Dynamite Kid: The Rise and Tragic Fall of Tom Billington.

The career of Tom “Dynamite Kid” Billington is one of incredible highs and devastating lows.

His fast-paced, hard-hitting style revolutionised the industry, blending the technical mastery of catch wrestling with the high-flying innovation of junior heavyweight wrestling.

Influenced by stars like Mark Rocco and Tiger Mask, Dynamite introduced a level of speed, aggression and intensity that had never been seen before.

However, that same intensity came at a devastating cost. Self-conscious about his size, he turned to steroids, packing on muscle that his frame wasn’t built to handle.

Combined with his relentless in-ring style, this led to a career-altering back injury that would define the rest of his life. Despite his body breaking down, he refused to slow down, continuing to take dangerous bumps while relying on painkillers and other drugs to keep going.

The consequences were tragic. Years of punishment left him confined to a wheelchair, his health deteriorating as his past choices caught up with him. On his 60th birthday, the Dynamite Kid passed away – alone, his final years marked by pain and controversy.

This is the story of how one of wrestling’s greatest pioneers paid the ultimate price for his craft.

This article is split into three distinct parts:

• Part 1: The Rise of the Dynamite Kid – from his humble beginnings in the UK to his work in Canada and Japan, and making it to the WWF with his partner, Davey Boy Smith.
• Part 2: The Fall of the Dynamite Kid – beginning with his back injury, it chronicles his backstage issues, how steroid abuse affected him mentally and the breakdown of his relationship with the British Bulldog.
• Part 3: The End of Tom Billington – by this point, his career was over and he was no longer the dynamic personality in the ring, but a broken husk of a man who had alienated his family and died alone in his flat in Wigan.

Part 1: The Rise of the Dynamite Kid

Tom Billington was a revolutionary in professional wrestling, but he had very humble beginnings. The Englishman was born in Lancashire and taught to wrestle by “Dr Death” Ted Betley, following a meeting between Betley and Billington’s father.

This led the young Billington to train at Riley’s Gym in Wigan – more commonly known as the infamous Snake Pit, a term coined by Japanese wrestlers. Here, he trained with legends like Billy Robinson and Steve Wright, who could see early on that this boy was a prodigy.

He began training in 1971 at the age of 13 before making his wrestling debut just four years later. A 17-year-old Tom Billington wrestled for the Jack Atherton promotion, with Ted Betley coming up with the name “Dynamite Kid” for the bout. I guess it stuck!

Just a year later, the Dynamite Kid was featured on TV for the first time and the 18-year-old quickly became a household name. Despite being small, he was electric in the ring and his personality made him larger than life next to heavyweights like Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks.

The Dynamite Kid learnt from the best in those early days. He wrestled some fantastic professionals like Alan Dennison, “Crybaby” Jim Breaks and Mark “Rollerball” Rocco in some of the finest technical encounters you’ll ever see. While the fans loved to see matches like Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks, it was the Dynamite Kid’s matches that sent their jaws smacking into the floor.

However, it was his sheer intensity in the ring that made the Dynamite Kid so captivating. He oozed class with his flawless execution of every move, but the way he put his all into every push, pull and punch showed a will to win that nobody could ever match.

How the Dynamite Kid Ended Up in Stampede Wrestling

In the spring of 1978, the Dynamite Kid was British and European Champion, so he needed to go further afield to make a bigger name for himself. Luckily, Canadian wrestler Bruce Hart – son of Stu and brother of Bret and Owen – was wrestling for Joint Promotions as “Cowboy” Bruce Hart during a tour of the UK.

Unbeknownst to his father, Bruce was also on a little scouting mission, wanting to impress his dad by bringing back some of the best wrestlers unknown to Canadian fans. As soon as he set eyes on the Dynamite Kid, he knew he’d be a hit in Stampede Wrestling (the promotion run by the Harts in Calgary).

After a particularly impressive bout with Mark Rocco in Cleethorpes (“Well, we always had a good match,” the Dynamite Kid said in his book), he was invited to Calgary for a tour with Stampede and offered a car, accommodation and $400 a week for his troubles.

This was far, far more than he ever made in the UK. However, he was initially talked out of the deal by booker Max Crabtree, only to come to his senses after receiving his measly pay packet from the Joint Promotions boss.

He left England with £20 in his back pocket for a new adventure on 27 April 1978. He was 19 years old and about to embark on a career move that would help define him as a wrestler and a human being. He wouldn’t return to Britain until his career was over and he’d ruined all the relationships in his life.

Dynamite Kid vs Bret Hart in Stampede Wrestling

Tom Billington became a massive star in Canada almost as soon as he stepped off the plane. From his first matches in the Stampede Wrestling ring, the fans, wrestlers and bookers knew that he was the star of the promotion and nobody could come close.

