Long Bomb

In 2003, I noticed a book on Amazon.com which chronicled Vince McMahon and the NBC television company's American football league.

Long Bomb : How the XFL Became TV's Biggest Fiasco by Brett Forrest was unavailable to buy because it had sold out so I kept making frequent visits to the site to see if it had been republished.

It hadn't.

I was awake in the early hours a fortnight or so ago and tuned into the US sports radio station I usually listen to in bed and I heard Brett Forrest being interviewed about the book. After years of looking out for a copy, I thought I would try once again to see if I could get one.

Once again, the book was listed as unavailable but third-party sellers had new copies going for around forty dollars. I then decided to try my luck on the UK Amazon site and found a second-hand copy for three pounds.

Bargain!

I wouldn't say it was worth the wait although it was an okay read and did tell some of the story of the 2001 disaster which was the XFL.

There were, however, a few things to note in the way the author wrote.

To me, metaphors and similes are more effective if they are used once. In this book, Forrest writes about someone's teeth being like 'Scrabble tiles' on more than one occasion and it comes across as desperate when used the second time.

I also found him naming The Rock as 'Dwayne Douglas Johnson' as quite pompous. Do we really need the full name every time he is mentioned in the book? A simple Dwayne Johnson would be suffice.

Parts of the book are based on the calamities that befell the XFL and how the WWE tried to stage certain aspects of the show by using bait-and-switch tactics to have cameramen inside the cheerleaders' locker-room. One such attempt at a ratings ploy was not covered and I feel it was key to showing how Vince McMahon tried tactics to keep viewers but ended up with egg on his face.

I don't know the entire story but I remember reading about it in the Wrestling Observer. The gist of it is the show opened up with a helicopter on its pad and the reporter (it may have been Stephanie McMahon) saying that one of the star players' wife was about to go into labour and was at the hospital and the chopper was on hand in case he needed to go.

This was hyped up throughout the show.

At the end of the game, the player in question was interviewed and was asked about the labour and he noted that his wife was still weeks away from giving birth and was either at home or sitting in the stands, I can't remember which.

Surely, something as ludicrous as that should have made it to the book. Unfortunately, it didn't.

It was okay for what it was but - as with the pregnancy story I remembered - it doesn't write about everything that made the XFL a fiasco which lasted one season.

It could have been worse - I could have ordered the forty dollar copy.