Frankly, this is one of the most spiritually truthful wrestling autobiographies I have ever read. This is pro wrestling, bullshit and all.

A terrific and well-written biography of someone who has certainly lived a unique life. Highly recommended not just for wrestling fans but for anyone interested in a truly fascinating life story.

3 ½ of 5 stars

Review:
Tod Gordon, along with Paul Heyman, are credited with being the creators of Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW). It was as advertised- an extreme amount of violence and debauchery in its shows and its fans loved it. The title of this book, written by Gordon and Sean Oliver, came from a chant started by some of these fans and Gordon is very happy to tell you about it.

That was one of the issues I had with the book. Of course, any memoir of anyone who had success in whatever line of work they did will want to talk about proudly. But I felt that Gordon did that a little too loudly and for a little too long. Plus, he spent some time defaming Heyman as best he could. Finally, he gave far too many accounts of the drinking, drug use and sexual escapades of not only the wrestlers but also of himself. It was not needed in this much volume to give a reader a picture of went on in the locker room and in bars and hotels. It also painted a less than flattering portrayal of Gordon.

So why did I give the book a favorable rating? The stories about the actual business and about the wrestlers. The book actually starts out quite well with Gordon talking about his work in a Philadelphia pawn shop and his venture into the wrestling business. The way he was able to land a regular time slot on cable television for his new product Eastern Championship Wrestling (which of course was later changed to Extreme) made for great reading, just for one example of the type of text about the business side.

The other reason I gave this book a favorable rating is because there are mostly great stories of some of the wrestlers. Not just the well-known ones like Terry Funk, Mick Foley and the Sandman but also ones who are not as well known except for the hard core fans. One can learn a lot about the history of ECW through these stories and Gordon gives proper credit to his talent (as he calls the wrestlers throughout the book) as he should since it was them who puts on the shows that drew the fans.

The end of ECW did not mean the end of Gordon in the business but there isn’t much about that. Instead, it’s a mostly fun romp through the history of ECW that fans of the product will enjoy immensely.

I wish to thank Permuted Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I received a free review copy of 'Tod is God' via Netgalley. Thank you to Permuted Press.

At one time I used to absolutely devour wrestling biographies when I was a big fan of the sport, but then I cold turkey-ed for about fifteen years as family commitments took over. Now my kids are a bit older we've got into watching pro wrestling together and it's reignited that passion I once had.

A wrestling journalist whose writing I've always admired described this book as hilarious so I was keen to pick this one up. 'Tod is God' is the story of Tod Gordon, once owner and booker of ECW, a promotion that went from local shows to the national stage and burnt out in less than a decade. If you were around at the time, there was no streaming, not quite so much internet so if the way to access wrestling was through mail order and tape trading. How I loved those ECW tapes turning up with their grainy lines having been copied about ten times! They were such a game changer, and when the tapes were available professionally they were hoovered up by me. In the late 90's ECW was the most violent, the most cutting edge, most exciting promotion around. Sure people got more violent and the 'high-spot' culture we have today is far greater (not a good thing) but back then there was a real culture and identity to ECW. You knew you were getting something unique which satisfied an itch which the other major promotions couldn't hit.

So this book is Tod's story - from the time he created ECW out of the ashes of the failed TWA promotion, how he gently progressed and eventually brought in Paul Heyman as a booker, then partner, and how the promotion was wrestled from him by Heyman.

The absolute highlight of the book is the coverage of early ECW, including the bar shows. This period isn't as well known and it looked and felt very different from what ECW became, but you could definitely see the direction. I recently watched a lot of ECW from 1993 when they first got their TV deal and it's tons of fun. You really get a sense of the early days and the era when Eddie Gilbert was booking (by the way Gilbert was awesome on the streets of Philly!).

Once you get to about 1994 though the history drops off, as though the more Heyman was involved the more the stories and history don't matter. It's shame, because whilst it's Tod's story and his story is that of ECW, if you don't know the history then this book doesn't really tell you much. Despite him saying how he and Paul talked every day and they were jointly involved in the booking I couldn't help but think, 'your words in this book don't give that impression'.

