Tod Is God: The Authorized Story of How I Created Extreme Championship Wrestling

From 1992 to 2001, Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW)—distinguished by its hardcore style with obligatory table-smashing, barbed wire–covered bats, and copious amounts of blood—influenced and impacted the two major wrestling federations at the time: Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation, now named World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). ECW founder Gordon, with the help of Oliver (co-owner, Kayfabe Commentaries; Transfer: A Supernatural Horror Novel) chronologically delineates ECW’s rise and fall with a seemingly endless parade of anecdotes and stories featuring the organization’s colorful roster of wrestlers, such as 2 Cold Scorpio, Tazmaniac, Sabu, the iconic Terry Funk, and many more. Like ECW, the book’s writing style, while entertaining, is raw, often crass, unfiltered, and crude, especially the description of a sexual encounter between wrestlers Sandman and Missy Hyatt. The book includes umpteen stories about drugs, gives insight about promoter Paul Heyman’s (a.k.a. Paul E. Dangerously) premeditated plan to take sole control of ECW, and lays to rest the fake-news conspiracy angle that Gordon was a WCW mole.