FAQ

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The Pro Wrestling Authors Hall of Fame (PWA HOF) is a virtual hall of fame that seeks to honor authors who have specialized in the production of specific types of professional wrestling literature in the service of broadening knowledge and understanding of pro wrestling and its history.

A simplified version of the criteria for inclusion would be an author who has written or heavily contributed to the writing of four books that enhance the historical understanding of professional wrestling. The average length of a qualifying work would that the book is at least 75,000 words in length, for which a good benchmark is around 200 pages in length. This is a general guideline and not a rigid requirements.

The full criteria for induction is available here.

The PWA HOF induction criteria was designed to honor a certain variety, quality and quantity of professional wrestling authorship. The general guideline for determining the number of works required to qualify for induction was the average requirement for completing an official minor at most American universities. In essence, a book serves as a proxy for four semester hours of collegiate coursework in historical writing. By derivation, it could be surmised that all PWA HOF inductees have completed the equivalent of a minor in historical writing in the service of professional wrestling.

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Books that consist primarily of event listings, match listings, press clippings, program covers, photographs, and illustrations. While these collections can be extremely valuable as reference materials for guiding additional writing and research, they fall outside of the scope of what the PWA HOF is intending to honor with its inductions. Collections of wrestler biographies and match reviews are generally excluded from consideration unless they are curated in such a way so as to serve a compelling interest, buttressed by extensive and obvious research beyond the opinion of the author. An example of a book that would not qualify for inclusion in a potential inductee’s count would be a book that collects biographical information on wrestlers that is easily attainable through an internet search.

It is highly unlikely. The PWA HOF does not hold a monopoly on the ability to confer awards and honors among authors, writers, and historians as it pertains to professional wrestling. As such, the PWA HOF encourages the creation of alternative awards and honors that seek to honor additional contributors to professional wrestling writing and history by applying a different set of criteria.

In addition, the Commissioner of the PWA HOF has it within their power to grant a Commissioner's Choice Award to a book deemed to be of such superlative quality and significance that it is worth honoring despite not contributing to an author's PWA HOF candidacy.

No. Judgement of the quality of a specific work or the ability of any individual author is highly subjective. The criteria of the PWA HOF is designed to honor authors who perform a specific type of work that necessitates a specific level of engagement, and which has been repeated for a specific number of times. With that being said, several of the authors honored by the PWA HOF have been frequently cited by readers, book reviewers, wrestling historians, and fellow authors as having been among the very best authors who consistently write about professional wrestling.

Through the Commissioner’s Choice Award, the Commissioner of the PWAHOF has the ability to retroactively spotlight important historical works that may not have garnered a level of attention significant to attract high sales or annual awards, but which are deemed — in the personal judgement of the Commissioner — to be of inestimable value to pro wrestling history due to the quality of their content, the depth of research that was poured into them, and possibly even the difficulty and effort required to conduct that research. 

For more information on this award and books that are ineligible to receive it, please click here.