Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, trolls and
marks the light. Welcome one, Welcome all to another episode of Wrestle Magic.
Now, if you guys know where I actually pulled that from. You
guys are a big YouTube fan, you know what I'm talking about. But
anyways, tonight's episode, we're going to be covering somebody who really helped the
industry back in the eighties, the Dynamite Kid and helping me today. And
why I keep saying, we somebody who's been a really great influence on me
throughout my life, somebody who I have looked up to for a long time.
My uncle, my friend. No, not Michael. So I'm talking
about six Pack Timothy Gross, his brother Tim. How are we doing tonight,
man, I'm doing good. It's good to see a Maverick. And
that's awful kind of you to put those words that way. Absolutely, man,
So let's just dive right into it, man, because I remember you
talking to me about this guy as a kid. I didn't know much about
him. So I really became an adult and really started looking into this dark
history of this guy, but also some light parts to it. But yeah,
so let's get into it. We're going to talk tonight about the Dynamite
Kid. Definitely a polarizing figure. You have a guy that he's done just
about everything as far as tag team wrestling and innovating, and then at the
same time too, on the other end of the spectrum, he's done some
well allegedly done some pretty dark things agreed, as well as paving the way
for those like Eddie Guerrero, Chris ben wah jusin thunder Liiger and many others.
He's known for some terrible things as well as some great things. I
mean, he was kind of one of those guys who proved you don't have
to be Hogan Sina and the rock size to really show great skill set,
and that is something that I feel is really admirable to do when you're,
you know, not the biggest guy. You're somebody that almost anybody can look
to and say, I kind of want to be like that guy, and
it's still unachievable goal as long as you put the work in. He you
know, he's one of those guys that managed to stay relevant even though he
did not have the size that but at the same time too, we're talking
about one of the first guys hitting moves like the superplex, absolutely, and
it is well known about how stiff he was in the ring, and I'm
not talking about like stiff performance wise, but when he was hitting a move,
it looked like it hurt a little bit extra than anybody else hitting it.
He just looked like when he'd punch you, he'd look so much harder
with it. His clotheslines just looked so much more crisp and so much harder
hitting. Let's get into it start of his career. Where exactly did Dynamite
Kid start this stuff? Off Man was born gold Born in England and he
started doing a construction with his father. His father was an ex boxer.
He mentions that his father trained him and fisticuffs a bit when he was young.
His dad went on to do construction and that's where he met a man
by the name of Ted Bentley. Ted Bentley wasn't he involved with the snake
Pit Jim and Wigham Uk. Ted Bentley, who I guess at one point
had wrestled as a doctor death moniker, who took him to meet Billy Riley
where the shoot fighters and the pro wrestling would meet. You had guys with
that old school hooker mentality, just vicious. That's probably where Dynamite first learned
to be so freaking mean and so effective in the ring. So he eventually
started training with a guy by the name of Billy Chambers and by the age
of sixteen, he was ready to make his debut his first match against the
guy by the name of Bobby Hums. I just have one question there,
Tim, You said he was a hooker. You said he was working the
street corners out there, buddy. You know, times were tough back then.
You had to do what you had to do to make ends meet.
So a hooker, you hear that term applied to guys like Billy Robinson or
Luthz And the idea was that was the old school grapplers that were if you
were going to try to shoot or pull some Now this is the time where
wrestling was moving from a lot of the more legit grappling aspects to more fictional
for entertainment purposes. There would be a lot of people in different territories that
would try to take something on you and try to try to gain a little
bit something from your reputation by hurting you in the ring. They were known
for being vicious wrestlers. These were guys who knew that legitimate, real mma
style as well as the performance aspect, right right, So almost like a
h I kind of want to compare that to almost like and Shamrock almost of
today, just a way that you see him as in the ring, if
you were to try to do let's say, you were to try to be
too stiff with him, once he'd get you in like an ankle lock or
something. He knew how to actually do it so it would actually hurt you
type of things that. Yeah, that's a that's an interesting way. You
have people who were then trained in legitimate bone breaking arts, you know,
and that's these guys. Could you know, a Luths could snap you if
he really wanted to, and it wasn't just bs, you know. The
Dynamite kid is learning this hardcore smash mouth style from his connections with Ted Bentley,
who was training him. Bentley gave him a chance by contacting Max Crabtree.
Crabe not familiar with him, which promotion was he a part of?
Now, let's put it this way. His brother was surely Crabtree, which
is known as Big Daddy. So we're talking the seventies and catch wrestling style,
you know England. From there, Dynamite got his first televised match against
the Guy, a fellow by the name of Pete Meredith. He I worked
with Big Daddy a lot. From his own words, he was usually the
underneath guy. He was the guy that, you know, they would have
a tag match and you'd have one tag partner. You see it all the
time. He goes in there, he gets the crap kicked out of him
and it builds up the big hot tag. So when he brings his partner
in, the guy can come in like a house of fire, get the
big victory, send the crowd home happy and Dynamite. So complaints is that,
Well, he was young, he could bump, you know, and
Big Daddy would come in look like the big hero. And so he was
there in the European you know catches catch can wrestling, working with fellas like
Haystacks Calhoun and ken Do Nagasaki and Mark Rollerball, Roco Rollerball rock O.
Why is that name vaguely familiar? I've heard this name before, sir,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you're thinking of Black Tiger, which
is what he became later on. Another smash mouth style kind of wrestler and
Dynamite had a lot of good things to say about them, that these are
the guys he sort of cut his his teeth with and about the age of
eighteen, he got his first his first actual title. So this is about
we're talking nineteen seventy six. Oh wow, so that's seventy seven maybe beyond
me man, Yeah, yeah, that's me too as a matter of fact.
But the Dynamite Kid is he's already showing people. And it was Ted
Bentley who came up with the name Dynamite Kid. By the way, according
to what Tom Billington says, Bentley had asked a young man, hey,
would you like this fellaw's autograph? He was sitting there with Tom Billington and
he's like, hey, would you like this guy's autographs? He's a great
wrestler, he's the Dynamite Kid. And he looked at Billington He's like,
hey, you know how to spell the word dynamite, you know, and
kind of pats him on the back. So that was his first autograph,
and it was Bentley who came up with the name. And he's stuck with
his entire career. So that's kind of interesting, and it was there in
nineteen seventy eight that Bruce Hart had witnessed him. And that's when you say
heart. Are we talking like Heart foundation style heart or who we talk about?
Man? That's absolutely you're dead on. We're talking about Stuhart's son,
and we're talking about Stampede Wrestling and Calgary and you have the you know,
the young hearts there. You got a bunch of people like Junkyard Dog.
There are young Hercules, Hercules Hernandez and this is a chance for a dynamite
kid. He goes over there, he's working young Jim Knight Hart Abdullah the
Butcher, and it was from there that he got his chance to go to
Germany with Brett Hart. So it was during these these eras he first meets
Storre Seyamu wrestling as Sam e Lee and sat Just. Also during this time
he meets j Yd wrestling in Stampede, who I believe was a big daddy
ritter at the time, and he says, this is when he first started
getting introduced. This is about nineteen seventy nine to steroids. Incredible as a
wrestler, the Dynamite was already going out there and pressing people with this hard
work. Unfortunately he was dabbling a little bit, which becomes much of an
issue later on, as we're going to get to right, right, I
mean, from what I've seen and heard, a big part of his career
and his life later on is heavily affected by the drug use and whatnot,
and it really does scr up a lot of parts of his life. I've
heard a lot of stories about apparently Jyd just used to be, like,
I don't know, a distributor, just the gateway for almost everybody, it
seems like, to like start getting into these drugs and everything. But regardless
of that, where does it go from here? Man? He bet a
fellow by the name of Hadachi who got him a chance to wrestle in International
Wrestling Enterprise, And this is the first time he worked in Japan, and
he apparently did well enough that he got a chance to from other promoters to
come and wrestle Tatsumi Fujinami and who was at this time the WF Junior light
Heavyweight Champion. Right right, and whenever you say like any kind of junior
heavyweight title kind of brings me to thinking about iwgp's junior heavyweight title and just
how it is considered one of the higher ones to be held in Japan,
and how so many have held it that are considered the rising stars. You
know, Liger has held it multiple times. I believe Nakamora held it at
a very young age as well, And it's one of those things that I
believe is just known as a badge of honor over in the Japanese side of
wrestling. Absolutely, he goes and he gets a chance to work Fujinami.
