Tangled Ropes

Wayne Coleman grows up in post-war Phoenix, where painting, sports and bodybuilding offer a way out of the anger of his disabled father. A bodybuilding magazine photo brings him to the attention of a Texas family who start praying for him. He finds religion at a revival meeting.

He leaves home, to his parents' mortification, bending steel, ripping phone books in half and preaching the Gospel on back roads across America. Work as a bouncer, boxer, repo man and football player follows. Under Stu Hart, nicknamed the "Mentor of Mayhem," he learns to wrestle.

Dr. Jerry Graham, a headliner on the decline, bleaches his hair blond and presents him as an in-ring "brother." Out of respect for the preacher, Coleman takes the name Billy Graham. The golden tan, huge arms, matching outfits and jive talk become a persona that Hulk Hogan and Jesse Ventura, among many others, later copy.

This autobiography, written with Keith Elliot Greenberg, follows the peak and the fall. In 1977 Graham beats Bruno Sammartino for the World Wide Wrestling Federation Championship and keeps it nearly a year, the first villain to do so.

After losing it to Bob Backlund, he sinks into depression, leaves the business and loses his money to drugs. A liver transplant in 2002 comes after years of ill health. The tone is candid, nostalgic and humorous, with anecdotes from Vince McMahon, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Ivan Koloff and Arnold Schwarzenegger.