The Six Pack: On The Open Road In Search Of Wrestlemania,New

From the bestselling author of The Wax Pack, comes another eyeopening road trip adventure into a pocket of iconic pop cultureprofessional wrestlingstarring the Iron Sheik, Hulk Hogan, Tito Santana, and many more largerthanlife characters of the WWF of the 1980s. In 2005, Brad Balukjian left his position as a magazine factchecker to pursue a dream job: partner with his childhood hero, The Iron Sheik (whose real name was Khosrow Vaziri), to write his biography. Things quickly went south, culminating in the Sheik threatening Balukjians life. Now seventeen years later, Balukjian returns to the road in search of not only a reunion with the Sheik, but something much bigger: truth in a world built on illusion.Balukjian seeks out six of the Sheiks contemporaries, fellow witnesses to the World Wrestling Federations (WWF) explosion in the mid80s, to unearth their true identities. As Balukjian drives 12,525 miles around the country, we revisit the heady days when these avatars of strength, villainy, and heroism first found fame and see where their journeys took them. From working out with Tony Atlas (Tony White) to visiting Hulk Hogans (Terry Bollea) karaoke bar, we see where these men are now and how they have navigated the cliffs of fame.The Six Pack combines the spirit of a fan with the rigor of an investigative reporter, tracking down former WWF employees, childhood friends, and mutually curious archivists. Wrestling is perceived as a subculture without a cultural home, somewhere between sport and theateroften dismissed as silly and lowbrow. But what makes this book so compelling is the humanity beneath each wrestler. The Iron Sheik, Hulk Hogan, and the rest of the cast were not characters in a comic book movie. They were real people, with families and feelings and bodies that could break. Most of them did, in fact, break; some have been repaired, but none of them will ever be the same.