He also gets a chance to work a guy's like a noocchi and choshu and
tag bouts and such, and he's still working Stampede at this time. This
is we're talking about. We're getting about nineteen eighty and his manager at the
time is called a guy called John Foley. Fully sort of interesting. There
are some dark rumors surrounding him, which we will get to. All right,
So around this time, would you say this is uh, wasn't it
eighty two? Where he eventually has his matches with Tiger Mask, And these
are considered some of the best matches that like even mcfoley talks about as a
young man. He kept rewinding him just watching these matches in like slow motion.
At the point where he's like breaking tapes of it. Not necessarily how
well the moves are always executed, but the speed and the precision and just
everything about the match itself was just so well done that so many people are
really captivated by it, especially at the time, and it really does come
in later on with from what I've heard, that was one of his greatest
works was I believe it was nineteen eighty two at the time. There's an
excellent match with Tiger Mask versus the Dynamite Kid for the adopt Off Light Heavyweight
Championship in Madison Square Garden and it's great. You can hear Vince mcmahonon commentary,
you can hear Guerrilla Monsoon, and during this Gorilla Monsoon refers to them
as the future of wrestling, and he was right. Tiger Mask is doing
things like whipping his opponent into the corner, he runs and he climbs up
them and does a backflip off it. He's doing things like the moon Salt,
He's doing dives to the outside. From his matches with Tiger Mask in
eighty two to eighty three, he's really set the standard that people would try
to emulate. Later. You're seeing some incredible stuff, right, and honestly,
the way that I could compare seeing some of the stuff that was done
in those matches, the way that I can kind of describe it today as
almost like watching a match of well Osprey or maybe Ricochet in a way.
The way that they work with outside dives, the moon salts, everything that
they do. This was kind of brand new back in the eighties because it
was more, how do I describe it, a different kind of show.
I'm going to tell you you didn't see high flying. Then you'd see a
match, you know, a wrestler would come out and some leagues more so
than others. A WBF, that's what it was at the time, is
the World Wrestling Federation didn't have high flyers so to speak. That you'd refer
to a guy's being agile, and you know you had Jimmy Snook on such
but really towards the end of the match you would do a big flying splash.
Most of the time, these guys would hit a lot of drop kicks
and a crossbody block, and that's what really that's the type of moves that
you'd expect. You didn't see people doing dives to the outside. It did
not come around often at all. Let me tell you the first time I
saw it, it was people like, of course Dynamite and Ricky the Dragon
Steamboat, who were you know, another legendary performer who pushed work rate as
it was. But I guess the difference between say them and someone like a
Ricochet will Ospray and there's nothing I'm not trying to take anything away from those
guys, you know, Ricochet and Osprey a fantastic workers, is that it
looked so legit with Tiger Mask and Dynamite. They were just they still worked
hard as hell. They were slugging each other with these these shots that had
old school smash mouth style pro wrestling with every shot, and it didn't look
like an aerial exhibition. It didn't look like some sort of festival for spots.
It looked like they were trying to hurt each other. And I think
that's why a lot of people still cherish a lot of these matches today,
because they walk that that sort of edge, you know, on the you
know, between being fantastic entertainment and still being brutality that makes you believe it's
kind of a fight, right right, And that's something that the way that
I kind of see wrestling today is there's two sides to the spectrum. For
those diehard fans, really you've got the people that are more on the side
of Jim Cornett, where it's like, hey, I want this to look
at least somewhat realistic, so I don't have to suspend belief. I want
it to look like, yeah, this is something that could happen in a
fight. Whereas whereas then there's people like Meltzer who are like, you know
what, I just want to be entertained. So what if they're you know,
all doing a flip off the top rope and almost like everybody doing it
in sequence or something like that. If it's entertaining, let it go type
of thing, which I get it. I can understand both sides, but
realistically it feels like that was just a best of both worlds, and seeing
clips of it and everything, it's like these guys really did it and really
tried their best to do both at the same time, and they perfected it
somehow just right. Oh it was, Yeah, there's something there that's just
you know, different. You're not seeing something that just looks practice, I
guess, is what I'm saying. It doesn't look like they're cooperating. And
interesting enough, you mentioned Meltzer. He actually the second match, the second
five star match he ever gave out in his ratings, according to him,
was Tiger Mask and Dynamite Kid, which is interesting, right. He's very
well known for giving out ratings to certain matches. I know that a few
years ago he had gave was it Kenny Omega and Kazushido Okada, I believe
the first ever six star and ever since then it's kind of gone off the
rails with the rating system. But yeah, no, that's I guess that's
kind of how it goes when something just blows your mind to the point where
you're like, I didn't think it could be this good. Tiger Mask eventually
leaves New Japan, and those matches they had at that time were absolutely those
two together, they were timeless. But Dynamite continues, you know, with
his career, and he's now working in places like Portland where he's in a
group called the Klan with men like rip Oliver and the Cuban Assassin and this
it is here that he he starts meeting Billy Jack Haynes and Kurt Hennig.
Who have you know, mister Perfect an incredible wrestler. Hennick of course isn't
quite the size and such that he was in later years. But right off
the bat, if you see these early matches in eighty three, you can
tell that you know, Hennig is going to be something special and right because
Hennig he became mister Perfect, right, I mean that's yeah, Kurt Well
right, and that was after he uh not not only you know, he
went to the AWA became a champion there and such. It's I I'm I'm
kind of a mark for mister perfect. So I really think he could have
been a world you know, contender, but I don't think. I guess
maybe at the time in the WWF that wouldn't have worked as well. You
always had a face led champion, you know, a face champion, a
baby face, and you know, maybe he didn't work that as well that
way. But going on though, right off the bat, he's working these
great guys. He's in his own words though, he's starting to hit the
story. It's pretty hard and the Dynamite Kid is now up to two twenty
five, especially because you know he's describing Henneg as small and Hennig's you know,
a bit taller than him and such. He starts to get Davy Boy
Smith, who's his brother in law. I believe I believe that was his
cousin of some sort from what I had heard and seen. I heard that
they were cousins. His brother in law actually ended up being a Brett Harp
believe it or not. Yeah, I think you're correct. My apologies.
So he gets Davy Boy and they start wrestling in New Japan as a team,
and he's also working singles matches with a guy known as the Cobra,
which is George Takano. He's who he's worked in the past, but this
was sort of they did the best they could. Tiger mask is gone now
and they start bringing in a black Tiger, which of course was the before
mentioned Mark rollerbral Roco's about at the time of eighty four or so, say
hey, I'm a contact Dynamite tries to get him to work with you for
UWF. And if you've heard of the UWF, it was sort of a
promotion that was supposed to be a combination of the entertainment with a very heavy
aspect going towards realism and mixed martial arts style fighting. They didn't want to
do a bunch of backdrops and you know, they didn't want people flying off
the top rope, and so you have people like Sayama and Akiramita there.
