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⁠Brad Balukjian⁠ stops by to discuss his fascinating, thought-provoking and important new book, ⁠The Six Pack: On the Open Road in Search of WrestleMania⁠. In Balukjian’s continuation of the series – The Wax Pack was his debut book in 2020 – the sports writer and scientist continues his travels across the country in an effort to disentangle fact from fiction, myth from reality, work from shoot while reconciling or at least shedding more light on some notable and a few not-so-notable wrestling and “real human” identities.

Here are some highlights –

5:29-5:49: “The book really is about the line, the border between fiction and fact or myth and reality and work and shoot in Kayfabe terms. … to really find out where myth blends into reality and where that line is.”

9:34-10:09: “I was trained on more of that participatory journalism style, which you don’t see as much of anymore, but I was reading Gay Talese and Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe and all these practitioners in the ‘60s of kind of first-person narrative journalism. And that was what I always wanted to do ‘cuz I just think that if you can do it well you put the reader in your shoes, and they can kind of experience things as you experience them.”

25:25-25:54: “I’ve always been more of a process than destination person. So I always knew that even if I didn’t get every person to talk to me, what I could always tell is my own story and the story of trying to get someone to talk to you. And I think if you’re honest and you bring the reader in and you show them what you’re going through, you give them a chance to root for you.”

34:27-35:37: “As a writer when I learn more about the working conditions, where to this day the wrestlers are independent contractors without health insurance, it was just unconscionable to me. And so I thought if I have the opportunity to bring awareness to this issue, I want to take that opportunity. … A lot of these guys from that era end up with CTE just like the football players do. It’s the downside to wrestling not being taken that seriously, where they’re [regarded as] somewhere in between entertainers and athletes and stuntmen, yet all those groups of workers have unions and protections, but not wrestlers.”

42:35-42:59: “When I approach someone and I wanna try to capture their essence in one chapter, I’m gonna go with what they give me, right? And Tony [White/Atlas], the shoe thing was a big part of his life. … But it was not just sort of a fun fact; it was relevant because it related to the other dark stuff, the trauma.”

Be sure to check out The Six Pack as well as Brad’s website for more content.

OTNB’s previous book special, which featured Ethan Scheiner, can be found here.

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Music: “Who Likes to Party” by Kevin MacLeod.