If I am being honest the book comes across as one long burial of Paul Heyman like in a shoot interview. I'm not sure who the audience is for this. If it's for younger readers wanting some history they may agree with the perspective, but I suspect most reading this will have been around at the time of ECW and been fans, therefore it will be news to no-one that Heyman is a bit dodgy and untrustworthy. It was well known and documented a quarter of a century ago. I'm not necessarily defending Heyman or saying Gordon isn't right, but there are more receipts here than a supermarket floor and it does get a bit tiresome.

Another problem with the book is that Gordon comes across as quite an unpleasant person, despite his protestations. The book is littered with his sexual escapades and drug taking. I get it, one of the appeals of the 'rock star' biography or the 'wrestler' biography is the tales of wild excess, but neither Gordon, nor Oliver who supported with the writing are a good storyteller. And I think this is one of the problems with - he's not 'one of the boys', but he desperately appears to want to be one. It's ironic that he comes across as a mark, rather than an owner. Really, when you've heard about his shagging around and smoking another joint it does get a bit boring.

Another thing that annoys me a little is explaining everything as though the audience knows nothing about wrestling so we get a description of words like 'booker' or 'dirtsheet'. Is there anyone reading these books who do not know these terms? And if they are, put them in a glossary. It reads like a big reveal when that genie has long gone. I also noted that he does not explain what a 'rat' is despite using the term often. I find this really off-putting in 2023. I get that it was common parlance back then, but when one considers the rampant sexual abuse and exploitation of women fans, many underage I don't need Tod Gordon to be 'one of the boys' talking about 'rats'.

A large part of the book covers the wrestlers he worked with, and it was interesting, especially since so many of them had amazing matches, angles and feuds. It's pretty interesting but necessarily doesn't go into enough depth. There are 'funny' stories, but they mostly seem to be stories of them getting fucked up in hotel rooms. The best books on wrestling have these, but they also have insight into booking, funny ring stories, personalities. This kind of feels absent.

There is also quite a sad section of all the wrestlers who worked for him who died (and there are some he notably didn't mention). Now, the drug culture of pro wrestling certainly didn't stop and start in ECW - it was endemic in American pro wrestling. However, when you are reading about these people who died so young, often due to their rampant drug and alcohol use, or suicide, or heart attacks at no point does Gordon seem to take any kind of responsibility for HIS OWN locker room culture and HIS OWN in ring action. He is keen to tell everyone who is the boss, but under his watch a lot of wrestlers messed up their bodies and died young. He makes no connection to his own role as their boss. It's sad and sadly this lack of awareness seems to be on every page because of course, 'he's one of the boys'. It's like the last few decades haven't created any kind of reflective difference. He's keen to paint himself as a hard worker and the one who took the financial risks and that he is a good businessman. They all could be true, but I don't think this is as 'warts and all' as he thinks it is.

Despite these criticisms, the book flies by and I read nearly 300 pages in about a couple of hours so I couldn't put it down, and it was good to go down memory lane. I also dug out a few late 90's shows and generally felt 'holy fuck' enjoying myself revisiting them.

I think those who this book is aimed at will still enjoy it, but it doesn't come strongly recommended because of course, there is a book long angle here.

A final note, the review copy has quite a few editing errors which hopefully will be rectified before release.

Tod Is God tells the life story of ECW founder Tod Gordon.

Tod had been working in his family business, a pawn shop named Carter W. Reed when he booked Missy Hyatt to appear in the store. After some time, he grew close with Bob Goodhart, the owner and promoter for TWA (Tri-State Area Wrestling Alliance) and would eventually earn fifteen percent of the company after helping to keep Bob afloat during some tough times. Sadly, the company would fold after Bob's expenses grew too high to be supported by lackluster ticket sales.

