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This Mitchell's Take was originally published five years ago this week on PWTorch.com...

With this weekend's announcement on the Ross Report that Mike Awesome, Planet Stasiak, and the incomparable Horace Hogan had been dropped by WWE, the number of big time wrestling/sports entertainment names out there desperately searching for a way to turn a buck without, well, getting a job, continues to grow.

Unless you're a member of the Armstrong family, or can impress mid-level country music types, the rampways to the Jarrett's sinking ship have been pulled up. The indy scene for former wrestling television stars are as sparse as the XFL memorabilia market. Times are tight and widder-women aren't looking to mortgage their children's future to provide has-been wrestlers with a few more months of income like you might think.

Mick Foley [artist Neal Obermeyer (c) PWTorch]

So your former ECW heavyweight champions, your former several time WCW tag team champions, your former chicken suit wearing, 1982 Manager of the Year types need a surefire way to make their years of experience pay off one more time. There's only one last card to play: write a "tell-all" book. Mick Foley, DeWayne Johnson, Joanie Laurer, Kurt Angle, Missy Hiatt, Bobby Heenan, and all the rest have proven that wrestling fans can indeed read, and the wrestling book market is tailored made for the washed up old worker to tap.

Don't let the stacks of stacks of wrestling bios on the remainder tables fool you. Clearly, the market is wide open.

Play your cards right and you could reuniting with your legion of rats, uh, fans on a nationwide book tour before you know it (assuming they can find babysitters...)

Like Kayfabe, though, there are rules the forgotten old has-beens need to follow if they want their book to be a big success like Lillian Ellison's is:

-You Don't Actually Have To Read A Book Before: Just keep talking, the co-author will transcribe it all. The idea is to fill up the pages. Double-space everything, use a big font, whatever, like you can remember anything....

-Be Nice To Vince McMahon: He's responsible for whatever success you had in life. Be sure to mention the time you bought one of the McMahon children a drink. You never know when you could get the call. This also goes for Jim Ross, Paul Heyman, Triple H, and whoever that Raw writer guy is. Clearly, the only thing missing in that company right now is your wealth of experience.

-Rip The Crap Out Of WCW: So what if the company paid you more than you ever made in your life, gave you a human schedule so you could stay home with your family, and ran one of the great parties at owner's expense in the history of corporations, gosh darn it it wasn't right what they did to Vince McMahon during the Monday Night wars.

-Be Vague, Really, Really Vague: Bobby Heenan, who spent thirty years working alongside Superstar Billy Graham, Ivan Putski, Hulk Hogan, and Rick Rude never saw no steroids or anything. According to his autobiography, he saw a lot of guys leave Dr. Zahorian's office at WWF television tapings with little paper bags, but he never saw what was in them. Bologna sandwiches, maybe?

-Wrestling Fans Need More To Look At Than Words: Put the print over fuzzy, faint black and white pictures. Dribble gray dots down the page. Whatever. Like these people can read.

-If You've Ever Been On National TV You're Got a Best Seller in You: (ECW notwithstanding). Don't believe me? You're just as good as most of these people. Think about this. Diamond Dallas Page's book, Positively Page, had been in big time bookstores for over two years now. If he can do it, you can, too. (Unless you're Disco Inferno. No one's reading that.)

-It's Okay If You Live In A Parallel Universe: For example, Roddy Piper is not brain damaged, he just lives in an alternate world where he invented pay-per-views with Starrcade, invented the WWF Machine, started famed comic's Andy Kaufman's career, attended a fraternity with Bruiser Brody, started WCW, and had so much integrity he'd never take a dive no matter what those evil promoters did,. His gutsy new book paves the way for the Ultimate Warrior, Sid Eudy, Honky Tonk Man, and a host of others. I, for one, can't wait.

The Free Agent Sports Entertainer owes it to himself to explore this lucrative market. Manipulated correctly, a new book could get the Internet fan talking about you, and the WWE phone call could be an inevitability.

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