Author: Ian Douglass
Ian Douglass
The journalism career of Ian Douglass began with a stint as an internet news producer for ABC News (WXYZ) in Detroit, and continued with a role as an on-air reporter for NBC News (WEYI) in Flint, Michigan. Ian is a multi-time coauthor of professional wrestling books, having contributed to the autobiographies of Dan “The Beast” Severn, Dylan “Hornswoggle” Postl, Michael Davis (AKA “The Brute” and “Buggsy McGraw”) and “Killer Bee” B. Brian Blair. In addition to writing books, Ian serves as a columnist for Splice Today and is the former editor of Fixed Ops magazine. He also holds degrees from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and the Quantic School of Business and Technology in Washington, D.C.
When the professional wrestling contributions of Woodrow “Woody” Wilson Strode are introduced into conversations by well-meaning mat historians, the establishment of his significance is often handled in an inductive formula of A + B + C + D = E. In this case, since Strode was A – at least half Black – and B – a successful football player – who C – became a headlining professional wrestler – before D — progressing onward to become a motion picture star – he is therefore E – the pre-Civil-Rights-Era prototype for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. This is a clear instance…
The Great Nita. It can be difficult for wrestling fans who are only familiar with Atsushi Onita as the deathmatch king of Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW) to process his days as an athletic and often high-flying wrestler capable of exchanging technical wrestling holds, flips, and flying dropkicks with wrestlers as tactically brilliant as Ricky Steamboat without looking even remotely out of place. Unfortunately, Onita’s career took a career-altering and ultimately industry-shifting turn in the most unlikely of fashions. After successfully defending his NWA International Junior Heavyweight Championship against Hector Guerrero on April 20, 1983, Onita was in the midst of…
When Jumbo Tsuruta passed away in May of 2000, my first response was, “Oh yeah… That’s the guy who unified the Triple Crown Championship in All Japan before Stan Hansen beat him for it.” Shortly thereafter, I was taking a cursory glance at an article that referred to Jumbo Tsuruta as “Japan’s strongest wrestler” and “the greatest Japanese wrestler of all time.” After all, I had reasoned that any Japanese wrestler worth knowing would have popped up on my home television screen at some point in my life, either during a WWF, NWA, or WCW event. This limited entries into…