ECW Press is one of the best publishing companies that documents professional wrestling. Irvin Much-
nick is one of the best writers to have ever covered wrestling.

Now these two forces have combined to create one of the best books ever published about professional wrestling -- Wrestling Babylon: Piledriving Tales of Sex, Death, and Scandal.

The name of the book, which is a compilation of Muchnick's stories, is a nod toward the cult Hollywood Babylon books that underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger wrote about the seedier side of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Muchnick's collection of articles in Wrestling Babylon is full of scandalous tales.

His collection chronicles the "wrestling renaissance" of the mid-1980s and the years that followed it.

The gem of this collection is an article that was originally published in Penthouse called "Born Again Bashing with the Von Erichs."

As written about in the book, this article was chosen to be in a collection called Best Magazine Articles: 1988 shortly after it was first published.

In "Born Again Bashing," Muchnick profiles the Von Erich wrestling family of Dallas, Texas, which is the real-life, adult male version of Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides.

Muchnick's story documents the drug-related deaths of two of the five Von Erich brothers who lived to see adulthood.

The disturbing postscript to the story offers information about two of the other Von Erich brothers who had committed suicide by firearms.

"Born Again Bashing" is not the only story in Muchnick's collection that sends chills down the spines of the reader.

In another well-reported story, Muchnick chronicles the death of Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka's girlfriend in 1983 in an article titled "Superfly Snuka and the Groupie." According to Muchnick, this article was supposed to be in the Village Voice, but it was never published. Now this article is in print for the first time.

People who are diehard fans of professional wrestling have probably already read these stories. A few simple Google searches are almost guaranteed to bring up the articles that are published in Wrestling Babylon, which is priced at $17.95.

But no one should feel cheated by paying for Muchnick's comprehensive collection of wrestling articles. His pieces show the dark side of the cartoonish world of pro wrestling.

Any true fan of wrestling, or of great writing and reporting, will get more than his or her money's worth.

Grade: A