Good Ol’ JR Is Back With More Great Stories

Few people in the history of professional wrestling have more stories to tell than Jim Ross. Good ol’ JR got his start in the sport half a century ago, in 1974, as a referee. He’s worked for promotions like Mid-South Wrestling, WCW, WWE, and now, All Elite Wrestling. He’s seen it all during those five decades, from wrestling’s greatest days, to some of its most tragic. Ross has written a few books before, including 2017’s Slobberknocker: My Life in Wrestling and 2020’s Under the Black Hat: My Life in the WWE and Beyond (he’s even written cookbooks!), but his latest, Business Is About to Pick Up!: 50 Years of Wrestling in 50 Unforgettable Calls stands out because Ross isn’t writing a memoir we’ve read before. Instead, this book is filled with snapshots of how it felt to be part of some of wrestling’s biggest moments, including a few you may have forgotten.

Jim Ross Had A Memorable Wrestling Career Long Before He Joined WWE

Good Ol’ JR Was The Voice Of WCW

Jim Ross’ opening dedication for Business Is About to Pick Up is, “To a lifetime of fans, from a lifelong fan.” This is because the book is written for those fans, with Ross reminiscing as a fan himself. If you want a book going into great detail about Ross’ life outside the ring and lots of backstage stories, this isn’t it. He has written those books already. Business Is About to Pick Up is like a time machine, with Jim Ross wanting to take the reader back to those big moments. If you’re not a wrestling fan, you might not appreciate it, but if you grew up with Jim Ross (and with his iconic career, we all have), then these stories, crafted so clearly, take us back to where we can nearly smell the arena and hear the roar of the crowd. Many chapters begin with Ross simply reminding us of what was going on that year in pop culture as a quick way to take us back. For many of those years, Jim Ross has been a big part of that pop culture himself.

Only two short chapters look at Ross’ early days in the business, from his time on college radio to working with Tri-State Championship Wrestling. After that, Jim Ross really jumps into it, as his career took off as a commentator with Mid-South Wrestling and later WCW, where he worked with the same commentator he shares the desk with now in AEW, Tony Schiavone. The WWE Hall of Famer goes over his most famous calls of that era, such as when Ric Flair battled Ron Garvin at Starrcade 1987, or when he tried to find a way to sell the most bizarre Chamber of Horrors match at 1991’s Halloween Havoc. That doesn’t mean Jim Ross is simply living in nostalgia, as if this is The Chris Farley Show on SNL, with the host going, “Remember that time you called Ric Flair vs. Sting? That was awesome!” No, with honesty and humor, Ross takes us into his mindset during those moments, while also paying respect to them. He writes these early tales as if he was a fan in the front row shocked that he was so lucky to be there.

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Much of Business Is About to Pick Up centers on Jim Ross’ knowledge that he knew he needed to evolve with the times in wrestling. If he had stayed in an old school mentality as many in the business did when the 80s changed over to the 90s, he would have been left behind. Instead, Ross did whatever was asked of him, even if that meant dressing up in a toga for his WWE debut at WrestleMania 9 at Caesar’s Palace. JR knew he was a long way from home in Oklahoma, but rather than be humiliated, he accepted it and grew, stating, “I knew I’d made it where I wanted to go.” Now he just had to prove to everyone that he belonged

After that comes two decades of WWE stories. It was an up-and-down time for Jim Ross in WWE, with Bell’s Palsy attacks, more than one firing by Vince McMahon, and public humiliation on TV from the boss. And while he does briefly touch on how those moments made him feel, again, this is not that book. This is not the story of Jim Ross, but a celebration of the sport he loves. Ross is in awe, like a kid, as he reminisces about a random Raw in 1994 where he called one of his favorite matches, Bret Hart vs. The 1-2-3 Kid. He gets equally sentimental about the time Barry Horowitz won a match in 1995, as he does when Dwayne Johnson made his debut the next year, or when The Undertaker took on Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 25. The sweetest moment of his WWE recollections, however, is when Ross writes about his 2007 WWE Hall of Fame induction. Rather than going on about whether he deserved it and what he said, he instead talks about his wife, Jan, and how he was looking for her in the crowd. Even though Jan tragically passed away in 2017, there is beauty in the heartbreak, as Good Ol’ JR writes about how lucky he was to find true love.

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Jim Ross writes about how wrestling saved him after Jan passed away, and you could argue that AEW helped save him as well when he got to raise his voice aloud about his love for wrestling when AEW came to existence in 2019. He doesn’t use these pages to bash WWE and Vince McMahon, but to explore the appreciation he felt to be part of the action again. He writes reverently about the joy of watching matches with Kenny Omega or Darby Allin just as he did about Ricky Steamboat decades earlier.

One predominant theme in Business Is About to Pick Up is that Jim Ross wants to get it right when it comes to the evolution of wrestling. Times have changed, with wrestlers who weren’t straight white men once being treated a certain way, but now we have female, Black, gay, and transgender wrestlers thriving without who they are being mocked or used to sell a character. Ross reminisces about the past as a way to look at the future. Now, at the age of 72, he doesn’t finish the book talking about the end of a career, but rather how he wants it to keep going, because wrestling is his purpose. It’s still who he is, and he doesn’t know who he would be without it. We don’t know what wrestling would be without him either.

Business Is About to Pick Up: 50 Years of Wrestling in 50 Unforgettable Calls Rating: 4.5/5