The Dynamite Kid tagged with Bruce Hart early on in his run with the company. However, after several “missed” tags during one of their matches (“I bent down to tie my shoelaces and pretended I hadn’t seen him”), he smacked the young Hart in the mouth and transformed into a destructive heel, much to the chagrin of the Canadian fans.

People were so angry that he needed security to escort him back to the dressing room. The fans spat at the Englishman and threw rubbish at him (and worse) as he smirked his way to the back, completing his transformation.

Bruce wasn’t the only Hart the Dynamite Kid threw around the ring, though. His matches with Bret Hart, still early in his career, became legendary. They battled over the British Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight Championship (a title invented just for the Dynamite Kid by Stu Hart) numerous times, constantly trading the belt between themselves.

Their clashes included a legendary ladder match, an innovation that came out of Canada during this time. Sadly, no footage of this bout exists, and both men considered it one of the best matches of their careers.

While his transformation into a hated heel and battler of the Hart family was iconic, it wasn’t the only transformation the Dynamite Kid would undergo.

How the Dynamite Kid Started Using Steroids

Bret Hart was already wrestling in Stampede when Billington came over to Canada to stay with the family. He talked extensively about the Dynamite Kid in his book, Hitman, remarking that he was an exceptional talent in the ring, one of the best ever, and even noting that he didn’t drink, smoke or do any drugs – something that would not continue throughout his life.

That was because he would soon be introduced to that world by some of the veteran wrestlers in the territory. The Junkyard Dog, of WWF fame, was the first person to get the Dynamite Kid into steroids.

Tom Billington had been self-conscious about his size his entire life. His incredible work ethic and intensity in the ring, as well as the huge risks he took, were his way of showing the world that his size didn’t make him any less of a man than the other, bigger wrestlers.

This also led him to Junkyard Dog, who introduced him to anabolic steroids during a tour of Germany in 1979. They were still legal at this point and used by numerous wrestlers, having been popularised by former WWF Champion “Superstar” Billy Graham.

The ability to grow muscle and become as big as his peers was enticing to the Dynamite Kid. He had always been the smallest man in the ring and faced some ridicule from the other wrestlers. While he’d never admit it, it was clear that Tom Billington felt inferior because of his size, and steroids helped him greatly in that regard.

As his muscles grew, so did the attention. The Dynamite Kid’s star continued to shine brighter and brighter. More opportunities to work all over the world came in and he was recognised as a true superstar in Calgary. Now the skinny kid from Wigan was a proper professional wrestler in the eyes of many.

The steroids would have their downsides (which we will get into later), but his growing muscles and continued fantastic work earned the Dynamite Kid the chance to tour Japan and face his greatest-ever rival – Tiger Mask.

Dynamite Kid vs Tiger Mask in Japan

It would be fair to say that the bouts between the Dynamite Kid and Tiger Mask are some of the most influential in the history of professional wrestling. As soon as the pair locked horns, professional wrestling worldwide would never be the same again.

The first time the Dynamite Kid shared the ring with Tiger Mask was actually in the UK, where the Japanese star wrestled as Sammy Lee. This was in a multi-man tag match, but it was their first singles encounter in Japan that would change the world as we know it.

When they finally locked horns on a joint New Japan Pro Wrestling and WWF card in 1981, it was like pro wrestling had been injected with a dose of nitrous. The match moved at the speed of light compared to the dull, plodding matches of years gone by.

The two junior heavyweights mixed the classic British technical style with hard-hitting Japanese wrestling, delivering non-stop action filled with quick counters, high-flying moves and spots that made the usually reserved Japanese crowd jump onto their seats and scream with surprise.

The pair wrestled numerous times over the following years, at NJPW and WWF shows. These bouts showed the stark difference between the two products and, along with his matches against Bret Hart in Stampede Wrestling, helped the Dynamite Kid get signed by the WWF.

Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith: The British Bulldogs in the WWF

The Dynamite Kid was brought into the WWF in 1984, initially teaming with Bret Hart at a 29 August 1984 TV taping against Iron Mike Sharpe and Troy Alexander.

However, he would soon be paired with Davey Boy Smith, whom he had begun teaming with in Stampede and NJPW a year earlier. The pair were cousins, and Davey had followed Dynamite to Canada after becoming a star himself in the UK.

They quickly made a name for themselves as one of the best tag teams in the WWF. Their hard-hitting, fast-paced style was light years ahead of what fans were used to, and they became big stars in the company, making big money for the first time in their careers.

