”The Doc” Chad Matthews has been a featured writer for LOP since 2004. Initially offering detailed recaps and reviews for WWE’s top programs, he transitioned to writing columns in 2010. In addition to his discussion-provoking current event pieces, he has written many acclaimed series about WrestleMania, as well as a popular short story chronicle. The Doc has also penned a book, The WrestleMania Era: The Book of Sports Entertainment, published in 2013. It has been called “the best wrestling book I have ever read” and holds a worldwide 5-star rating on Amazon, where it peaked at #3 on the wrestling charts.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, it has been quite a journey. Sixteen years ago, I logged onto this website for the very first time and my wrestling fandom has never been the same. Through LOP and the so-termed internet wrestling community at large, I found a passion for thinking deeply about sports entertainment history, with there being no greater exemplification of that statement than my analytical fascination with breaking down wrestling matches. What is a good match, what is a great match, what is an all-time great match? These questions have fueled the very existence of my various LOP aliases – Chad Matthews V1 / CMV1 / Dr. CMV1 / “The Doc” Chad Matthews – for most of my adult life; those questions gave me an escape from adulting and all its various challenges, and they followed me around long enough to make me want to define the answers as specifically and definitively as possible. Such is where the most awesome passion project of my wrestling reviewer/columnist/podcaster career – The Greatest Matches and Rivalries of the WrestleMania Era – was born.
For the past five years, I have been working on the book that I knew I would most like to read – a logical, reasonably objectified ranking of the 100 greatest matches and rivalries in WWE and NWA/WCW lore that strips away the veil of pure subjectivity others have stayed hidden behind and that identifies the specific traits that separate the truly great from the very good and, having pinpointed those elements, compares the totality of stories like Daniel Bryan vs. The Authority or Stone Cold vs. Vince McMahon to overall rivalries like Triple H vs. The Rock or Edge vs. Undertaker and to iconic matches like Steamboat vs. Savage or Angle vs. Michaels. I promise you, this is the most analytically thorough account ever written on the subject; and, if you like to read and you like wrestling, then I think you will love this book.
I did my best to handle what I consider to be the most engaging topic that we can discuss about wrestling history with the same kind of care that I would a patient. After careful analysis and study these past fifteen years, I offer this book to you as a reference guide, as an unapologetic answer to one of the most intriguing questions ever asked about sports entertainment lore, and as an invitation to any and all to attempt to prove its conclusions incorrect. I’m so proud of it, and I hope that you will read it and share with me your thoughts.
You can order it through pretty much any online avenue (just search for it in a browser and various options will pop up), but for those who prefer to buy your books via Amazon as I do, here are a few links to make it easier:
