Brad also spent time with Konstantine Kyros, the lawyer who put together the lawsuit, that helps to fill in much of the background surrounding the legal battle.

Balukjian came to this project with a real sense of passion, and it shines through in his work. Having been unable to get his Iron Sheik biography off the ground ages ago, it was admirable to see him try to get Sheik's story told again by approaching it from a different angle and in doing so, he was able to showcase many of Sheik's peers at the same time. His reunion with Sheik near the book's completion helps to bring the journey full circle on a touching note.

THE SIX PACK is a great examination of an industry that provides both the highest of highs and lowest of lows for its performers and what's unfortunate, is that it often seems completely arbitrary.

Professional Wrestling is the oddest of American sports - somehow both pervasive but underground, niche but mass culture. I was never a wrestling fan, but most of my friends were. I played a ton of wrestling video games, especially on the Nintendo 64, but never owned one of them. I could name a couple handfuls of wrestlers from the 90s to today, but couldn't tell you the last time I watched it on TV. It's just there, slightly off to the side, something noticed out of the corner of my eye and then forgotten until the next time.

Despite my lack of passion for the sport, I was still excited to read this book by Brad Balukjian. It's always fun to dive down deep into the history and background of something that's so many feel so passionate about. My only apprehension was the author himself. I enjoyed The Wax Pack, but still found moments of Balukjian's writing off-putting. I wish I could tell you exactly what it is that makes some of his writing so unappealing to me, but I can never put my finger on it. I'll go pages perfectly fine and then pages where I don't want to keep reading. Really, that's my biggest issue with this book. I think that Balukjian is a wonderful deep researcher, but he needs to partner with someone to help him write in a way that puts that research into a story that highlights his skills.

I did enjoy learning about the history of the WWE/WWF, getting some background on Vince McMahahon, and the titular six pack of wrestlers that Balukjian tracked down. The concept of keyfabe was such a big part of these wrestler's lives that seeing the distance between the keyfabe and real life dissolve is a fascinating thing.

Many of these wrestlers have ended up in places that are a definite step down from where they were, and a lot of the downfall was self-inflicted, and Balukjian doesn't shy away from that fact. He's sympathetic, especially because these were his heroes as a child, but not forgiving.

I enjoyed the approach that Balukjian took - that of a fan, but not a fanboy. It helped to make the book something fun and enjoyable without being pure WWE propaganda, and it also helped avoid the opposite effect of an author looking down their nose at the concept of professional wrestling.

The last decade-plus saw the rise of the concept of "poptimism", especially as it regards to culture. Things like comic book movies, cheesy songs, stuff that used to be considered the junk food of popular culture, are now considered acceptable to be into. Professional wrestling falls under the big umbrella of poptimism, and giving it a book like this helps us to see why people loved it in the past and why they love it now.

I loved reading this and getting to see these men from the real, raw eyes of someone who admired them but is getting to get to know the real guy behind the mask.it was entertaining, educational, and a little heartbreaking at times. You know what they say, never meet your heroes.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Hachette Books for an advance copy of this book about growing up with heroes, meeting them, the lessons they taught and the reality of their existence.

One of the oldest sayings is that one should never meet their heroes. Especially the heroes that one had as a child. Being a child is rough, even in the best of situations. Slights are magnified, doubts and fears become phobias that one has to deal with later in life. For someone to have somebody to give them hope is a great thing, and something to be cherished. But maybe they should not be met. These heroes might, at the least ignore, someone who wants to meet them, maybe charge a person for being in their presence and answering questions. Or threaten to kill you. Brad Balukjian learned all this during his odyssey to meet some of the wrestlers he loved as a child, including the one and only Iron Sheik. The Six Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Wrestlemania is a memoir of of Balukjian's youth, meeting his heroes, a history of Wresting and a look at America and its past as Balukjian drives the country like an old territory wrestler, with his ony payout being knowledge, threats and more.

Brad Balukjian was a wrestling fan from an early age and his favorite was the man known as the Iron Sheik. Known for his bald head, big belly, cheating ways, exceptional strength and love for Iran, the Iron Sheik was the ultimate heel, the one the crowds loved to hate. Of course there was a lot more to the this man, and Balukjian hoped to showcase this, but these plans ended when the Sheik broken in so many ways threatened to kill Balukjian. However the dream never died, and Balukjian after a previous book on baseball had an idea. Find those who were still alive on the night that broke wrestling into the mainstream. The Wrestlemania where Hulk Hogan defeated the Iron Sheik for the Championship and set what was called the World Wrestling Federation on its slow climb to the top. Balukjian drove almost 13,000 miles in a post-COVID America finding those survivors of that night, getting their stories, paying for their stories, or being ignored. Balukjian looks at the life of these men, their hopes dreams, and broken promises, for many, fame and yet sometimes even worse problems for others. As Balukjian travels Balukjian learns about the hold that professional wrestling has on fans, and even those who should know better, the wrestlers themselves.

