Your photography is beautiful, great composition and structure, and the message each picture conveys is in many ways complete in itself, the emotion and competition, the aspiration and anguish with the audience as voyeur. Taken together, they are an amazing record of an era. And, the competitive spirit, the man-to-man hand-to-hand combat which is all too often rendered cerebral today. The metaphors of brainpower are expressed in brawn, and our common metaphors of speech are acted out in these pictures. The diversity of people and ages is also striking. The men hanging out waiting and reading or watching....what are they thinking, and what are their fantasies? And the kids and women, especially the prudish, are they visualizing being ravaged, or enjoying puritan disapproval...."well I never!"? Each picture begs to be expanded into a story, and each story into a chapter of a book. It is also nicely organized, and your introductory pages provide context.

Just wanted to thank you for the quick delivery and to let you know I really enjoyed the book. The photos were fantastic and it really brought me back to watching wrestling with my grandparents back in the day. And 71 was when I started getting into wrestling. I was 7 but I have great memories of watching my 4 foot 11 Italian grandmother getting all riled up at the antics of the heels of the day. Thanks again for letting me relive that.
— John S.

In short, I enjoyed it tremendously. You have encapsulated a slice of history and it is now immortal. Congratulations!

— Faruq

I absolutely love your photographs! I will order a copy of WRESTLING for my brother as well.

— Demonsthenes

Really enjoying it so far! Thank you for creating something so important like this!

— Oscar

I am so excited about your book! I started my wrestling fandom around the time featured by going to Sunnyside Gardens. It brings back fond memories of me and my father's outings from Bayside, Queens to this magical (but grubby) place a few neighborhoods away. Beyond that, the photos sampled on the Facebook site are fantastic. I LOVE New York and particularly New Yorkers from back then.

— Bennett

WOW, WHAT A SURPRISE!--- The book is exceptionally valuable worth several times the amount paid! An excellent collection. Not only the time and event (I was 11 at the time), but the fact JUAN CARUSO was one of my 3 main favorite pro wrestlers. Caruso lost way more matches than he won, but I thought he was sensational anyway. Thanks for this exceptional valued collection of the Sunnyside Garden Wrestling 1971.

— Larry

Thank you so much for the super service and quick delivery of the Wrestling Sunnyside Garden Arena book. I’m a longtime wrestling fan but I didn’t start attending the matches live in my area (Utica, NY) until 1980 or so. But you truly captured the feel and atmosphere of a night at the matches in a far less complicated time. Your comparison to WeeGee is an apt one and he is one my my favorites.

- Your book will make a perfect compliment to that one in my wrestling collection.

— Scott

I received your gorgeous photobook two weeks ago and I am ashamed to say that I allowed that time to pass without telling you how much I adore the collection and appreciate the work you have made available to world!  The pictures have a wonderful expressionistic aspect to them made all the more intriguing by knowing that every picture was captured naturalistically.  I experienced genuine synesthesia with some of the pictures. At times I could smell the cigar smoke and the sweat. Just thinking back to those day when when would put on suits to go to the wrestling matches with little kids sitting next to them, both completely captivated by the drama and the action being played out in the ring.  I recall my own experience of being at the Olympic Auditorium in the early 80s (I guess about 10 years after your own pictures were taken) and as a 12 year old thinking the ring was REALLY high above me!  I couldn't even imagine how they got INTO the ring!  

Your pictures also capture the sense of "another day, another dollar" for those wrestlers.  These were guys who were working day in, day out.  They weren't necessarily superstars or high earners.  It makes the story of Stan Stasiak's WWWF World Title victory over Pedro Morales all the more strange in my mind.  Evidently, Stan "the Man" found out on the night he was to win that he would be the champion!  He was necessary for the transition of the title back to the returning, beloved Bruno Sammartino.  So Stan was never going to wear the belt very long, nine days in total.  But he is a part of that history! And anyone who was at Sunnyside that day in 1971 could say they remember seeing Stan when he was on the undercard against Manual Soto.  

I of course would have only been  5 months old that late November day (and residing on the other side of the country!) but your book really does have the effect of a variety of "Time Machine of the Mind" for me.  And now, at 52 I find myself working on my own photography projects and taking great inspiration from your exquisite and evocative photo record of that Saturday in the year of my birth!

— David