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"...!