Billington declines the offer, and Uwa did have some success later, but then
after that they kind of, you know, kind of fizzled out. And
during this time he's still working with of course Calgary Wrestling and such. He's
going all over the place after Tiger Mask, and the after Tiger Mask had
left, he starts to work with Giant Baba in All Japan. There was
a kind of a shift there and in Japan All Japan was starting to gain
quite a bit of a credibility in traction with better wrestlers and such, and
that's where they're attracting people like the Funk brothers, you know, Terry and
his brother Dory. Where uh, that's you know, the British Bulldogs as
they would eventually become, are now working. They're not the Bulldogs yet.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. You're gonna say something.
Oh no, I was just gonna ask about so Terry and Dory Funk.
Weren't they from Texas or something? Like that. Oh, absolutely, Amarillo,
Texas. These are the guys who they eventually Terry Funk started the Funk
You University and the absolutely yeah, Amroillo, Texas. And so these are
old school, you know, mid South kind of kind of brawlers, and
they had some fantastic matches. These guys are just beat the hell out of
each other. There's some great ones with the Funk Brothers take also taking on
uh Bruiser Brody and Jimmy Snooka during this kind of era in all Japan.
I highly recommend it, but not gonna be for the faint of heart.
There's a lot of blood and these are very stiff shots. Yeah, Dynamite
right up his alley, and he liked Terry Funk right off the bat,
who was kind of a prankster and a goofball just like he was, right.
I mean, I've heard a lot about uh, there's a lot of
ribbing back in the day from what I've heard, and ribbing for you guys
who don't know, meaning that there was a lot of pranks that went on,
but there was some people who really were against it because you know,
ribbing on somebody it could be anything from you know, taking a dump inside
their gym bag or whatever, to shaving their head while they're asleep, stuff
like that. But some wrestlers who were like out of the road for a
long time, they just didn't find it funny. After it's like, hey,
I've been you know, away from home for you know, two months.
Now this is all I've gotten. You're really gonna, you know,
defecate on everything I have type of thing. But you know, that sort
of stuff going on, and but yeah, please continue, tim, this
is amazing stuff. Well it's it's it's it's interesting that you go that way,
you know, that route, because yeah, he and he and Davy
boy Smith are eventually known for doing some pretty ridiculous and some pretty hard the
type of ribs at you you start to think yourself, is that really a
joke? And one of their favorites actually is cutting up other wrestlers clothes with
scissors while the guy's out wrestling, going into the guy's bag. But anyhow,
after his time there, this is back in Calgary. He's also wrestling
in Calgary and all Japan at the time, and that's where he and Brett
Hart when they're wrestling each other end up getting the attention of a man named
George Scott who works with Vince McMahon. And this is where they get their
first invitations to go down and do some matches for some television tapings. He
and Brett Hart they travel down there and they wrestle and he says, they
do a couple of matches. They do some tag team matches as well,
and such. This is without Davy Boy. He complained about what they were
paid. Actually, he says it was something like the equivalent of twenty five
dollars each. That's not, you know, not very good. But then
they were promised, hey, you come back, we're doing a loop and
we're going to be doing a bunch of house shows in New York. It's
gonna be good money. And when he returned, and at this time,
Vince McMann is also working with Stampede a little bit, he meets Vince McMahon.
Vince takes a look at him and Davy Boy, who Dynamite has told
him about. He says, I got this, I got this, cousin.
Excuse me, you know, cousin. Vince looks at them and he
was like, you know what, you guys look like a couple of bulldogs,
you know, they're wide, they're angry looking that it was Vince who
came up with the idea of the British Bulldogs. Interesting always leave it up
to Vince first some good character ideas. But then again, you know,
one of his ideas for a Stone Cold's character was supposed to be Baron von
Frost and stuff like that. So not a ways, but I think he
hit the nail on the head with this one, hey, you know,
and that's that's Vince boy. He's the guy who changed the business. And
he also, you know, he's come up with the Undertaker. He also
came up with Bastrom Booker, so let's put that in you know, perspective
there. So they he was the one who came up with them wearing the
Union jack, you know, British design, and he was also the one
that decided that they would come out with bulldogs. And Vince has come up
with some pretty hokey things, you know, He's we could have been worse,
we could have been the red Rooster, you know. So all we
had to do was walk a couple bulldogs to the ring. It wasn't so
bad and it did go over well with the crowds. They you know,
they start to take off. Vince is building towards WrestleMania two, and during
this time the Heart Foundation has started off in the WBF, the Oo Brett
is there as well. You know, things are you know, really growing.
A Dynamite Kid and Davy Boy are still working some matches in All Japan
where he meets Mitsuhara Masawa, another fantastic wrestler, another Dave Meltzer favorite,
another five star kind of wrestler. At this time, Misawa's wrestling as Tiger
Mask Number two. They're having pretty good matches and such. Though Misawa was
a different kind of Tiger Mask than Seyama was. He was less agile,
less acrobatic, more more of a heavyweight, but still a very good wrestler
and a little less theatrical in general. That's miss Sawa. Any match you
watch with him, he doesn't give a lot of emotion to the crowd,
but between working All Japan and working the WF, he's doing quite well.
And in WrestleMania two, they've decided that the British Bulldogs should get the tag
team titles in Chicago now and in WrestleMania two, that's the one where Vince
decided with close circuit television and such. He was going to book out three
arenas make the most money. Could you have to understand, folks, this
is before standard pay per view as we know it. And so he has
Hogan wrestling King Kong Bunde and a steel cage in Los Angeles, Hrandy Savage
and George the Animal Steel for the Intercontinental title. In New York. You
also have the Dream Team Brutus Beefcake, Greg the Hammer Valentine taking on the
Bulldogs. And that's in Chicago. And this is nineteen eighty six WrestleMania two.
A smashing success. An odd finish to the match, though, I
have to say, did you ever watch that match? So I've seen some
clips of it, but I have not seen the finish of it, so
please elaborate. It's an odd finish the ideas, I guess. The maneuver
they use is referred to as a sort of sacrifice maneuver that only and Jean
Anderson would use, where one tag team partner would slam the head of an
opponent into his own partner. So it's like a forced head butt where you
grab your enemy and you slam it into your buddy's face. And that's what
the British Bulldogs did. They wrestle a pretty good match with Beefcake and Valentine
and at one point you can see Dynamite on the second row. He starts
patting his head to get Davy Boy's attention. Davy Boy smacks Greg the Hammer's
head into his Greg the Hammer goes down like he's completely out. Davy Boy
Smith gets the pinfall for the three before a brutus Beefcaken interrupt But what you
don't see real well in the footage, and I highly if you watch this
match, I highly recommend you check it out slow motion if you have to.
The fall Dynamite Kid takes is ridiculous. You know, it's a head
butt to headbutt. He is standing on the second rowe and he falls from
there got to be a good nine feet onto concrete and the camera doesn't even
capture it that well. The crowd saw it and it was pretty intense,
and I'm sure that's what he was trying to do, is show you a
big, incredible moment, but it was a little disappointing when you watch it
on you know, on footage, people miss it a lot. We all
know about the infamous Mick Foley falling off of the Hellena cell after being pushed
off by Undertaker and falling through the announcer table. Could you imagine if the
camera just didn't catch that. Now we have the British Bullbox as the World
Tag Team Champions, and this is about the time they have Matilda as their
manager or their mascot. I guess, but right, who exactly was Matilda
again? Just remind me please, I'm a little lost on that. Matilda
was just a bulldog. She was a sweet little dog that Vince gave them.
Dannymite talks about this in his book and he says that what they would
do to try to get Matilda to chase some of the villain's managers and such,
whether it's Bobby Heenan or Slick or whatever, is that he would have
asked one of them to go up and keep taking her toys, or he
said, they would ask Slick to kind of kind of prod her a little
bit with his cane, to kind of piss her off all the time,
so that Matilda actually hated these guys and didn't know much better. Sometimes it
worked. If you watch some of these old matches, you can see they
get in the ring with Matilda and she'll go right after Jimmy Hart's megaphone or
whatever, and that's you know, it looks great for television. That is
interesting to hear about how they potentially did a little bit of animal training to
get a little bit of a reaction and a little something just you know,
having oh, even the animal doesn't like him sort of thing. And just
she's that well in sync with the team that she was the mascot for.