This led to a match at WrestleMania II, which at the time was one of the biggest wrestling events ever. Following the success of the previous year’s event, celebrities were bussed in to appear across three cities (it was an absolute mess that year), with Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne accompanying the British Bulldogs to the ring.

They beat Greg Valentine and Brutus Beefcake at the event to win the WWF World Tag Team Championship. The pair were on top of the world, acknowledged as the best tag team in the biggest company, with more respect and riches than they could ever have imagined.

That would be the beginning of the downfall of the Dynamite Kid.

Part 2: The Fall of the Dynamite Kid

Coming off WrestleMania II, the Dynamite Kid was flying as high as he ever had. The British Bulldogs were respected in the locker room and were being pushed as the top tag team in the business.

They were earning more money than they knew what to do with and spent it on big houses in Canada to be near the rest of the Hart family (Davey married Bret Hart’s sister, while Dynamite married the sister of Bret Hart’s wife).

The British Bulldogs’ matches were as good as ever, especially against the Hart Foundation. However, 1986 would mark the end of the good times and the beginning of the dark spiral into the worst years of the Dynamite Kid’s life.

The Dynamite Kid’s Back Injury

The Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith battled Bob Orton and Don Muraco in a house show match on 12 December 1986. They were touring North America defending their WWF World Tag Team Championship, usually against the Hart Foundation.

This seems like a nothing match that would be forgotten over time. However, thanks to a sneaky fan bringing a camera into the arena, we got to see the beginning of the end of the Dynamite Kid’s career.

Midway through the match, the Dynamite Kid ran to the ropes, hitting them with his back in anticipation of turning and running back towards his opponent. However, the Englishman simply collapsed onto the mat, clutching his back as the other wrestlers in the match looked around, confused.

The immense mass he’d put on to stand out in the WWF and his high-risk style had finally come back to bite him. There was no way his body could carry that amount of mass, and he ruptured two discs in his back. The diving headbutt he was famous for was also said to be a factor, with Harley Race regretting ever inventing it.

He would be in and out of hospital over the next ten months. However, just six weeks after the injury, he returned, being wheeled to the ring for a title defence against the Hart Foundation. The Dynamite Kid refused to vacate the titles and would only come back to put Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart over, albeit without actually doing any wrestling.

Doctors advised the 28-year-old to retire and told him his career was over. That didn’t work for the Dynamite Kid, though, as money issues and personal pride meant he rushed back for WrestleMania III, needing the payday to help pay his mortgage. He was pumped to the gills with painkillers, a common theme that would follow him for the rest of his career.

Dynamite Kid’s Backstage Bullying and the Jacques Rougeau Fight

While his injury was tragic, numerous wrestlers backstage weren’t too upset to see the Dynamite Kid knocked down a peg and take an extended break from the WWF.

The Englishman was a known bully backstage. He wasn’t a light-hearted ribber like Owen Hart. His “pranks” were much more insidious, with the Dynamite Kid enjoying spiking others’ food and drinks with sleeping pills or laxatives.

This included popping sleeping pills into beer cans before handing them to the driver of the van the wrestlers travelled in on their tours of Canada, which could have ended with multiple dead wrestlers.

He would also violently bully people backstage, which led to the infamous incident with Jacques Rougeau. The Dynamite Kid was already known for beating up a young Mick Foley in the ring and decided to get violent with Rougeau backstage after a prank pulled by Curt Hennig was wrongly attributed to the Canadian.

In 1988, the Dynamite Kid attacked Jacques Rougeau backstage at a show in Miami, breaking his nose and his pride. To regain his standing in the locker room, Rougeau learnt to box with his father before punching Billington with a roll of quarters in his hand some weeks later.

The Dynamite Kid only went down to one knee after the punch, so Rougeau had to keep attacking him. The pair were pulled apart by the roster, which was lucky for Rougeau – if they hadn’t been, the Dynamite Kid would likely have murdered him there and then.

This incident is said to have humbled the Dynamite Kid somewhat, although he soon returned to his old ways for the rest of his career. He never let up at home, though, and remains one of the most controversial wrestlers of all time.

Why the Dynamite Kid Was Sent Back to England

If you thought his conduct in the locker room was bad, thank God you didn’t have to live with the Dynamite Kid.

He terrorised his poor wife, Michelle, throughout their married life. Increased steroid use had made him angry and irritable, although he had been a bully long before he ever started on the juice.

The Dynamite Kid abused his wife physically and emotionally, threatening to kill her and her children on multiple occasions. He would regularly lock her in the wardrobe before leaving to go to the bar, among other horrendous abuse.

Michelle even considered killing herself and her children just to get away from the abuse, but didn’t because she couldn’t guarantee the children would die with her.

