Review:Hitman: My Real Life In the Cartoon World of Wrestling by Bret Hart

Ever since I was a child I have loved pro wrestling. I loved the athleticism, the drama, how two athletes could tell a story in the ring using nothing but their bodies (and the occasional prop). When I was growing up my favorite wrestler was Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart. He was never the biggest or the strongest but that was part of his appeal. He was just a man who wanted to be the best and would give everything he had in the ring each and every night, a man who wanted to succeed not just for himself but for his loyal fans as well. Naturally I’ve wanted to read his autobiography Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling for some time. Now that I have I’m glad that I did.

Bret’s autobiography chronicles everything from his early life, his wrestling career and right up to his stroke and his dad’s death. What is blatantly apparent early on is this genuine. Bret wrote the book himself with the aid of a cassette dairy he had kept on the road. No punches are pulled, we get the whole story through Bret’s eyes and he doesn’t sugarcoat it not even when in the instances where it makes him look bad. A word of warning right now if you decide to give this one a go; bad things happen to good people. Wrestling is an industry rife with alcohol and drug problems and like I said before ‘no sugarcoating’.

The only minor blemish to this book is a few minor timeline mistakes which is bound to happen when discussing a lifetime of events. When I say minor that’s exactly what I mean, I’m talking about stuff like mentioning Chyna was Triple H’s ring valet when talking about events in 1995 when Chyna only showed up on WWF TV in 1997. I’m sure she was around the dressing room in 1995 and there was probably no other place to mention it but that might get on a few peoples nerves. These small flaws take nothing away from the story itself, so it really is nitpicking.

Overall this a strong emotional and brutally honest story of one man’s life. Whether you watched him wrestle or not really doesn’t matter, I guarantee you at times you will laugh and at times you will cry and you won’t be able to help being moved by it and that is really all a good story is. 9/10.