Shortly thereafter, Tod would launch his own promotion - Eastern Championship Wrestling. It would go through its initial growing pains before landing a permanent booker in Eddie Gilbert and a spot on local Philadelphia television. After landing on national TV in syndication, Tod would begin to receive attention from Jim Crockett who was in the midst of launching his World Wrestling Network. As Graham grew suspicious of Crockett and Gordon's relationship, his paranoia would ultimately drive Gilbert away clearing the way for the man who would be synonymous with ECW, Paul Heyman.

By now I think we're all aware of Paul Heyman's inability as a businessman to keep ECW afloat as it grew from a northeastern independent promotion into a national one, but I wasn't quite prepared for the receipts Tod Gordon kept when it came to Paul's incompetence. While Gordon never did get into the business to create a competitor to Vince McMahon's WWF or Ted Turner's WCW, at the urging of Heyman the two worked to create a solid third promotion during the industry boom of the late 90s. However, whenever they seemed to have an opportunity to grow (get onto television in the New York market or even a chance to land on HBO), Heyman would kneecap the organization by either neglecting to perform an important job or mislead Gordon into believe things were better than they were.

The better parts of any wrestling book have to do with what goes on behind the scenes and the madness that goes hand-in-hand with performers keeping themselves occupied on long road trips during the downtime between shows. That being said, I thought this book went a bit overboard with the sleaziness and drugs-and-sex culture that ECW fostered backstage. It's hard to fault the author for being honest but at the risk of sounding prudish, I could have done without the constant stories of sexual debauchery that occurred behind closed doors. But hey, if that's what floats your boat in a wrestling memoir, there is more than enough here to sink your teeth into

Gordon spends much of the latter half of the book shining a light on what made several of the company's top performers special. He also brings up the names of several of those who have since passed by telling a few memorable stories of the time he spent with them and detailing the often tragic circumstances surrounding their deaths. It's difficult to read at times when you remember just how young many of these athletes were and how both the brutal drug culture of the industry as well as the relentless schedule often led to early graves.

While many people would believe Tod Gordon had wiped his hands clean of the industry after parting ways with ECW, he has quite an extensive resume beyond Extreme Championship Wrestling. Tod worked with Pro Wrestling Unplugged, 3PW, an MMA venture dubbed Extreme Fight Club, and finally CZW.

While he's no longer in the business, Tod Gordon's influence on the wrestling industry is certainly undeniable and he deserves to be recognized as a driving force behind ECW's popularity. Without Gordon's business acumen, Paul Heyman would not have had a place to freely and liberally showcase his vision of the industry alongside Tod. Wrestling fans who believe Heyman was solely responsible for ECW's success need to take a look at TOD IS GOD to uncover the full story.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Permuted Press for an advance copy of this memoir of the man who led one of the craziest, loudest obnoxious and most missed wrestling promotions in history, Extreme Championship Wrestling.

Wrestling has many different ways of telling a story. Stories are told in the ring, on the microphone, in the locker room, to the media that covers them, interviews after they retire, and more recently in books. Some swear by their stories, some swear at the stories being told. The truth in wrestling is like Schrödinger's Cat, both real and fictional at the same time. Stories are a currency to wrestlers. I got the scoop brother, buy me a drink, or a pill or dinner, I'll tell you, brother. Truth from a certain point of view can be entertaining, and continuing to paraphrase from an old Jedi, that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. Tod Gordon was one of the originators of what grew into one of the more interesting and violent wrestling promotions and in his memoir Tod is God: The Authorized Story of How I Created Extreme Championship Wrestling written with Sean Oliver is a look back at his life and experiences in the world of pro wrestling.

