Content
The book's initial focus is on the lives of Hart's grandfather and father, giving context to Hart's later life. It chronicles Hart's childhood with his father, mother and two sisters living in poverty on the Canadian prairie during the early 1910s and 1920s, his time as an amateur wrestler, and his military service and early career as an in-ring performer. It also covers the development of his relationship with his future wife, Helen Smith, and his time as a promoter and trainer of Stampede Wrestling.
The book covers Hart's experiences as a father to his twelve children (Smith, Bruce, Keith, Wayne, Dean, Ellie, Georgia, Bret, Alison, Ross, Diana and Owen), and how he managed to raise them all while handling Stampede Wrestling. [7] [8]
Like many other biographies of wrestlers, the book focuses on the period after the Great Depression, especially after World War Two, and offers general insight into the early wrestling industry in western Canada. [9]
The book also features over thirty photographs courtesy of the Hart family. [10]
Reception
The Wrestling Observer Newsletter described the book as the most comprehensive work ever written about Hart's life, which covers his life all up until almost the end. [11]
Sports journalist Heath McCoy notes in his book Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling , which chronicles the wrestling territory which Hart owned and managed, that the book's description of the deal which turned over ownership of the promotion to Vince McMahon may have been inaccurate. The book implies that the deal was sealed with a verbal agreement, but Pain and Passion states that other sources indicated that there was a written agreement. [12] McCoy nonetheless found the book to be of great value when writing Pain and Passion. [13] He also noted that the book confirmed a few stories from the controversial book Under the Mat , which was written by Hart's youngest daughter, Diana, and published a few years earlier. McCoy elaborated on these in Pain and Passion. [14]
The reviewer of ProWrestlingBooks.com considered the book one of the better wrestler biographies, stating that while it has many stories from the Stampede Wrestling promotion, it functions best as a coverage of an individual life story rather than of the Stampede territory. [15] Hart's second oldest son, Bruce, liked the book but noted that readers would not learn much about the wrestling industry because his father revealed almost nothing about it. [16] [17] [18]
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