I loved wrestling as a kid. Professional wrestling was probably the only sport I cared about, and even now the only sport I could imagine sitting down and watching. The feuds always brought me in, this guy had a beef with this guy, and it only could be settled in the ring. Sold. Balukjian and I would have been great friends and probably had a great feud about who he liked and didn't. The best thing about this book is that Balukjian looks at wrestling from both the fans point of view and the realist's point of view, showing that wrestling can be and is a nasty world, with a lot of broken promises, broken dreams and even sadder broken people. One can go from selling out Madison Square Garden, to trying to get people into a VFW hall in Iowa. Or living on a park bench. Balukjian is a very good writer, and even better persistent. And a good listener. These are the real stories, not the WWE published books, but real stories about life, family the toil and the toll on body, soul and family. A really special book, and there are a lot of touching moments, which surprised me.

Wrestling is back in the news, and not for the best of reasons, and Balukjian's book is a good look at the wild and wooly 80's when Vince McMahon was making a name for himself, and Human Resources was his wife Linda. Which explains quite a bit. This is book about a fan, for fans, but it also shows what our heroes of the squared circle had to deal with. A really very good book, perfect for wrestling fans, and for those who regretted never meeting their heroes. Maybe it was for the best.

Want to start with thanking NetGallery, the author and publisher for the ARC to read and review.

I grew up on WWF on the late 80's and early 90's. Out of the six wrestlers chosen for the book, I was a fan of half of them. And didn't realize Demolition Ax went as a different gimmick. Overall it's a really good read if you are a ol school WWF wrestling fan. Will say that I felt there was a bit too much about Iron Sheik, as I wasn't a fan of his. And of course knew there was zero chance he'd actually get to talk to Hogan but overall was still a very good read.

"The Six Pack" is author Brad Balukjian's effort to understand the mythos and legacy of wrestling in its WWF Hulk Hogan heyday. The book, a chapter by chapter investigation of the wrestlers on one fateful card, explores the way the now-WWE exploded in the 1980s and shaped the lives of its performers, their families, and the the families watching them.

What's good: The author's efforts to speak personally with the wrestlers about their experiences is the hook here. The author gives great respect to these performer-athletes, stressing the physical costs of their jobs as well as the nature of kayfabe in this entertainment. In addition, for anyone who grew up with the WWF/now-WWE, this is a nostalgia trip for them, not just for the author.

What's iffier: The book in many ways opens up the possibilities of more discussions on these themes (health insurance for the wrestlers, the role of addiction, the financial choices of the WWE) but, due to the nature of its structure (focusing on the players on one night in WWE-history) it can only go so far. In this way, the book is like walking a hallway and glimpsing stories left untold as we pass open doorways.

With gratitude to the publisher for the chance to read and review an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

This was such a fun read that brought back all sorts of memories being a wrestling fan growing up in the WWF era. Brad Balukjian did a fantastic job chronicling the details of his cross country pursuit of interviewing six wrestlers (some friends, some foes) that were there to witness Iron Sheik’s greatness firsthand.

Brad has a way with giving you just enough details to understand the backstory of each wrestler(some of which I had heard of but not super familiar), but still thirsting for more, making this an extremely fast read. I could not get enough of this book, gobbling it up in just a matter of days as I could not seem to put it down. He has a way of flashing back to touch on each wrestler’s past then bringing you up to speed with where they are in the present and how they got there, but does so without delving too deep into details which can sometimes be a fault for some wresting and sports books that I’ve read in the past. I would definitely read more from Brad and will be picking up the Wax Pack in the future, just off the strength of this book alone.

I don’t want to spoil too many of the actual details of the book itself, but if you were or are a wrestling fan, or even just a fan of sports in general, I would definitely recommend! This was an easy, informative, and fun read.

This book was an advanced copy from Hatchette Books and NetGalley in exchange for my honest and fair opinion, but this will be one that I purchase a physical copy so that I can read multiple times and share with friends. Look for this book to hit shelves on April 2, 2024.

Better than The Wax Pack (and I enjoyed The Wax Pack a lot) because this one is really personal and has a storyline from start to finish. Right up my alley as a child of the 1980s who consumed as much as WWF as possible. Each chapter is full of emotions, information and adventure.

“If a life could be expressed through a series of mathematical equations, then the Iron Sheik had been a constant.”

Thanks to Hachette Books and Netgalley for the ARC.

Good read on the Iron Sheik from wrestling fame. The book was ok. It seemed to drag in places. Yes, the author writes about other wrestlers, and my being a huge wrestling fan, maybe I expected more. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my honest opinion. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on my thoughts.