That's interesting and I like that. So they're tag team champions at this point.
They're kind of just going up and up in popularity. Yeah, what
goes on next with them? Man around this time in eighty six, he
has a match with he's tagging with Davy boy Smith and they're taking on Orton.
This is Randy Orton's father, Bob Orton, Bob Cowboy Orton, and
his tag team partner that magnificent Morocco Don Morocco. During this bout, he's
working against Morocco and he gets whipped into the ropes. Dynamite is supposed to
jump over him and hit the opposite ropes, and he said there was something
about the leap that he pulled his back right there in the middle of it,
so he hits the other side, jumping over his opponent, and then
from there he kind of collapses. I believe that after that he had to
have surgery on his back, and I believe it was something along the line
of having two discs pulled out of his back. Afterwards just being removed completely.
This is where he started to experience some big problems. First of all,
he couldn't finish the match very well. He ended up just laying there.
He kind of drags himself over, He tags Davy Boy, who ends
up finishing the match, and from there he's now injured. Transport him back
home to Calgary. Actually he's in the hospital. In his own words,
Davy Boy only came to visit him when he came with He arrived with his
wife. They showed up, they got a photo for the local newspaper in
Calgary, and then they left. And as far as Tom Billington says,
he claims that that was that was probably it. You know that Davy Boy
apparently didn't give a damn and they were just doing it for you know,
exposure, you know, for you know, for press and sucks. So
it's hard to say whether Davy boy really didn't care about him or what.
But that's kind of how he paints the picture. After this, that's when
Dynamite started to go a little downhill, right, I mean he had the
injury and everything at that point. I don't want to say you're becoming useless,
but you're going to have a little bit less of everything at that point,
at least during the healing process. And according to h I had watched
the Dark Side of the Ring episode about Dynamite Kid, and people claimed,
yeah, he wasn't out for very long. He was out for maybe two
weeks and tried to get back in the ring already after that, even though
he was told he shouldn't be anymore. And it was claimed that at that
point that is when they were told that they had to drop the titles because
well, you know, you're heard at that point, they don't want to
absolutely just destroy this man's body completely. He actually, from what he describes,
he's twenty eight at this time, and he's finally told by a doctor
where he hears the words over there like maybe you should find another career.
So you're twenty eight and you're already be told, hey, this is enough
for you. He's refusing that, and he's talking about yeah, not only
he's having the problems with his back, he had issues with his leg.
His left leg was apparently not responding correctly and there were some signs of paralysis.
Though it did come back to him and Brett Hart did come to visit
him, and while there bretton here talking, Brett says, and would like
it if I can maybe take the title back with me. We have to
continue. We have stuff we got to do, you know, things have
to go on, you know. Dynamite refuses to give him the title.
Brett Hart returns back to you know, the Federation and apparently tells Vinces,
who then calls Billington later, can't you know, have you know a belt
that's not being defended. You know, let's you know, let's figure this
out. And the solution they came up with is they have the Dynamite kid,
who's now been training for a little bit, return with Davy Boy and
he they walked to the ring. I remember watching this as a kid.
They're walking to the ring arm in arm, which is such a strange and
by that, I don't mean they're working with their arm around each other,
like, hey, buddy, how you doing, like if you put your
hands on your hips and there's someone else doing the same thing and you sort
of link at elbows. He walks down the ring side with him like that
because apparently the Dynamite Kid just could not walk correctly, and this is what
they had to do. So they get there. Jimmy Hart's megaphone is used
against him so he can be knocked out at ringside, the Heart Foundation,
jim Knightheart and Brett Hart end up wrestling Davy Boy in what's almost a handicap
match. They have Dangerous Danny Davis not quite yet, but the referee Danny
Davis, who they start to show is a heel referee going against the faces
and the good guys of the WWF. He keeps checking on Dynamite on the
outside in a way that it keeps allowing the Heart Foundation to just keep working,
almost like a handicap match against Davy Boy. Of course, this leads
to them getting the titles after several double team maneuvers, and that's that.
Danny Davis ends up working with the Heart Foundation in a WrestleMania appearance against the
Bulldogs. During this time, it's just interesting seeing how his performance really just
kind of flattens out for a little bit, and you can tell it's just
different from how he was. It's a little bit disappointing and a little bit
heartbreaking. Know that guy is twenty eight. I'm twenty five right now,
and that feels like, man, that's only three years away from me.
I didn't really realize that. I do understand businesses business. Maybe they should
have just vacated the titles and said, well, look, go a little
bit reality with it and just say, hey, you know, the champion
was injured, but he wants to fight back for the titles, So we're
going to hold a you know, tag team tournament or whatever for whoever's going
to win the belts, and then you know, they'll be able to try
to win him back or whatever while he recovers and then is able to come
back for it. You know, maybe they should have thought about some around
those lines to get him at least interested and not too upset about the whole
situation. I guess, maybe not have his pride in the way of things.
Yeah, well, what are you going to do there? You have
a situation. The show must go on, and the WWF is getting so
much momentum and at this point you got to realize too, the Bulldogs are
they're in a great position. You know, you have this league that's exploding
at the time, and you've got to do what you've got to do.
Business is business. Anyways, they use this to build towards the big match
at WrestleMania three, and you know, Billington has been training and working out
again. And the thing is he's at that age he's doing so many steroids.
He's he describes himself at one point that he's doing steroids. He's doing
cortizone shots. You're not supposed to take cortizone all the time. It's not
supposed to be something that you just do once a week, and that's how
he's describing it. And it's supposed to be something you'd take maybe twice a
year or also can damage the joints and the muscles in your body, which
comes back to him later. But Dynamite Kid Tom Bellington, he sort of
lived for the moment. He just kept kept rocking on, kept going right
right, And something that was mentioned by Jacques Roujeau. He had said that
he remembered at one point seeing Billington walking around in the locker room. He
had a needle sticking out of his butt and it's just kind of like moving
and just dangling there, and he's like yelling, I'm gonna have a great
match that night, and then he just sees him walk out and he's just
kind of like scarred for life watching as this dude's just walking around with his
needle just flailing out of his butt like that. Well, that's there's so
many stories about the guy. I believe it's the Honky Tonk Man mentions dynamite
Kid gives himself a shot with a steroid at one point, you know,
right in the ar's cheek. He would just throw the needle, you know,
like on the ground or whatever. You know, didn't even bother with
the trash at the time. It wasn't even like he was trying to hide
the steroid usage, but a lot everyone was doing it. I guess at
the time there was something that I had seen as well about uh Spivey had
talked about, Uh yeah, a lot of guys they would just shoot up
and then they would throw it into a wall like it was a dart.
And he called everybody that was in the locker room just idiot wrestlers. But
that was just how it was back then. That's who they were. You
know. It's easy for us to laugh, but I guess they were.
