Follow Friday: The Masked Man

Photo Credit: Deadspin

One of the best writers about wrestling on the Internet isn't even in our circle. His name is David Shoemaker, but you may know him better as The Masked Man, or @AKATheMaskedMan on Twitter. While you'd expect the best writing on wrestling to be done at, say, Fair to Flair (CHEAP PLUG) or what not, there's a strong case that it's being done by Shoemaker at Deadspin and Grantland, two sites that you don't normally associate with pro wrestling all the time. He just gets it.

He started out at Deadspin doing the "Dead Wrestler of the Week" in which he'd write really verbose but really beautifully constructed career retrospectives of, you guessed it, dead wrestlers. I guess you could say he's an OG when it comes to writing about wrestling in a constructive, critical way that looks at what happened on the screen rather than how much money it's making. From there, he landed a gig doing the wrestling columns at Grantland. Bill Simmons is a noted wrestling fan, so of course he was going to have someone covering it on the site. I'm glad he got Shoemaker to do it, because hey, if you're going to have someone write about wrestling on a sports journalism and opinion site that set out to raise the bar, you might as well get the best around.

Follow him on Twitter. He's not around 24/7 like some folks, i.e. me, but he when he's there, he brings insight. Great member of the Better Wrestling Journalism Group.