Piece Comment

Review of 'The Mad Russian': Reflections of a Cold War Wrestling Villain


Aaron Henkin is a multiple threat: he conducts excellent interviews, he writes well for himself, his reading style is crystal clear with lively phrasing, his voice is attractively deep without being so into itself that it lulls you to sleep - and then he goes and provides pristine production values including subtle dramatization. Finding all those chops in one producer is very, very rare. This story, about an ex-pro wrestler from Eastern Europe, was carefully made over a bit of time - and has a high level of human interest. I thought it was ever so slightly long - but the quality is so high it's going to make the air sound good.