They were living like rock stars. They had that mentality that you know,
you had that much testosterone, that that much ego in the room and people
are going to act like tough guys. They're they're destroying their bodies. But
at the time they were. It was what they needed. It was what
they needed that boost. I might not agree with it, but that's what
they did. Unfortunately, Dynamite Kid was doing it like crazy and he's having
all sorts of problems. So he and the Davy Boy Smith are starting to
have some issues. And it's about this time when they had a day off,
I guess they decide to fill in the match for in Stampede Wrestling,
you have to understand the Bulldogs did not sign to a major contract like a
lot of other wrestlers did. They wanted to still be free to go wrestle
in All Japan Pro Wrestling or Stampede or wherever they liked to make as much
money as they could. Dynamite was always booking based on how he could,
you know, build his bank account, which is smart it's business. You've
got to make the money where you can. But a lot of wrestlers you
work for the WWF focus on that it's the you know, the big coming
league, and that's what Vince wanted obviously. That was the way the future
is that people would work just one specific league and one you know, travel
with just that. And he did get in trouble for filling in doing a
match in Stampede, and that's what Vincent took, like, Hey, even
if you're not signed to a contract, you're not going to go work you
know, some indie and you know, the North American leagues and such,
and that's not the way it works, you know. So she's a little
controlling, but I get it. You want your league to be almost exclusively
just who you have on your roster. To an extent, I understand Vince's
point of view on that that if you're working other places, it diminishes the
you know, the World Wrestling Federation. And as a wrestling fan, maybe
I didn't like it at the time, but I guess I understand Vins's motivations.
It helped him to become the promoter that he did. Concepts like that,
right, right, So yeah, moving on from there him coming back
from Stampede. So, I think we know what people kind of want to
hear about. Let's start to move into the Rougeau incident and some of the
things that happened in the locker room Man In nineteen eighty seven, he first
worked with them in the Survivor series. He tagged up with the Killer Bees,
the Strike Force, the Rougeaus, of course, and the Young Stallions
when they took on Demolition the Islanders, the Heart Foundation and the tag team
of Dino Bravo and Greg Valentine. The Bulldogs were eliminated by the Islanders.
The Young Stallions and the Killer Bees end up going on to win the bout.
He describes not liking the Rouge's. He says that when you were around
the Rougeau's Jacques and Raymond Rougeau, who are French Canadians, and he claims
that they would talk to each other in their own language, and it made
you feel like you were outside of the inside Joe. He describes them not
being very popular with the rest of the roster anyway. The whole incident seemed
to come about when Kurt Hennig, mister Perfect, who was quite the River
himself decided to snip up some of the clothes of the Rougeau's and apparently made
it look that the British Bulldogs were behind it, which was not a surprise
because they had done this to several other people. Interesting some of the ribbing
coming back again to haunt them in a way, but you know, it's
just how the business was at the time. Dynamite claims that, well,
this is one of the times we did not do it, and Jacques Rougeau,
according to Kurt Hennig, had you know, stooged them out to Vince
McMahon or someone he said or was trying to. So he walks in during
a card game that Kurt Hennig is having with Jacques Roujeau and a Raymond who
is also there. Dynamite walks in with sort of an entourage. He has
Bad News Brown with him and Don Morocco and a couple other guys he's friendly
with, and he walks up in this blasts Jacques Rougeau in the side of
the head kind of palm strikes from behind and knocks knocks Jacques right out of
his chair, and Jacques is trying to be reasonable with him. Hey,
what's going on? Why? Why? Why are you angry at me?
What's going on? And his brother Raymond has to step in. And it's
interesting because there's a couple different arguments on this. One is that Dynamite claims
he knocked out both of them in his own words, and in Raymond Rugeau's
is that he, you know, he socker punched his brother, Jacques Rujeau,
and then that was basically it. Then he had left, and Raymond
Rougeau was known for being kind of tough himself. He was a golden gloves
boxer and a lot of wrestlers knew this about him. But he had injured
himself previously before this and was on crutches himself, so he wasn't really,
you know, a tough guy. Otherwise he claimed he would have tried to
step in and actually fight, because Jacques Rougeau was not supposed to be a
tough fella at all. I'm not saying he wasn't tough as a pro wrestler,
but he wasn't. He didn't have the reputation that someone like say Dynamite
Kid does right right, and seeing the way that he even talked about himself,
he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to carry himself to be like
not really looking for fights or anything. But from Rougeau's own words in Dark
Side of the Rings, special about the Dynamite Kid was he had talked to
his father about like what to do, because he was kind of plotting revenge
at that point, taking his father's advice, which was go to the bank,
get yourself a roll of quarters, and then go ahead get him back,
sucker punch him the way that he did to you. And according to
him, he waited and was just waiting for a dynamite after a match,
and he said for a week he hadn't looked Dynamite Kid in the eyes,
but then that day he was waiting for him, and as he saw him
walking over towards him, he said, hey, how's it going. He
said, Dynamite Kid lifted his head up, had a coffee in his hand,
and then as soon as he lifted his head up, immediately just punched
him straight out of the chin. And he said, you know those monster
movies that you see as a kid, and how there's blood spewing everywhere,
Well, it's true. I knocked out four teeth and that's the way that
it kind of looked at that point, and then I yelled at him,
next time, I'll put you in a wheelchair censoring. Of course, Vince
McMahon had apparently spoken to them and said, hey, I'm going to talk
to you guys soon, because he knew something was brewing. He knew there
was problems, you know, going on this locker, and the Rougeau's knew
that if they didn't do something soon, you know, if they've reacted after
Vince spoke to them and told them, hey, you know, I don't
want any more violence, then that was their jobs. And he went down
to one knee and Raymond Rougeau is cheering his brother on, come on,
Cohan, try to jab jab jab, you know, to try to take
him out. Raymond can't get involved. He's on crutches. Dynamite is not
going down, but he's trying to hold on to Raymond eventually or Jacques Roujeau,
and eventually he does when Jacques Hill jabs him enough that he goes down.
Bad News Brown gets in separates everyone and after that, the Rougeau brothers
go and they immediately go speak to Vince McMahon, who was in the middle
of speaking to Hogan at the time, and the Dynamite kid has taken off
to go get his teeth fixed. It was a couple of weeks later Vince
brings them all together and he has the Rougeau brothers agree to pay for Dynamite's
teeth and drops it at that though the Rougeaus deny that they ever actually paid
to it. They just said it and apparently Vince paid for it, and
Dynamite also in his book Pure Dynamite claims that he got his teeth fixed for
free, so he pulled one on them anyway, and several wrestlers have stated
that that's the point where Dynamite wasn't quite the same guy after that, because
his sort of tough guy status and the way he sort of swaggered was changed.
You know, people had seen him fall and he was never quite the
same right at that point, it seemed like his ego has started to fall
off. Now, one other thing that had happened after the incident, in
a little bit of the falling action from all of that, was it gave
Dynamite issue some issues with his confidence and everything, and eventually it led to
him buying a gun to give to his wife because according to him. Apparently
Dino Bravo, who you know, he had his mafia ties and everything and
all that stuff that had went on with his career. Well, apparently he
had seen a envelope with you know, Thomas Fillington's family home address names everything
in it, and he was telling them like, hey, you might want
to be careful. I think Jacques may have done something to prevent any kind
of retaliation. And according to Jacques Roujeau, he set that up that it
wasn't actually real, but he made something up that Dino Bravo would believe enough
that he would go back to the Dynamite kid and tell him, yeah,
you guys better be careful sort of thing, Whereas Jacque Ujaux claims, well,
I guess it works. He wasn't gonna bother me again sort of thing.
I guess, really trying to get rid of the bully of hard Way.
And no, I guess it worked because you never really hear about any
kind of issue after that. If they were working Dynamite a little bit,
you know, it's hard to say, can you really blame them, you
know, considering all the pranks and stuff he pulled on everyone else, They
probably just wanted it to be done. And he also had mentioned that during
this time that Chief Ja Strongwoll had or try to buy some steroids off of
Tom Billington, and Billington said, well, I just gave him ten bottles
or so, and he ended up, you know, also getting fined.
