Is it sport or is it entertainment? As presented by World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., the most well-known promoter of professional wrestling, it is hard for the uninitiated to tell. A refuge for the very athletic, and often a breeding ground for the highly dysfunctional, professional wrestling is, in the truest sense, life on the fringes.

Headlocks and Dropkicks: A Butt-Kicking Ride through the World of Professional Wrestling chronicles sportswriter Ted A. Klucks effort to become a professional wrestler at a popular wrestling school in the suburbs of Chicago. In training to become a wrestler, Kluck was able to delve into the traveling-circus elements of the sport and talk to the people who make it workpromoters, bookers, and the wrestlers themselves.

Wrestling has weathered manifold changes in American taste to survive and thrive as it does today. Kluck examines the tension between the good vs. evil tales that permeated wrestling in the early to mid 1980s, along with the seamy soap opera storylines that seem to drive it today. He also takes time to catch up with the biggest stars the sport has producedsome of whom have parlayed their fame into financial security and others who are currently looking to reclaim their past glory.

• 15 illustrations