There’s a poignancy to the third biographical book from the tag team of Jim Ross and Paul O’Brien as you read deeper and deeper into Business Is About to Pick Up!: 50 Years of Wrestling in 50 Unforgettable Calls.
It’s a reference that good ol’ J.R. probably won’t get but it fits. In the later years of his time on Hockey Night in Canada the late Bob Cole would occasionally get names mixed up. Hockey fans could only chuckle because he was still Bob freakin’ Cole.
That’s the same feeling I have gotten and many others with J.R.’s recent appearances in AEW. He’s still a valuable asset for the company but shouldn’t be front and center.
Which he isn’t, and, having read Business Is About to Pick Up! (BenBella Books, May 2024), we learn some of the reasons why, especially his health challenges.
Given the history of pro wrestling, how it’s so all-encompassing and demanding, it’s heartening to read about how J.R. has had a bit of a change of heart, to “rethink my life, now that I’m moving toward the inevitable.” He is prioritizing his daughters and grandchildren, and the result is X posts like the one below, where his family rallied to his side after yet another health scare in May 2024 (after the book was published).
Dad and his two Angels!
They truly love their Daddy.
💕 pic.twitter.com/I9BrwxbC46— Jim Ross (@JRsBBQ) May 23, 2024
Like with Cole, and other legends on the air, J.R. recognizes it’s not a forever job.
“I know that wrestling fans will understand when I make the adjustments that I feel I need to make in my life and maybe come back and see them less. When I do show up again — and I will — I might stumble a time or two, like I always have, and I might misspeak a couple or three times, like I always have. But those words and sentences they hear will come from a man who has always had passion for his job that drove him through the hardest times, and carried him through the greatest.”
Business Is About to Pick Up! and really about the second part of the title: 50 Years of Wrestling in 50 Unforgettable Calls.
J.R. and O’Brien start in 1974 and pick out memorable matches, in many cases pulling a transcript of the audio, and using it as a springboard to not just talk about the match but bigger picture things. For example, the 1992 call of Ron Simmons beating Big Van Vader for the WCW World title is a chance to talk about racism in the wrestling industry.
The inherent advantage of looking back gives J.R. perspective, though the AEW stuff already feels out of date, and has one lamenting what was once a company with so much potential. “CM Punk was, and is, as I write this, that guy for AEW,” he notes, the book at the printer no doubt before Punk was terminated and now a star in WWE again. And the WWE hardcores may complain about how much AEW there is, seven out of 50, but one is a boxing story, hardly reflective of the sheer amount of matches Ross called for WWE.
What isn’t there are much explanation about who these people are; it’s assumed that, for the most part, that wrestling fans are reading this book and will be knowledgeable enough about the names mentioned, or will seek out the information elsewhere.
All in all, it works, though I will admit that I found myself glossing over some of the reprints of the calls, set aside in the text as pullout quotes.
There’s so much knowledge here, so much background, so much experience that fans would be a fool to overlook it, though they are going to want to have copies of J.R.’s previous two autobiographical books (Slobberknocker: My Life in Wrestling and Under the Black Hat: My Life in the WWE and Beyond) alongside if they want more detail.
RELATED LINKS
- Jim Ross story archive
- Buy Business Is About to Pick Up!: 50 Years of Wrestling in 50 Unforgettable Calls at Amazon.com or Amazon.ca
- SlamWrestling Master Book List