You know, who knows if the steroids were something to you know, tell
back to McMahon or you know whatever. Probably not, because Mince was probably
doing them too, and the Bulldogs were starting to maybe lose a little bit
of favor. You know, there was a lot of bad, bad talk
going on about them in you know, the locker rooms and such. And
it was a little surprising later on when they were supposed to fly elsewhere and
there's only so many flight coupons that were passed out to the wrestlers. Billington
claims that strong Bow, as Vince's agent, seemed to mysteriously not have flight
coupons for both he and Davy Boy. He believed at this point that things
were starting, you know, that this is a punishment and things were starting
to catch up. So he went and he called Giant Baba. Right,
what year would you say this was? At this time point, this would
have to be a found nineteen eighty eight. Okay, that makes sense.
They finished up their time there doing the Survivor Series match. They were supposed
to do bouts with the Brainbusters as well, and apparently Tom Billington did not
like he said. Arn Anderson was all right, but he didn't think much
of Telly Blanchard, so he instead asked, now, let's just do I
don't want to lose to those guys, and so he ends up going to
All Japan and doing some work there. This is around eighty nine. He
ends up starting to work Danny Spidey with Stan Hansen, Toshiaki Kawata and the
Malankos, Joe and Dean. He had very good things to say about the
Malankos, which isn't a surprise. They're fantastic wrestlers and they're not that different
from his style. But this is where things start to go, you know,
a little off the rails, and it's in Japan. I think.
He mentions they go a little harsh on a man by the name of Mitch
snow. Right, you and I talked about Mitch snow a little. He
Dynamite Kid was not a fan of Mitch snow He describes Mitch as being a
bit of a loud mouth. He said that Mitch Snow had made the claim
that, yeah, the bulldogs are never gonna get one over on me,
you know, meaning they're never going to pull a big prank on me.
You never say, oh yeah, they'll never get me, because then they
will find a way to get you. It doesn't matter who it is,
whether it's the Bulldogs or whoever. But if I remember this correctly, So
Mitch Snow, according to a few different wrestlers, including Spivey, said yeah,
he was a real trash talker all the time, no matter what was
going on, in any little situation that he could put his nose into,
be like, oh yeah, you really screwed the pooch here for whatever reason.
Now, eventually they had I'm just gonna preface this right now. For
anybody that's listening that has a sensitivity to how do I put this things about
like assault, date, rape, any of that kind of stuff, you
should probably stop listening here because there's going to be mentions of roofees and the
store. It only gets darker from here, honestly, So if you can't
stomach some darker things that happened in this man's life. You should probably stop
here honestly and live your life. Figure what he was a great guy trigger
warning. Yeah, so he had essentially roofeed Mitch Snow and from there he
basically collapsed in his hotel room onto the bed, and then Davy Boy Smith
and Dynamite Kid they went out the balcony, so they broke into his room.
Apparently they shaved off his eyebrows, shaved his head, took a dump
in his gym bag, which I know I mentioned earlier a little bit of
foreshadowing, but yeah, they really just kind of screwed this guy up just
to show like, oh, you thought that we couldn't get you here?
You go? And Tim, we were talking off camera, did you say
that something had happened with him having to leave Japan early because of that?
From what I understand, when Don Morocco picks him up for a spike pile
driver maneuver, both the bulldogs jumped off turnbuckles and spiked him very hard,
and after Mitch Snow is recovering from his problems, Davy Boy did go and
damage his stuff. You know, Oh we got him in a prank,
but it's you know, he makes it sound so much more innocent than what
you describe, right, right, of course he's gonna have his rose colored
glasses on and just say, oh, you know we yeah, we uh
just pulled a prank on him. No, that's not what that was.
And in the words of Jacqurau show once again, I keep kind of referring
back to him because everything that he had said in the special about him,
well, they like to rib on people, and you know, it's funny
when it's something small time, but man, when you're you know, two
months out of the road, it's not funny anymore when you haven't been home
that long and this is all your stuff, this is all you have.
It's not funny anymore when you know you haven't seen your family in this long
and you're like, man, I've been gone this whole time. This is
everything I have and you guys just mutilated my face and my head doing this
stuff and you're calling it a prank haha, But you're really just screwing me
over long term. So that's kind of how he had seen it, and
it was a pretty good way to describe it, I think, because it
might be funny in a way, but realistically it's kind of messed up when
you're in the middle of a situation like that, not to mention spiking someone
on a pile driver, you know, three person assisted pile driver like that.
Yeah, right, there's that, and then there's also the spiking of
the drinks and everything else, and it's like, man, come on,
because that's what they had said in the Dark Side of the Ring episode was
that they legitimately drugged him. But yeah, that kind of thing. So
yeah, he actually does mention later on too, Mitch Snow when he was
going to wrestle in another league. One of the promoters contacts him and says,
we got a guy here named Mitch Snow and they would like to make
sure that that you're not going to try anything on them, and Dynamite Tom
Billington apparently couldn't turn down that temptation, you know, refused to not further
harass the man. So so anyways, that's basically how we're ending out nineteen
eighty nine and sort of in the nineties, he does mention. He gets
to wrestle Cactus Jack, which is interesting because those of you who know Mick
Foley's book and you know what Mick Foley talked about situation with him and Dynamite
Kid. Are you familiar with this? Maverick Mick Foley had claimed that it
was that he was still going by just Jack Foley at the time. He
had claimed that during the match that ah Man, he said that Dynamite Kid
went for a clothesline, and he said it felt a lot less like a
clothesline and more like he just clubbed me with his bicep and because of that,
it dislocated my jaw and for about three weeks, I wasn't eating any
solid food. Said there was no ill will about the whole situation, that
it wasn't a huge uproar about it. Nobody was upset with each other.
He said that he shook their hands in the locker room afterwards and thanked them
for the match, and then he went back to his hotel room and threw
up in the toilet. Yeah, well, Mix a pretty cool guy about
getting the hell beat out of him. Yeah, that's that's what I heard
as well. Is that Dynamite Kid. I mean, he was known for
that, for doing that, that clothesline, that hooking one. In his
own words, he describes his version compared to how Davy Boy would throw a
clothesline, and he says, hey, if I'm throwing a clothes line at
you, I'm running at you. I'm gonna hook you. You better go
down because if not, it's it's gonna blast you. And you can see
on those shots it looks like, for those of you who have not watched
a lot of them, look at Chris Benoi throwing certain clothes lines, it
looks like, you know, killing the other guy with him. That was
like one of his proteges, wasn't it. Absolutely? Oh absolutely, Chris
Benoa looks like a carbon copy of him at times. But that clothesline is
so so vicious dynamite. It looks like he's catching them with between the bicep
and the forearm right under the neck half the dime, you know. And
when Davy Boy would do it, he would he'd blast him with the clothes
line and then he would lift off a little bit, you know, he'd
hit him with the bicep, you know, and try to connect with the
other guy's pectorial. Well, that's what you're supposed to do with the clothesline.
It's supposed to be that contact. And he says that, you know,
Davy Boy would he'd hit and he would lift off. He felt that
Davy Boy was being too gentle, and Davy's you know comment was like,
hey, I don't want to rip a pectorial muscle on you know, somebody
else, and din might you know, he would he would lay into and
Mick Foley mentions that in his book and they the match you can actually find
online as he's jack fully. It actually ends with a top rope belly to
back superplex, which is insane to see in the eighties belly to back superplex.
You have to realize how young and inexperienced Mick Foley was at the time.
That's not an easy bump to take there. That's you know, that's
you know what they were in the past. But in the nineties he gets
to wrestle Cactus Jack. Mick is a little more experienced, and Tom Billington's
own words, they have a very good match, though he did describe that
when Cactus Jack goes to do his classic elbow on the outside, rolls out
of the way and left Mick to just take the entire impact himself. Mcfoley
doesn't seem to have any hard feelings about this. Good for him, God,
Mick just seems like the nicest sort of guy, like I feel like
somebody could pour soup into his lap and then he would apologize to them.
