Brad Balukjian’s New Wrestling Book ‘The Six Pack’

Let’s get this out of the way right from the start. If I hit the lottery tomorrow, I’m buying a publishing company and hiring Brad Balukjian to write books like The Six Pack (and his previous one, The Wax Pack) about every sport.

That’s how much his work hits my personal sweet spot. For the uninitiated, in his two books, he’s traveled the country to track down a random assortment of athletes. For The Wax Pack, he opened up a pack of baseball cards and was determined to get to every player in there. In The Six Pack, it was a quest to find a host of wrestlers from the 80s who starred in WWE. The concept is brilliant. The execution is better, as he not only chronicles his road trip – over 12,000 miles cross country for The Six Pack alone – but the stories of these athletes, warts and all. It’s a fine line to walk between sensational and respectful, but he pulls it off. And while baseball is an easy sell as the National Pastime, pro wrestling might be a harder sell to casual readers. So, how does Balukjian sell The Six Pack?

“I think it gets at a bigger theme or question of why is this thing popular and what is it about, how does playing a character 24/7 change or not change who you are,” he said. “And that whole theme of what is real and where’s the line between fantasy and reality or myth and reality, that’s something I think that everyone can find interesting or relate to because wrestling is such an anomaly in that. Especially back in the era that I wrote about, where the promoters were still saying, ‘Hey, this is a real sport,’ and that led these guys to have to be in character all the time and to never take the costume off.

“And the fact that they were wrestling year-round, and especially in the late eighties, when that schedule is 330 days a year and no off-season, it’s really a human story about these guys and the sacrifices they made. Back then, and even sometimes today, it was like, ‘Oh, it’s fake, right?’ Well, what’s not fake is the 20 surgeries that some of these guys have had. So, with all my books, what I’m really trying to do is write about people in a way that is relatable, so that people that are fans see these athletes more as peers than people that they idolize.”

You can tell that Balukjian is a fan, and he’ll tell you as much in the book. But he doesn’t let rose-colored glasses fog his vision. In addition to being the story of an extended road trip, it’s also home to serious journalistic work about these wrestlers and the business. If you doubt that, read the book and then subscribe to his Patreon page, where you can see some of the fruits of his labor. Of course, seeing the other side of the business can dull that fandom, but you never get the impression that Balukjian is bitter. He even believes the wrestlers he spoke to would still choose to take to the ring and take the bumps all over again, even if the job is a lot more lucrative than it was back in their heyday.

“I think they would all do it all over again,” said Balukjian, who took some bumps of his own as he attempted to learn the business first-hand in the ring. We call that suffering for your art. “I think that they do feel a little bit resentful of just how much harder they had it back then in the sense the money was not as good. The schedule was a lot worse. There’s still a lot of reform that could be done in wrestling, but the thing about now that’s so much healthier is kayfabe not being a thing. When these guys are out in public now, no one’s harassing them. They’re harassing them for autographs, but not in the way that the guys were harassed back in the 80s when people were trying to attack the Iron Sheik and stabbing people and making death threats. People really took it so seriously.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of all the fights these guys would get into at the bars, and that was because some local football guys would come up and be like, ‘Your thing is fake,’ and challenge them. I don’t think the wrestlers were looking to fight, but I think when other guys would insult their profession, they were expected to stick up for it. And, of course, a lot of promoters back then, if you got your ass kicked in a bar fight, you were not going to have a job. So, you had to be a legit tough guy out of the ring. And people were picking fights a lot with those guys. That’s not going to happen now. So, I think there is some resentment there, but also probably some pride with these guys, justifiably, I think, to say, ‘Hey, we were tough back then.”

One of the toughest was the late Iron Sheik, and Balukjian was actually in talks with the former WWF champion about writing his biography. That didn’t work out, but, in essence, his deep dive into the Iranian great’s life throughout The Six Pack doubles as a biography; that’s how thorough it is. And it’s fair. The Sheik’s story isn’t pretty at times, but there are moments that make you smile, and when you finish the book, you think, this is a love letter to wrestling. And here we are, Balukjian in his 40s me in my 50s, and we’re talking about wrestling like a pair of teenagers. So we’re hooked. Will a new generation follow us? Will there be grown men talking about the era of The Rock, Roman Reigns, and John Cena in 40 years like we are now?

Balukjian is optimistic.

“I see the social media, TikTok crowd react,” he said. “Go to a show now and kids have got the belts and all the memorabilia. What doesn’t change about wrestling is the existence of these over-the-top characters that allow you to lose yourself. And I think, in a way, the fact that it is entertainment is why it’s popular because kids know that, deep down, these people are not getting hurt. I think that part of its popularity is that it feels safe in a way. And I think that people will look back at their childhood wrestlers in a similar way to the way we did.”

The Six Pack. Buy it. It’s one of the best wrestling books you’ll read (Click HERE to order).

Thomas Gerbasi

Thomas Gerbasi is currently senior editor for BoxingScene.com, Women’s Boxing columnist for The Ring magazine, a contributor to Boxing News (UK) magazine, and a member of the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame’s Class of 2022 in the non-participant wing. An award-winning member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, Gerbasi is also the author of five books. His amateur boxing record was 0-1.

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