Tod Gordon was born in Philadelphia and grew up without really an idea of what Gordon wanted to do in life. Gordon's father and uncle ran successful pawn brokerages for fine jewelery, but Tod was not as interested in that life. College introduced him to the arts something that stayed with him after college, even when he thought of taking a job painting pipes. Eventually he joined his father's business and soon was running it, though something was missing. A chance to back a wrestling promotion gave him back an entry into the arts, and soon he had his own company. Things started small, buy moved quickly, from doing shows in bars, to suddenly having TV time. Fans followed, a name change to Extreme Championship Wrestling, and soon ECW was the talk of the business, with daring matches, both violent, and technical, storylines that pushed limits, and wrestlers that pushed even further. Gordon was on a roll, till suddenly things took a turn.

A book for fans of the sport and for ECW fans in particular. There are plenty of behind the scenes stories, drug use, matches gone wrong, drug use, pills, hookups Sandman stories, and more. One doesn't read wresting books for introspection, and there is not much here. One has to remember the era and what was considered acceptable behavior, cause some of this does read as a little juvenile and braggadocious, which I get as it is wrestling, so what else would it be. Gordon liked what he was doing hanging with the boys, and girls, smoking reefer and watching the madness, and occasionally taking part. There is a little score settling, but not as much as one would expect, for a wrestling book it is kind of low. I can't imagine trying to run a business by day, and than dealing with wrestlers and their issues, plus having to talk to Paul Heyman all night. I have to give it to Gordon for that.

Recommended for fans of ECW and for those who miss the Shoot Interviews series, as a lot of this stories would have been perfect. One learns a bit, learns a lot more about the peccadilloes of wrestlers, especially Sandman, or one half of the tag-team Public Enemy, than expected, but it is still an enjoyable book.

Review copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks for the review copy and permission for an honest review.

As a lifelong wrestling fan, I enjoyed the "backstage" access and first-person tales, but had three issues (two substantive, one not):

1) the formatting of the ebook is off on so many occasions that it's quite noticeable;
2) setting aside what ECW was (and I am a fan), I believe some of the author's opinions/perspectives are crass and/or inapproriate; and
3) the narrative is hard to follow at times because it jumps around and it's not clear how the author intended his story to come across (definitely not chronologically).

If you're a fan of wrestling, I would definitely recommend this book because it's a quick read, there's some stories you likely didn't know and the author's writing style is enjoyable and easy to read, but I wouldn't go out of your way to make sure you read it. It doesn't tread new ground and has some of the issues I described.

First of all, I have an unreasonable love and fascination with all things professional wrestling. When I saw Tod Gordon had written a book concerning ECW, I was overjoyed.

Nevertheless, this book started off great. We were offered a glimpse into the background of Eastern Championship Wrestling and Tod's introduction to professional wrestling. His writing style was very conversational, showing off his Philly roots.

Most of the book, I really enjoyed how he told his early history or ECW and some of his takes on the talent and his relationship with Paul. If he would have stuck with just focusing on ECW, the talent, and his part in it I would have loved it and given it 5 stars.

However, the aspect that brought the book down for me was Gordon's lack of humility, putting himself over to the point of ad nauseum at times. I am not saying he doesn't deserve to put himself over, but he put himself as one of the best minds and creative geniuses in all pro-wrestling. Next, there were too many instances where he really wanted the reader to know how cool and sleazy he was for the fun sexcapades he had with women, breaking up a marriage with his crew, kinky stuff with girls, and I was just like "what the hell does this have to do with ECW?" By the end of the book, I had two very different images of Tod: a businessman who truly loves wrestling and a sleazeball philly suit.

This was a pretty decent book, but 1/4 of the book could have been edited down to focus on his perspective of the rise of ECW, which I thought was the main goal of the book. Nevertheless, wrestling fans can get a good glimpse into the rise and struggles of a small wrestling promotion and how it became the late-great ECW.

This is a biography of Tod Gordon, the money man and brain behind Extreme Championship Wrestling.

I snapped this up when I saw it on Netgalley. Tod Gordon, the father of ECW? How could I pass this up?