Honestly, Mick, we're not talking down on you, man. You're just
such a nice guy. If you are listening, you know, right right
right, you know everyone loves you. Still dynamite kid. At this point,
he and this is the nineties era now and things. This is sort
of the downward spiral of Tom Billington. I hate to say, He's wrestling
a lot now in Japan. He's wrestled in stampede with Johnny Smith as both
an opponent and as a tag team partner with him and Davy Boy, and
he and Davy Boy are starting to end their agreetment as the Bulldogs at the
Around this time, Davy Boy takes off back to the WWF and he has
trademarked the name the British Bulldogs, and so he didn't he just become the
British Bulldog at that point though, he did, yeah, and he showed
up and he was huge. And Tom Billington continues to wrestle with Johnny Smith,
oftentimes has the British Bruisers because that's what Johnny Smith had wrestled as Johnny
Smith. By the way, it was related to Ted Bentley. He was
not related to Davy Boy Smith at all, which is interesting because that's the
way they boys presented right. He ends up working the Nasty Boys, and
from his opinion, he didn't think much of them at first. Apparently there's
some incident where they had all went to a sushi bar, the Nasty Boys.
If you look up interviews with them, Brian Nobbs mentions, hey,
we we just forgot We were young, We were drunk and we left a
bar tab open, and I guess it reflected on a Dynamite kid and Dynamite
ad started the match with them. He had looked over to Johnny Smith and
he'd said, hey, don't give him nothing, which meaning, you know,
meaning don't sell for them, don't make them look good, just you
know, just beat on him. And that's what he ended up doing.
The match apparently ends where Tom Billington whips Brian Knobbs to the corner. He
tells him, hey, stay for the clothes line, and he comes running
in and blasts him with a corner clothes line and ends up splitting the guy's
lip, you know, giving him a pin and he said the Nasty Boys
were cool about it, though maybe they were like Mick Foley, and afterwards
he decided he really liked them, good guys. But that's basically how he
started ending you know, all Japan in ninety one. This is sort of
the end of his time. He goes to see his father, his own
father before he dies in England, who has not seen in about thirteen years.
He hates Davy Boys Smith now who's trademarked the name the British Bulldogs so
he can't use it himself. He's not working for the WF, he's not
working for All Japan, who were not happy about, you know, certain
incidents like the Nasty Boys and such. Though they would have still kept booking
him, he just decided he was done there. He's working matches in England.
He's doing stuff for Max Crabtree and such. Again. Davy Boy's done
some stuff for the Federation and then went off to WCW. He apparently didn't
last long in the Fed, and then did some stuff for Crabtree and stuff
back in England again and Dynamite shows up at one of the shows and Smith
is not there. So Tom Billington just destroys his merchandise. Stan, I
guess, and you know, to talk smack about him and such, very
very professional and this is a sort of the tail end years for him.
He ends up working a couple more matches. The last bout I believe was
in Missionoku. Did you know about that? Would that be the attempt to
come back match within nineteen ninety six? I believe, Yeah, I guess.
The idea was they wanted to bring him into surprise Tiger Mask, and
so he works against Tiger Mask. He's tagging with Kuniaki Kobashi and dos karras
against the original Setoro Seyama as Tiger the Great Sasake who owns Missionoku and Mills
Maskarez, and the match itself is okay, but this is pretty much is
You can see when he shows up there, he's a shell of the guy
he was. He's not been doing the steroids. He's not been it's it's
years afterwards. He is now just sort of doing it for the money.
And he mentions himself that he felt embarrassed afterwards because he knew that at this
point it wasn't his work rate anymore that was getting him hired. It was
his his name it was. That was that was all he had left,
right and from what I've heard and what I've seen, his ring gear didn't
even fit correctly at that point, because I mean, he was obviously off
the steroids at that point. He wasn't big enough to really fit even into
his tights at one point for what I've heard, which was spandex. So
that's kind of hard to swallow at that point. In ninety seven, he's
now he's been divorced. At this point, he was divorced in ninety one,
I believe from his life well correct, we can cover that a little
bit later. That was if you guys are still listening, that was,
you know, more about what the trigger warning was for for all of you
guys that you know may be uncomfortable with that, which, hey, no
harm, no foul if you're not comfortable with it. By ninety seven,
he marries his his new wife, Dot who apparently, in his own words,
didn't know he was a wrestler. He liked that that that she just
met him, and you know, they got along. At that point,
he's at the end of it. He's he's seeing doctors and such. He's
wheelchair bound. He's friends with Dan Spivey still who was also having a lot
of problems of his own, and this is pretty much, I hate to
say, it's the end of the man's career. Go for all the things
that he's done and kind of ties up the end. He says that he
was proud of a lot of the things he did. He you know,
he a five Star match with Tiger Mask, the second one Dave Meltzer ever
mentioned. He's had tag the world tag titles in the WBF, in all
Japan, he was the WF Junior light Heavyweight Champion. This guy helped Brett
Hart get to where he got to. You know, the matches they had
were incredible, and he helped shape him and you know the rest of the
Heart family and the others at Stampede, right the guy he helped train Ben
Wah. He really paved the way for the guys like Guerrero and Liger and
really was just a cruiserweight legend at that point before it was really popular to
be that kind of guy. Absolutely. I mean, as far as that
high spot style match, he's the guy who innovated both the superplex and the
backdrop superplex, did some incredible stuff so much it's incredible to see. If
you watch any of his matches, you will see he's very stiff with a
lot of the things that he gives, and he's precise with his move set.
And something that's very memorable about him and something that I've only seen him
hit the way he does is his snap suplex. It's oh quick and it
looks like it hits hard, and even jocqu Rujeau said, yeah, one
second you're standing there and then the next you're just flipped over him and you're
gone. You just feel it hitting the mat. You just feel your back
hit you, and it's like you just didn't expect it, even though you
knew it was about to hit you. His snap super lex is incredible,
and that's you can see that with Ben Wah, Chris. Ben Wah imitates
us, which were so many maneuvers and the guy was great, you know,
flying head butt from the top rope. Some of his work rate really
transcends what you'd expect at the time. It it became the cornerstone for what
you would expect for light heavyweight wrestlers. Cruiseweight Wrestling, the two h five
Live kind of divisions that that sort of you know, hey, we can
wrestle on this, we can do you know, dives to the outside.
These are incredible things, incredible stuff there. On the downside, there's a
lot of negatives. And this is I think you and I talked before,
and I'd said a little bit of the good, the bad, the ugly.
Yep. Yeah, for you guys who are listening, here's what the
trigger warning was about. Let's go back to nineteen ninety one. Let's talk
about what we talked a little bit off camera about. So, okay,
yeah, what are we going to talk about? His wife and the shotgun.
We're going to talk about the family life and things that just happened,
and his daughters remember his former wife remembers. So we'll start off with this
story, guys, nineteen ninety one. I believe his former wife had said
it was New Year's and he comes home with just a bloody face, and
his daughter was just terrified. Obviously, I mean her dad just walked in
faces bleeding. I think any little kid, that's for anybody that would see
that would be like, yo, what is going on? And he comes
over he's like, Ah, don't worry about it. He fell, It's
okay, And his wife's a little nervous, obviously for good reason, and
eventually she starts talking to him and says, hey, what's going on.
He's not really being specific. Eventually it seemed like he had lost his mind.
During this time. She tried not to have anybody hurt in the situation,
but as she was pregnant with his third child, I believe don my
kid had an absolute episode and it seemed like he had lost his mind.
There's a point where she had asked him to leave because of the way he
was acting and being and he said, you know what, I think you
should leave me, he said. She said, no, you know,
I have the kids here, I'm pregnant. I think it would be easier
for you to go, and I think you should go back to England.
