September 04, 2024

On the NBA Beat Ep. 187: "The Six Pack" Book Special With Brad Balukjian

47 minutes

Sports writer and scientist 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.

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.”

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By Aaron Fischman, Loren Lee Chen

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