Kenny Casanova Talks Writing Sabu’s Book (Part 3)
“Sabu: Scars, Silence & Superglue” is available to order now.
Suicidal, homicidal, genocidal — Sabu’s book!
The ECW icon is releasing a tell-all book with co-author Kenny Casanova, a New England Pro Wrestling Hall of Famer who toured the indie circuit from the early 1990s until the late 2000s. In 2014, Casanova launched WOHW Publishing, an independent outlet for pro wrestlers to self-publish their autobiographies and distribute them through their own websites. His first project – “Kamala Speaks” – earned roughly $60,000 from book sales, Kickstarter and GoFundMe, with all proceeds going toward Kamala’s medical bills.
Since then, WOHW Publishing has released autobiographies of Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake and notorious WWE referee Danny Davis. Casanova is currently in the process of finishing up Vader’s autobiography.
Casanova graduated from SUNY Albany with a BA in English Literature and The College of Saint Rose with a Master’s in education. He currently teaches 12th grade English, having piloted an integrated program that lets vocational students gain English credit in their trade classes like auto, culinary and carpentry.
“Sabu: Scars, Silence & Superglue” gives you a no-holds-barred look at one of the most innovative and hardcore pioneers in wrestling. With 400 pages of ECW memories, lessons from his legendary uncle The Shiek, guest passages from Rob Van Dam, Taz and other extreme peers, this autobiography is sure to be the perfect addition to any wrestling fan’s bookshelf.
You can order the book here.
You can follow Casanova on Facebook and Twitter.
Casanova spoke with The Wrestling Estate in a lengthy interview last month. The following conversation has been edited and broken into parts for easier reading. To hear the full conversation, listen to Corrigan’s Corner on Monday night at Team LeftJab Radio.
Read Part 1 here.
Read Part 2 here.
I have to go back to this, though. If Sabu told a reporter he doesn’t like talking about himself, how did this book come together? Did you approach him?
Casanova: “Yeah. The way that I approached Vader is I did some shows with him in the past and reminded him, then asked if he was interested in doing a book. I told him about the Kamala book and he was into it. It was the same deal with Sabu. I worked with him on a show for Mike Sparta, who was kind of a crooked promoter out of the Massachusetts area. I reminded him that on the show I was on, he barfed and it went in someone’s mouth. (laughs) He laughed. I told him we could tell some stories like that. I worked on the independents for a while and had some writing experience, so he bit. He was somewhat friendly with the Beth Savage wrestler and I think she was the one who first plugged me to him. It just kind of fell into place.
Sabu was the same as all the other guys whenever I try to get a contract together. No one ever wants to sign a damn contract. I’m dealing with the old-school guys. They trust me and I’ve come through so far on my end of the bargain that they’re going to make more than that couple grand that a publisher would have thrown together. Plus, they own the book. They don’t have to spend that $12-$13 for a book to put on their merch table. I send them a thousand to sell on their own at shows. It’s a pretty good deal, and I set them up a website. Sabu has been selling some T-shirts and hats and DVDs or whatever, and then he can sell the book there, too.
I’ve done the same thing with Beefcake and Kamala and I own other sites, too. The hope is sometime down the road, I’ll get to work with them. I own DonMuraco.com and have a little tribute site up there for him. I’m not saying a Don Muraco book is coming, but maybe sometime down the road, if he wants it, it’s there for him. (laughs)”
I’m still not over this article. (laughs) When you see Sabu say he doesn’t want to talk about himself, are you like “how are we supposed to promote this thing?”
Casanova: “Yeah, man, I don’t know. Whatever. You’re right, though. The dude won’t talk about himself. I’ll tell you this, though. Once he opened up to me, I had all kinds of shit for the book. It may not always be 100% in his voice, but I wrote it and then I went back and thought how would Sabu phrase it. He wouldn’t call someone a ‘troglodyte’ or a ‘miscreant’ – he’d call them a ‘cocksucker’ or a ‘motherfucker.’ (laughs)
He talks about problems with drugs, pissing the bed as a kid, shitting his pants in a match, barfing in someone’s mouth. He doesn’t hide anything. He’s not shy, he’s very honest. He’s almost gross with description, but I think that’s good because Sabu was always gross. There was bloods, guts, barbed wire, scars, super gluing your arm back together. He was a pretty fucking gross, brutal dude. He doesn’t hide any of that. It just took a long time to get it all out of him.”
Do you think this will be your biggest seller?
Casanova: “I don’t know, man. I was all super psyched about Vader. I honestly thought Sabu would be a sleeper. But now I’m getting all this interest because people can’t believe he’s going to talk. Sabu doesn’t like talking about himself – he considers it work. That’s why he didn’t talk, following in the footsteps of his uncle, The Sheik in Detroit. He never talked much either.
If I were to tell you, you could have a free book of either Vader or Sabu, which would you like?”
I’d go with Sabu hands down.
Casanova: “Because of him being a newer name than Vader?”
I’d say Sabu because part of his appeal is that he doesn’t talk.
Casanova: “Yeah, I hear ya. And when he does, he usually puts his foot in his mouth saying stupid shit on Twitter and gets himself in trouble. In fact, I didn’t know how to end the book. So I said let’s do a big Sabu Twitter post at the end. He’s like, what do you mean? I said, ‘you know, how you bury guys? People are going to be looking for that now because some people only know you for that.’ So we did a ‘shout out’ section and a ‘fuck you’ section. (laughs) He’s like, oh alright, I get it.
He’s like, ‘Kurt Angle – I’m not going to straight up say ‘fuck you’ because that would be kind of stiff and I might have to work with you again, but someone like you, I’ll just say I can do without.’ I’m like, alright, that’s what we need. (laughs) So he rattled off a handful of people like that and a handful that he liked, like Rob Van Dam. If you’ve ever seen his Twitter, I added three commas to each name. So if you know and you’re in on that, I think people will get a kick out of how we ended it.”
(laughs) That’s awesome.
Casanova: “Yeah, it should be good. For the first book, we called it ‘Kamala Speaks’ because he never spoke. We thought about calling it ‘Sabu Speaks,’ and I was like eh, then there’s an expectation to maybe do that again for other books. So it’s called ‘Sabu: Scars, Silence and Superglue.’”
Which is one of the best titles ever. I love that title.
Casanova: “Awesome, thanks! It was going to be called ‘Sabu: Scars, Somas and Superglue,’ but we weren’t sure if the somas was going to turn off readers. Even if they might want to read about drugs, they might have been scared by it.
George Tahinos let us use his pictures and he gave us a great deal for them probably because he’s a big fan of Sabu. This was the first time of me not doing the cover. Kamala’s cover was a photo by George Napolitano, as was Beefcake’s. In this case, it’s a George Tahinos picture, but the guy who worked the image was Jay Kay from Iron Skull Productions. He does the DVD covers for High Spots. He took the photo and free-hand drew fans in the background, a ring, chairs and broken table in the back, so it’s a combination of photo and artwork. It’s awesome. I was so busy, so I let somebody else do the cover and I’m glad I did. Each time I do a new book, I’m adding something or someone to my roster.”
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