Shoutout: Best article about old wrestlers you’ll read this week

Ricky Morton in 2007

This is a Bleacher Report Blog first: A Shoutout to a wrestling article.

Jonathan Snowden, in his first piece for B/R, tells the fascinating story of the rivalry between two wrestlers, Ricky Morton and Kevin “Diesel” Nash, who are set to meet in a pay-per-view event this weekend.

“The animosity is real,” Snowden writes, and it “has some fans wondering, almost 30 years after Vince McMahon revealed that wrestling wasn’t on the up and up, whether the match is going to be a shoot or a work.”

In wrestling jargon, a “shoot” is a real, unscripted fight or event. A “work” is the opposite.

Snowden interviewed both men, who are long past their wrestling prime, and explores their enmity. “The root,” he writes, “as in all great conflicts, is money.”

Generally an MMA writer, Snowden is the author of “Total MMA: Inside Ultimate Fighting” and “The MMA Encyclopedia.” He does a terrific job here. It’s a great read even if—like me, who had to look up the definitions of “shoot” and “work”—you don’t care at all about wrestling.

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Photo: GeekAngel, Wikipedia Commons