BRISCO: The Life and Times of National Collegiate and World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion Jack Brisco

If you were a kid growing up in the late 60's all the way through the late 1970's, you know that Professional Wrestling had a different "feel" to it. Sure, there was always the question of whether or not you were watching something "real" - but that was half the fun. The whole steroid-enhanced, bodybuilding, make-up wearing personalities that started to emerge in the 1980's and 1990's had yet to take hold. Nope, prior to that; professional wrestlers looked more like collegiate athletes than ratings-driven Hulk-o-Maniacs. And one of the most respected and talented professional wrestlers was a man by the name of Jack Brisco.

Jack Brisco was the World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion for National Wrestling Alliance in the mid 1970's - a time when professional wrestling was quite exciting to watch. Jack Brisco retired in the mid-1980's after some 20 years in the sport, but he just recently got around to publishing his autobiography. Let me tell you, if you're any fan at all of professional wrestling's golden years, this book is worth the wait.

Brisco's book; titled simply enough: "Brisco: The Life and Times of a Collegiate and World Heavyweight Champion" takes readers from his poor beginnings growing up on an Indian reservation in Blackwell, Oklahoma to gaining a full scholarship for wrestling and basketball and then using that success to springboard into the ranks of professional wrestling.

Professional wrestling had already been a presence in America since the 1930's and had enjoyed some if it's greatest popularity in the 1950's. By the time Jack Brisco came along in the mid'1960's, he was considered part of "new generation" of professional wrestlers. And in fact, Brisco debuted at just the right time: television was coming into it's own as a great means to promote the sport and Jack Brisco was one of its biggest stars. - forever thrilling fans with his signature "finishing hold" the dreaded "figure-four leglock"...!

Now in the United States, professional wrestling was divided up into regions: you had a region in the North, the Midwest, the South, and over on the West coast as well. Professional wrestlers with names like Haystacks Calhoun, the Mad Sheik and Chief Jay Strongbow would migrate from territory to territory and build up a fan following. Jack Brisco was a rare professional in that he was first a collegiate national wrestling champion at respected Oklahoma State University before transitioning into the ranks of the pro's, so to an extent he was already a known commodity.

Still, Jack Brisco paid his dues. Brisco's book details his formative years as a pro. Wrestling night after night: each match in a different city, each city in a different state. His popularity grew as Brisco competed regularly against Dory Funk - then the reigning Heavyweight Champion of the World and a host of others. Fans didn't know then, probably just like they don't know now, that the Champion was hand-picked by committee. Professional wrestling's top promoters decided who the new champion should be and more or less how long their reign should last. Brisco explains this quite well in his book, and in his own words, Jack Brisco had to que up and wait his turn while actively campaigning to be the new champion.

True to the game, Jack Brisco wrestled thousands of matches across the United States and often for chump change. But by the time he won the championship belt back from Harley Race in 1973, Jack Brisco was wrestling seven-days-a-week, headlining wrestling cards with one-hour contests and earning thousands of dollars a week Big money for professional wrestling in those days. It would be nearly impossible for Brisco to remember all his matches, but he does a good job recounting the big ones and a lot of the not-so-big-ones as well.

In the south, "Florida Championship Wrestling" was a big part of the National wrestling Alliance and was an entity unto itself. Television was just starting to take hold in the early to mid-1970's and Jack Brisco enjoyed his reign at roughly the same time when he moved into that territory.

When Jack Brisco lost his title to Terry Funk (younger brother of former champ Dory Funk Jr.) in December of 1975, you'd have thought the Beatles just broke up. It was in all the Florida Newspapers, and even grabbed 5 minutes of coverage on Wide World of Sports. Jack's loss and WHY he lost is given great press in the book and is a worthwhile read.

In the 970's, Florida Championship Wrestling aired a weekly television show out of Tampa, Florida on Sunday mornings that aired throughout the South. It was the precursor of every wrestling show you now see on TBS, TNT and many other television channels across the USA. Jack Brisco had a stake in Florida Championship Wrestling. No dumb jock, he new the value of media and what it could do to the sport's popularity. He was part owner of FCW and parlayed that success into some big money in the late 1970's when Vince McMann changed the face of professional wrestling. This episode - now referred to as "Black Sunday" is explained quite well within the pages of Jack's book.

As I mentioned earlier, right up until professional wrestling exploded on television in the mid- 1980's, there was still a hush factor involved in the sport. There was a general outline to follow during the match and the winner was known only to the wrestlers and maybe the referee. These days, professional wrestling makes no qualms about calling itself "entertainment" but still, a wrestler HAS to be in shape. You simply can't wrestle night after night, week after week and not sustain a certain amount of aches, pains breaks and sprains.

Brisco explains that the physical toll on his body after 20 years and some of the more unsavoury politics in the sport of wrestling made the decision for him to retire quite easy.

I saw Jack Brisco wrestle many times in the late 1970's at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Miami was a big wrestling town back then. Jack was no longer champion at that point (his reign ended in 1975) but he still headlined near the top of the card. A class act both in and out of the ring, Jack Brisco pulls no punches in his book, but takes no cheap shots at his opponents either.

Brisco: The Life and Times of National Collegiate and World Heavyweight Champion Jack Brisco is available on-line through Brisco's website (www.jackbrisco.com) and also via Yahoo.com, Culture House Publishing (www.culturehouse.com) or can be picked up at Borders and other fine bookstores.