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Chances are, if you are my age, Bill Apter was sort of like the wrestling equivalent of Mister Rogers.
If you were lucky enough to be of the age where running to the newsstands to find out whether the latest edition of Sports Review Wrestling or Pro Wrestling Illustrated were there in all their full color cover delight with all sorts of stories and interviews with pro wrestling stars, well, then you knew Bill Apter.
Whether it was photos taken in the magazines of Apter presenting Awards, Apter shooting ringside, or Apter appearing on just about every professional wrestling program you could think of (from AWA to Pro Wrestling This Week to the NWA, he was on, I assure you) representing the magazines, he was the constant. Like Mister Rogers, he never raised his voice, he always came off kind and assuring and well, if you were lucky, you could learn a few things from him.
To this day, I often joke that my knowledge of geography was due to reading those magazines when I was a child. I was not only well aware that Jerry Lawler and Bill Dundee were savaging each other in Memphis, TN but in Evansville, Indiana as well, so those two cities had to be close to each other. I had never been to Birmingham, Alabama but I knew it was near Georgia. To me, the United States wasn't carved by State lines but where each promotion ran. Years later, that knowledge served me well when I ended up getting a job managing International Priority Airmail. Part of the job interview was listing every State and country I could think of. With my vast knowledge of both from years of reading back stories and results in those magazines over childhood, it was a cinch and the job was mine. Thanks in part, to Bill Apter.
Of course, growing up, who didn't think covering pro wrestling and interviewing wrestlers for a living wouldn't be the dream gig? Having grown up, I can attest that it is but I can also attest that perhaps Apter and those who worked for the Stanley Weston magazines not been successful in their rendition of covering pro wrestling, that sites like PWInsider.com might never have risen up, at least the way that history showed that they have. Sure, websites and such would exist but they would have evolved completely differently. I think that if there's a common history to pro wrestling through the territory era, a good part of it was shaped by those magazines.
So, it's fitting that Apter finally sits down and puts his memories to paper with the new autobiography "Is Wrestling Fixed? I Didn't Know It Was Broken: From Photo Shoots and Sensational Stories to the WWE Network, Bill Apter's Incredible Pro Wrestling Journey." A fitting title for someone who spent the majority of his career protecting the business as much as he promoted it and also expanded upon it with stories that deepened what viewers saw on their local TV programming.
The book is a light, fun read. If you are looking for Apter to give you dark dirt of what was going on behind the scenes, you aren't going to get any skeletons falling out of the closet here. He is, after all, the same Apter of yesteryear. He's not going to bite the hand that feeds him, nor should he.
What a reader will get, however, are a collection of interesting and funny remembrances from Apter's time in the business. With the book broken down the way that it is, readers can pick and choose the chapters as they want, as each is a different self contained story from Bill's time in the business. I personally thought the most interesting chapters were Apter recounting his original dealings with and being hired by the late Stanley Weston, who Apter writes about in such glowing fashion that you can still tell he sees Weston as a father figure.
It isn't until Weston sells the magazines off and the entire chemistry of what Apter loved about the magazines had changed that he considers jumping when World of Wrestling Magazine comes headhunting for him and it's not until a $25,000 signing bonus is waved in front of him that he makes the magazine equivalent of Ric Flair going to WWF....then learns like Dorothy that he isn't in "Kansas" anymore.
One of the more interesting lessons one can learn from the book is that what goes around comes around. Apter recounts taking pictures for a very young Taz and Tommy Dreamer when they were just breaking in as well as trying to help Taz get some booking. Years later, Taz and Paul Heyman are now in the position to suggest that WOW go after Apter if they really want to make a splash in wrestling magazines. A similar story features Apter, overwhelmed with photo equipment on the way to a boxing event in Atlantic City, encountering a young wrestling fan more than happy to help him as long as Bill will talk wrestling with him and buy him an ice cream cone. While Stu Saks refused to reimburse Apter for the ice cream, that encounter helped lead a former WWE and ECW star into the business.
Not all the interactions are positive ones. Apter recounts a story of Eric Bischoff tearing him apart in front of witnesses at a hotel check-in, of being fearful of Randy Savage when he learns Savage "wants to kill him", and several other instances where wrestlers were upset of how they were presented in the magazines, even when Apter had no control over such things. He was the one on the road and he was the front man, so he had to deal with it. How he does, especially in the Bischoff and Savage instances, are pretty interesting as are Apter's attempts to sooth things over with the McMahons and others when his publisher, Stanley Weston, riles their feathers.
The one common factor that shines through the entire book is that Bill loves the hell out of professional wrestling. That's probably the main reason he's still involved via 1Wrestling.com and other ventures, because he loves it. The reality is, pro wrestling loves him too. Much like the sport he's covered, Bill is a wacky, eccentric individual who is at home in the genre, whether in front of the crowd, milling about in the locker room or behind the camera lens.
In fact, when Apter recounts a pilot he filmed for the WWE Network, one couldn't help but be happy for him. Whether the show ever debuts or not, the reality is that much like WWE has become the custodian of wrestling history over the last decade or so, Bill sort of filled that role with his work for many a year...but the one TV he never appeared on was WWE. When the Network launched, there he was as a talking head, well deserved and finally checking off that final box on his list of promotions he appeared for. There's no argument that he could be in line for a WWE Hall of Fame induction one day, either. He's Bill Apter, after all. There could never be any argument against him.
"Is Wrestling Fixed? I Didn't Know It Was Broken" features an introduction from Jerry Lawler as well as a closing piece by Joey Styles. As noted, it's a fun read for those who want to take step back in time and remember the magazine era and re-live the high points of Apter's career, from Madison Square Garden to suggesting Andy Kaufman to promoters to Buddy Rogers and beyond. You aren't going to get deep analysis of why things went right or wrong at certain times, but you aren't reading this book for that - you are reading it for Bill Apter, and Bill Apter is certainly what you are going to get...and that's a good thing.
After all, who doesn't love Bill Apter?
And, when do we get a sequel?
To order "Is Wrestling Fixed? I Didn't Know It Was Broken: From Photo Shoots and Sensational Stories to the WWE Network, Bill Apter's Incredible Pro Wrestling Journey" click here.
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