Ian Rotten, best known for the bloody matches he performed and created as the creative genius behind IWA Mid-South Wrestling, has just achieved another career milestone: the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Rotten, 56, earned the coveted literary prize for his bestselling memoir, The Sanguine Canvas of My Forehead, which spent nearly 30 weeks atop the New York Times nonfiction bestsellers list. 

Rotten’s autobiography was described by literary critic Trevor M. Oulton of The Guardian as “a breathtaking achievement by an author whose prose is sharper and more cutting than a fist wrapped in sticky tape and dunked into broken glass. 

During his professional wrestling career, Rotten was known for his vicious battles against his brother Axel Rotten, for running an independent wrestling promotion inside a barn that smelled like armpits and sadness, for working a shoot job at Wendys, and for portraying the Aldo Montoya character in WWE. 

Although many dismissed Rotten for decades as a redneck rasslin’ carny of the lowest order, it turns out that Rotten is a Harvard-educated scholar who “slummed it” in pro wrestling for 20 years as “research” for his book. 

Rotten is already reportedly working on his next book tentatively titled Regrets, I’ve Had a Few: My Hepatitis Journey. 

 

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