One good Regal (Walking a Golden Mile - William Regal)

Member Name: triplecthegame

Product:	Walking a Golden Mile - William Regal
Date:	31/01/06 (184 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Inspirational, a great introduction to the wrestling book

Disadvantages: Harrowing at times.

Talk to any wrestling fan about autobiographies and they'll all tell you that the way ahead is to read the 2 Mick Foley books and in a weird way I disagree, yes they're great books that you literally can't put down, however - by going straight for Foley's books you're missing out on a more varied read about other wrestlers up-bringing, you could find out about the struggles getting into the business if you're female with Lita's 'A Lesser Travelled R.O.A.D.' or how hard it was to get over a broken neck with Adam Copeland's 'On Edge' or you could find a person who took a different route to wrestling fame in William Regal's 'Walking a Golden Mile'.

Firstly a background for you - when WWE announced that Regal was going to be the next wrestler to write a book back in late 2004 I was a bit perplexed, he's not a big character on screen any more, American fans like him, but they don't have the same respect for him as they do for say Undertaker, Eddie Guerrero or Shawn Michaels all three of which hadn't released an autobiography at this point (at time of writing both Eddie Guerrero and Shawn Michaels' books have just hit the British shelves) and it just seemed a bit odd, but when you read the book you'll understand why they opted for Regal. Here is a guy who started out at 15 years old working on Blackpool Pleasure Beach challenging members of the public to last 5 minutes with him in the ring, he then worked his way to the UK touring scene which regularly fought in holiday camps or small seaside venues before hitting the US, getting famous and sadly picking up addictions on his road to stardom as well - Walking a Golden Mile is William Regal's chance to tell you all about how he got to where he is, whilst also giving the harrowing tale of his demise into drug addiction and his fight to come back to our screens and wrestle again only to be knocked down with serious injury and forced to start it all again.

As the cover tells you - it isn't actually Regal who's wrote this book per se, more he's sat down with a shadow-writer (in this case Neil Chandler), ran him through everything he wants putting in the book, the writer will then go away, write a draft of it and come back to Regal with it, who'll read through it, make changes where he sees fit and then it gets sent to the editors. In my time this is the 18th Wrestling Autobiography I've read and one thing a lot of books wrote using a shadow-writer do at times is go down the 'and then this happened' road, basically they tell you what happened in a monotone list of incidents, an example would be 'on Monday night I fought Mr X, On Tuesday I was meant to be fighting Mr Y but he got injured so I fought Mr X again and ended up fighting him all week, then on Friday I got paid and went home - that was a great tour' - doesn't make for good reading does it? To be honest at times, Regal does threaten this, but every story he gives us seems to have an anecdote to it, or a meaning - it might be a tour where he met a friend who helped him in the future, or where he picked up a certain piece of advice that he took with him for future wrestling, but never once does the story telling get dull, which is an important thing in autobiographies.

The thing that makes this book so read-able is how intriguing Regal’s story is - perhaps its because as a youngster once a month I’d spend all my pocket money on getting the bus to Cleethorpes Memorial Hall to see the monthly wrestling show that brings a hint of nostalgia to me, but he does give you a good insight into what it was like wrestling on the UK Scene, along with the television deal they had (anyone remember that? 1 week you’d get British wrestling where invariably it’d be Big Daddy in the main event, then the next week it’d be American wrestling.) and the impact it had on wrestling in the UK when that TV deal got dropped.

However the parts that really stand out is how Regal tells of his descent into drug and alcohol abuse and just how low he really did sink at those times - its a harrowing tale and at times you wonder how the man is still alive, when he’s gone through so many times of hitting what he thought was rock bottom, crashing a car whilst high on drugs, taking 30-40 pills a day, spending all his time in his room trying to get himself cooler or warmer and even the extents he’d go to to get his hands on more pills. But this part of the story obviously has a silver-lining, and its even more poignant with Eddie Guerrero’s recent tragic death, WWE and more specifically Vince Mcmahon gave Regal the biggest kick up the butt he needed, they forced him into rehab and when he dropped out of that released him from the company, this was the sort of Rock bottom that Regal needed to hit, and to read his tale of coming back from that to make it as a big star in WWE is nothing short of inspirational.

One thing I would say about the way Neil Chandler's wrote this is that it feels more like Regal’s sitting down and telling you everything that’s happened over a cup of coffee - he’s just put the story in such a way that he makes you feel like one of Regal’s closest friends and that makes for an easier read, you can easily find yourself turning page after page without realising how far you’ve gotten into the book - a good example would be I took it with me on a train journey I had and ended up completely blanking an old friend of mine who happened to be on the same train, because I was so engrossed in the book.

All in all, if tales of C4 matches, ripped ears and countless concussions aren’t your cup of tea, you couldn’t find a better introduction into the wrestling autobiography market than Walking a Golden Mile - its an inspirational tale that is a page-turner as well, and you’ll find yourself glowing inside when you get to the end and realise that even after all these setbacks Regal’s determined to carry on with the one thing he loves.

Summary: An easy-flowing book that keeps you gripped from page to page