And he told her, you know what, you know, fifteen minutes to
get out, and grabbed a shotgun, pointed at her head and said I
will blow your effing head off. And at that point she actually called his
bluff. She's just now, yeah, you're not going to do that,
and eventually ended up calling the police, who basically told her, well,
he said you can leave, just leave, So eventually she did follow the
direction of the police operator, who I think is just wow, that has
to be one of the worst possible people to be giving you advice at that
moment. Oh well, the gunman says, you can leave, just go,
this is my house. No, right, right, Why aren't you
helping me? But wow, Yeah, there was a little bit more violent
things that went on, Like I guess he had dragged her across the floor
by the hair at first, and she had been just traumatized at that point,
but she kept trying to like downplay for the kids, like, oh,
no, daddy's having a moment. It's okay, he'll leave, We'll
be fine. Eventually she and the kids left, and then he left back
to England, where he wouldn't be seen for a long time and his daughters
hadn't seen him in what felt like forever. And then a few years later
he got remarried to I believe her name was dot you had said in what
was it Night? Ninety seven? Later on down the road his daughter was
oldest one. I believe her name is Bronwin. Yeah, she had decided,
you know what, I'm going to go and see him, just to
at least put that effort out there and to try for him and she claims
it was a nice visit. There was even a point where he actually apologized
to her for things that he had put the family through and how terrible it
was. There's just a lot to that to think about, Like could you
imagine witnessing your own family turning against you like that all over what you know?
Along with this, there is some rumors that he was in some sort
of bare knuckle boxing ring of some sort, and oh geez, Dan Spivey
had talked about it a little bit. I'm not entirely sure how true it
is, and from between Tim, you and I, we haven't really found
any other substantial evidence besides Spivey kind of hinting and talking about it during the
Dark Side of the Ring episode. But it seems like it's possible. Would
he have done it? Maybe, but who's to say really besides him And
at the end of it all, his wife blame or his former wife,
I should say. Michelle blamed the CTE and depression for what could have happened,
and she doesn't really want people to talk down on him, but more
of the situation and believes that maybe if there's better concussion protocol and people cared
about mental health, that these sort of things wouldn't have happened. But one
thing is very surprising and kind of comes to my mind about the whole shotgun
incident is and let's address the elephant in the room, the Ben Wah incident.
You know, I mean, where this guy said I'll blow your head
off ben Wah actually went through with it. As dark and depressing as that
is. I mean, there's other I did not mention this, but in
my research over and over keeps mentioning. One of his good friends was also
Billy Jack Haynes. Billy Jack Haynes, who's been recently mentioned also in ties
to a tragedy involving a shooting involving his own family. I think it's safe
to say that litting your body up with incredible amounts of testosterone and giving yourself
concussions over and over is probably not a good idea. I can't agree more.
And as of I think a month or two ago, Billy Jack Haynes
was arrested for shooting his wife birds of a feather they flocked together. But
there's only I mean, there's there's several other things that we did not touch
on while we were discussing. There's several rustlers that mentioned him slipping Halsey on
pills and people's strengths to mess with their heads. Oh, of course,
the honky Tonk Man. There's an entire bit worthy apparently the honky Tonk Band.
Now this is, of course, we're going to rumors here that the
the Dynamite Kid was friends with the King, Harley Race, that's what they
were calling him at the time, and the w w F Great Wrestler,
legendary guy. Also a very questionable concerning some of the antics. But what
according to Dynamite, he had heard that the honky Tonk Band had said something
about the the you know, Harley Race, the King when he was away
because he was having stomach problems, and made a joke on man, I
bet he wishes he had this paycheck that honky Tonk had just got. And
he then says he went and he slapped around Wayne Ferris, you beat him
up, and the Honky Talk Band was crying and such. And though if
you read anything where the Honky Talk Band's talking about it, he says,
it's it didn't quite happen that way. It seems a little, you know,
a little bit of an argument whether dynamite actually attacked him. Well,
he does mention the dynamite attacked him, but he doesn't say that, you
know, he went crying and such. I wouldn't want to tell people that
either. But he says that he never made fun of Harley Race, or
if he did, he just laughed at joke someone else that was saying and
it wasn't meant to be this serious. He claimed that Bobby he had made
some joke and then he laughed and it wasn't supposed to be that serious.
And one of the darker things I'd heard was also, did you hear the
stuff about John Foley's daughter, John Foley's daughter. Oh, We're getting really
deep in the weeds here. I did not know about this. I don't
know how legit this is. I like, this is the best I could
do from you know, research. But supposedly John Fully, which was one
of his managers in Stampede if you remember back then another English the claim is
that Dynamite Kid had broke John Fully's daughter's legs when John Fully had wanted to
use her for an insurance claim, not use her, but she had you
know, he'd wanted to get more money from an insurance claim, so he
asked Dynamite to break her legs from the knees down. And this is internet
rumor, I can't tell you for certain, but still given some of the
other stories he's told and such, who knows, who really knows. It's
it's hard to tell. I'm not trying to blame the guy, but it's
it's difficult when you look at this, this wrestler who's done so many incredible
things for changing work rate itself and changing what people thought was possible. And
at the same time too, there's so many stories of sadism, you know,
abuse, just these horrible things that he's done, and it's like,
man, you really kind of went off the deep end there. But and
I know that CDE and the drugs definitely played a part in it, but
man, that has so many of these bad effects. And like we just
mentioned Ben Wah and Billy Jack Haynes, these two other guys that most would
see them as they had to have gone nuts at that point to be well
doing the things that they did. Dynamite had condemned Ben Wah's actions afterwards,
and that's interesting saying you know, oh man, you got to you got
to learn how to taper the state. You know, you don't take it
out in family members and this that you know, And I mean he didn't
pull the trigger on his family, but he certainly pointed it at them.
It's there's a certain point where you say to yourself, there are fantastic legends
throughout and there are fantastic professional wrestlers, but there's a certain point where you
say, was he really that much of a professional? But as far as
his impact on as far as high flying and high spots and work rate and
the intense loads wh would do in the ring, he is arguably a legend.
I have to agree. He has paved the way for many and at
what cost, honestly, potentially is sanity. Body can't just go forever and
you can't keep juicing it up hoping for great result. And I think that's
where we'll end this one, guys, because we went down the dark path.
We showed you the good, the bad, and the ugly. Here
it's rough knowing what this man did, but at the same time, it's
also great to see what he's done for the profession that he loved so much.
But on a lighter note, so Tim, this is your first time
on the podcast. Do you have any recommendations for the ADDI it's book,
movie, song, just something something we do on Wrestle Magic. So my
recommendation. I tried to read as many books by professional wrestlers as I can.
My favorite, I would have to say Mick Foley's Have a Nice Day,
and it's extremely relevant to what we're speaking about now. He talks about
working with Dynamite Kid and what his experiences were like there. It's also just
a fantastic read. So that's my recommendation. Totally totally agree, man,
and honestly, guys, I don't know how all of you feel about Dark
Side of the Ring. I don't know how you guys feel about, you
know, even what we just did talk about this guy's career. But if
I could give a recommendation, that show really does go pretty well in depth.
So I will say, if you guys want to know more stuff like
this, like I'm pretty sure they went over like the murder of Bruiser Brody
and the questionable death of Dino Bravo and stuff like that. If you want
to know about that kind of stuff, check them out too. I have
to give them credit. It's narrated by Chris Jericho, which honestly, he's
got his own controversy kind of going on recently, but he does it very
well. And I have to give credit where it's due for also where I'm
getting some of my information. And I have to say it's been a lot
of fun here. You guys know where to reach me at maintenance mav on
Twitter hit me up, especially if you guys know where I got that intro
idea from, because I'd like to see who knows where I got that from.
But anyways, you sound nice for somebody you never know who needs it.
And with that, in the words of Memphis Mark, I know