Paul Levesque Featured in 'High Spots and Hot Shots'

In the field of pro wrestling photography, George Napolitano's name has consistently been at the top of the list from wrestling's days as a regional, territorial attraction to the modern era of sports entertainment. A new 320-page coffee table book, High Spots and Hot Shots, collects over 400 photographs from Napolitano's personal archives that the native New Yorker and one-time wrestling magazine impresario suggests barely skim the surface of his back pages.

Two pages document some of the earliest shots taken of a young Paul Levesque, the future Triple H, alongside his trainer, Killer Kowalski. Napolitano remembers that Levesque was still doing spot shows in high school gyms around Connecticut at the time as he'd just begun climbing the ladder to the big leagues. "He was somebody who looked colorful and, usually, if I saw a guy that looked colorful I would take a few more pictures. Kowalski told me that was his guy and he was going to be good. I saw (Levesque) a few months after that picture was taken and, honestly, didn't even recognize him. He thanked me for taking the picture and using another one of him in, I think it was Superstar Wrestler. He said he'd used it and sent it around. Guys would use that stuff as promotion to show where they'd been and what they'd done. If they were in a magazine, it showed they were doing something."

source: slam wrestling