Good, not great This book is very broad, and it caters mostly to the years when WWE wrestlers were at their peak in ECW. While that may have been ECW's "golden era," very little is covered about classic ECW matches in 1999 and 2000, with no mention of Tajiri and Whipwreck as a team, the classic 3 way matches, or any of the later additions that helped keep ECW afloat. It also caters to a very small percentage of former ECW wrestlers, using just people under WWE contract, and the producer of ECW TV. In addition, there are glaring errors with spelling and grammar, and pictures with incorrect captions. It appears no one bothered to proofread this book. The book has some good stuff and somewhat captures what ECW was about, but it suffers from a lack of depth, especially with ECW after 1996.
The Rise and Fall never rises above mediocre I loved ECW. So everytime a dvd or book comes out about ECW, I do a double take. I could write a really long review on this book, but I'll condense it really quickly to save you the time:
1. Thom Loverro may be a respected and longtime journalist, but he obviously knows nothing about ECW. He can't even decide if the name is Mike "Nova" Bucci or Mike Nova. The writing style is drab and reads like someone took a pile of notes and threw them on a page, then made barely-conscious transitions.
2. It's a dvd rehash. That was obvious from the beginning but I was hoping it would provide something interesting. I was wrong. If you have the dvd there's no point in reading this.
3. The innacuracies are frustrating. One would think at least one fact-checking session could have been devoted to this. Taz is even labeled as Mikey Whipwreck. Small children, after watching one show featuring the two, could have noticed there's a difference.
I would have given my eyeteeth to recommend this book and I rarely consider reading even the silliest books to be a waste of time, but this really was a waste. It's sloppy, badly put-together, many times inaccurate and totally devoid of any real passion. If you really want to read it try to check it out at a library.A blatant copy paste job I was so happy when this book came out. I thought that it would contain detailed behind the scenes stories about the little promotion that could. I wanted dirt and sleeze. Instead on page 64, "Sabu and Tazz defeated the Pitbulls; Tommy Dreamer beat Stevie Richards..." This goes on for awhile, and is repeated over and over again. Here's the form of the book. In 1997 these matches took place at ECW shows. In June of that year Cactus Jack had a good match. Mick Foley puts it this way, "yeah that was great". Thank you Mick. Oh but it gets worse! On page 77 the writer copy and pastes the whole page out of Have a Nice Day! Mick Foley's first book. I would be amazed if this guy took more than an hour to write this book. He copies match results which can be found dozens of places online or directly copies someone's quotes from previous books (like Foley) or from the Rise and Fall of ECW DVD (which was an amazing piece of work). It's hack writing to the EXTREME! No matter how much time Loverro had on this project it was squandered. Give me the same amount of time and I'll write a five star book on ECW. Only recommended for a completist.
