"Ring of Hell", a new book about Chris Benoit going nuts

Basically the best pro wrestling book I've ever read. Randazzo pulls absolutely no punches in characterizing the pro wrestling industry as a traveling ground zero of debauchery, one which completely consumed a decent guy (albeit one with deeply buried psychotically destructive tendencies) and made him bear witness to his best friends dying, his opponents suffering life-threatening injuries at his hands, and his principles ridiculed all for a buck someone else really made.

As a bonus, it probably has ten or fifteen of the funniest stories I've ever read in a wrestling book, easily; had I not read this book, for instance, I would have never known that Antonio Inoki bought an island off the coast of Cuba from Fidel Castro with the promise that treasure was buried on it, let alone that he would later rename it "Inoki Friendship Island" and try to entice his pals into digging for gold thereabouts. It is also wall-to-wall fucked up, largely because, if this book is even halfway to be believed, pro wrestling is basically the foulest, vilest, most brutal, banana-raping-est environment known to man. I wanted to read this book a lot faster than I actually managed to, mostly because I had to keep going back and rereading stuff.

The best part is that the author gets hell of dudes to actually go on the record, no mean feat w/r/t the notoriously obdurate subject matter. As with all wrestling books, it's worth questioning what you're being told, but considering how most of the author's sources are ex-writers hired for their entertainment pedigrees it's hard to believe many of them have a ton of interest invested in protecting the BIZZZZZZ~. and, as previously mentioned, what's there is absolute dynamite.

basically, buy this book.