Howard Brody dealt with quite a shady lot while trying to become a successful pro-wrestling promoter:
A convicted murderer, a kidnapper, international smugglers, suspected yakuza (i.e., Japanese mobsters), con artists, drug addicts.
Not to mention World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon.
Brody's interaction with all of them is told in a fascinating new memoir. "Swimming with Piranhas" ($19.95, ECW Press) chronicles Brody's quixotic 20-year quest to form his own successful grappling company.
"The idea originally was to write about the politics of the business and take examples of what happened to me, but it really turned into my autobiography," Brody said this week in a telephone interview. "I was very hesitant to put certain things in the book, but I felt the only way it would be well received is by being 100 percent truthful. I had to talk about my failures as openly and honestly as I could."
For full disclosure, Brody and I became friends in the late 1980s in South Florida. I was a high-school student just being educated to pro wrestling's inner workings. Brody, too, was a lifelong fan trying to claw his way into the industry.
Admittedly, part of the reason I found "Swimming with Piranhas" so gripping is my intimate knowledge of Brody's efforts and some of the personalities he dealt with. But any grappling fan will feel heartbreak reading how Brody would be on the edge of a breakthrough -- especially in the 1990s with a women's wrestling company and an overseas television product called "Ring Warriors" -- only to have the rug pulled out from under him time and again.
Financing was Brody's biggest obstacle, which regularly forced him to seek investor backing. That led to interaction with what he describes as a "long procession of characters" who weren't always what they seemed. Monetary and contractual promises often fell through, leaving Brody on the hook for expenses and torpedoing his chances for success.
Such disappointments took a major toll on Brody's professional and personal life. Brody, 49, fell into financial ruin and lost his marriage.
"I tried to show how so much of your personal life gets intertwined with the professional stuff," Brody said. "I was so obsessed with trying to become successful that I didn't worry about anything else. I couldn't understand why this was so difficult because I thought I was doing things the right way. I put blinders on while everything fell apart around me. That was a bad thing."
Brody did have some good come from his efforts. He learned valuable life and business lessons from the late Hiro Matsuda, an esteemed wrestler and trainer who formed "Ring Warriors" with repackaged footage of Japanese pro wrestling. He ran international tours and negotiated television contracts. Brody also became president of the National Wrestling Alliance and helped rejuvenate a once-thriving promotional body that was on its last legs. Brody even had his moment in the spotlight when appearing with Jeff Jarrett and Jim Cornette (who wrote the "Swimming with Piranhas" forward) on an episode of WWE's "Monday Night Raw" after helping to negotiate a working relationship between McMahon and the NWA.
"As odd as this sounds, I think the thing I'm most proud about in wrestling is writing this book," said Brody, who spent 2-1/2 years working on his 412-page memoir. "I was able to take a detailed look at my failures and can maybe teach someone else how to avoid those same things. I try to take the fan by the hand and walk them through what it was like to keep trying until you've finally made your mark. Even with my miserable failings and meeting all these horrible people, I really wouldn't change anything."
Brody, who co-wrote a Dusty Rhodes autobiography in 2005, is now trying to make a living as a Las Vegas-based author. He is working with former "Happy Days" star Erin Moran on her memoir.
While claiming in "Swimming with Piranhas" that his love affair with the "temptress" that is pro wrestling has ended, Brody admits he is still open to working with a company under the right circumstances. Brody, though, does offer words of warning to others who want to follow in his footsteps.
"To quote a line from 'Forrest Gump': 'Run, Forrest, run!' " a laughing Brody said. "Anybody trying to get into pro wrestling has to look at things not emotionally but from a business point of view. If you're doing this to have fun, don't complain when you lose money because that is going to happen. You have to see what the actual expenses are, how many fans you can realistically draw and make a decision from there. If you have a great business plan in place, hustle to try and make something happen."
If nothing else, Brody did just that.
To order "Swimming with Piranhas," visit www.ecwpress.com. For more information on Brody, visit www.howardbrody.com.
(Alex Marvez writes a syndicated pro-wrestling column for Scripps Howard News Service. Contact him at alex1marv(at)aol.com or follow him via Twitter at http://twitter.com/alexmarvez.)
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