This is the best wrestling book I've read in a long time. The Gordster doesn't waste any time and makes with the wrestling in short order. Tri-State Wrestling Alliance dies and Tod Gordon's Eastern Championship wrestling fill the void, eventually becoming the Extreme Championship Wrestling some of us knew and loved back in the day.

Tod doesn't really go out of the way to put himself over. He's a funny guy and obviously smart but doesn't sugar coat the decisions that came back to haunt him later. He's also open about the sex and rampant drug use behind the curtain in ECW.

I've probably read 50 or more wrestling books at this point and watched a shitload of documentaries but El Gordo reveals tons of stuff I never knew; the good, the bad, and the extremely fucked up. I don't want to spoil too much but Paul Heyman isn't the Sainted Father of ECW a lot of people make him out to bed.

Crazy shit aside, the Gordonator also makes the nuts and bolts of the wrestling business interesting. Not as interesting as the sex and drugs but it's really cool that guys like Terry Funk and Kevin Sullivan lent a hand when they could.

That's about all I've got to say, I guess. I'll refrain from saying Tod is God hits like Sabu on a table but imagine that I did. Five out of five stars.

This book really delivers on two fronts:

1) It is incredibly detailed about drug use in the locker room. .Tod was once quoted as saying "If you can pass a drug test, you can't work in ECW". And in this book, he talks about it all. From percocets to smoked pencil shavings, Tod is naming names.

2) Score settling with Paul Heyman. Tod has, for whatever reason, stayed mostly silent for 20 years about his role as founder and owner of ECW, letting the prevailing narrative become entirely about super genius Paul Heyman. I'm not really sure how much credit Tod deserves or doesn't for different things, but he sure does paint a comical picture of Heyman, at one point saying "Watching Paul work people is like watching a boa constrictor swallow an elk- you just can't believe the carnage being delivered by such a calm and calculating reptile".

This book probably would have generated more buzz and sales if it came out in 2005 during the peak of ECW nostalgia. In 2023, there are decent chunks of it that feel out of place with current societal standards, some stories that are like "yeah that's a lot darker and less funny than you think it is". But if you're buying a Tod Gordon book about ECW, you know what you're signing up for. So if you're interested in the subject, I'd say worth the read.

Note - I received an advanced reading copy of this book from Netgalley

Sometimes you want a comprehensive, chronological, fact-checked, revelatory account of a wrestling personality’s career. But sometimes you just want to laugh your backside off.

Tod Is God falls very much into the latter category, likely reflecting its origin story. It’s ghostwritten by Kayfabe Commentaries host Sean Oliver and he and Gordon are open about the way its production involved 60 hours of conversations followed by Oliver putting the highlights together in a logical order. The result is much like an engaging shoot interview where every question gets an entertaining response.

This isn’t to say the book doesn’t address key points: you’ll get Gordon’s take on the origins of the business and his personal and professional relationship with Paul Heyman. You’ll also get his side of the story with incidents such as the NWA title doublecross and his departure amid the “lockerroom mole” gossip.

However, the bulk of the book, and the undisputed highlights, are the countless genuinely hilarious stories of the crazy characters involved in pro wrestling. Revealing details would spoil the effect, but it’s filled with ridiculous moments, the humour being enhanced by the way such incidents are considered perfectly normal in pro wrestling, unlike virtually any other business.

For the most part, Gordon shows great self-awareness, making the point that his contribution to the rise of ECW should not be overlooked, but recognising his own limitations. Perhaps the only jarring part is that the repeated tales of excessive drug use and physical punishment are followed by a sobering chapter on his numerous former colleagues who have passed away, and a little more introspection on that connection might have been appropriate.

That said, this is not presented as a book that seeks to analyze the business or culture of ECW and its legacy in the industry. It’s simply the memoir of a man who straddled the line between an anarchic outlaw subculture and the legitimate business world of his family jewellery company. I can’t guarantee you’ll read it in a single sitting like I did, but it would take a heart of stone not to find something entertaining here, regardless of your background knowledge or interest in ECW.