This all came to a head one night when the Dynamite Kid pointed a shotgun at Michelle and threatened to kill her. Tired of it all, she told him to do it, calling his bluff. He eventually stormed off to his car, where Bret Hart confronted him after hearing the dispute from his nearby house.

This was the last time the Dynamite Kid would see his wife. She bought him a plane ticket home to Wigan, telling him the family needed him gone and that he wasn’t welcome.

He packed his bags and flew back to England. In his book, Pure Dynamite, he claims he left with just £20 in his pocket, a perfect mirror of the day he left for Canada.

Why the Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith Fell Out

The break-up of the British Bulldogs in the late 1980s deeply affected both the Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith, tearing their relationship apart and leading to a series of bitter events.

How it fell apart:

• 1988: They walked out on the WWF to return to work in Japan and Canada. The Dynamite Kid had a dispute with the WWF over plane tickets and was too proud to back down to keep his job, so he left. The ever-faithful Davey Boy followed suit, always doing what Dynamite told him to do.
• Stampede and All Japan: The duo worked together in Canada with Stampede Wrestling and in Japan with All Japan Pro Wrestling, but tensions grew as the Dynamite Kid’s injuries took their toll, leaving Davey Boy to carry much of the load.
• 1990: The pair split in Canada and Davey Boy returned to the WWF for a solo run, which the Dynamite Kid viewed as a betrayal. This further strained their relationship, especially when Davey Boy falsely claimed that the Dynamite Kid had died in a car crash to cover his abrupt departure.
• 1994: As both men wrestled in the UK, a dispute arose over the “British Bulldog” name. Davey Boy Smith had trademarked it for himself, leading to legal threats when the Dynamite Kid was billed as the “British Bulldog” by another promoter.
• The final confrontation: At a 1994 wrestling show, the Dynamite Kid tried to confront his cousin, only for Davey Boy to avoid him, escalating tensions between the two.

The feud, marked by spiteful actions and legal battles, was the end of their once-prominent partnership, with both men going their separate ways in the wrestling world.

The Dynamite Kid’s Final Match

While his career was functionally over by 1986, it would be another decade before the Dynamite Kid wrestled the final match of his iconic, if mixed, career.

His last match was for Michinoku Pro Wrestling in 1996, ending a legendary career with a whimper. The promotion had brought him to Japan for a number of appearances in the months prior, which he accepted because he needed the money, before he was convinced to take part in one more match.

The idea was to bring back some legends of the business to pay tribute to some of the most influential names in wrestling. This included reuniting him with Tiger Mask, with whom the Dynamite Kid had changed wrestling over a decade earlier.

The Dynamite Kid teamed with Dos Caras (the father of Alberto Del Rio) and Kuniaki Kobayashi to take on the all-star trio of the original Tiger Mask, Mil Máscaras and The Great Sasuke. His performance was nothing like the fans remembered, this skinny, almost skeletal Wiganer no longer embodying the spirit of the Dynamite Kid.

He was slow and stilted in the ring, messing up simple moves and failing to execute the impressive combinations that had wowed fans all those years ago.

For a man who had prided himself on hard-hitting, lightning-fast action, watching his body fail him was a depressing sight. It was clear he had very little in his life after his wife left him and sent him back to England. Wrestling was all the Dynamite Kid ever had, and now that had failed him too.

It was just sad. He barely spent any time in the ring, and whenever he did, he did very little. Every time the Dynamite Kid tagged out, he sat down on the apron clutching his head – clearly in pain.

He wasn’t involved in the finish, with Dos Caras pinning The Great Sasuke to win the match for his team. He had suffered a seizure before the match and hung up his boots for good after somehow getting through the bout unscathed.

That was the end of the Dynamite Kid.

Part 3: The End of Tom Billington

They say the brightest stars burn half as long, and that proverb accurately describes the career of the Dynamite Kid.

By the time his final match in 1996 had finished, he was just 37 years old and a shell of the dynamic performer who had once taken the wrestling world by storm. Just one year later, his injuries cost him the use of his legs and Billington was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

His back injuries, originally suffered in the WWF in 1986, had clipped his wings. However, the damage to his reputation was entirely of his own making, the result of a lifetime of violence, aggression and anger at the world.

This part of the article is titled “The End of Tom Billington”, rather than “The End of the Dynamite Kid”. That is because the Dynamite Kid died long before his final match in Japan. What remained was just a husk, a walking corpse of one of the great innovators of wrestling.

At that moment, the 37-year-old, broken-down shell of a man was Tom Billington, a former wrestler trying to recapture a magic that would never return. Through his own stubbornness and selfishness, he was all alone with nothing but memories to show for his work.

The Dynamite Kid’s Final Years in Wigan

After being sent packing back to England by his wife, Tom Billington lived in a small, dingy flat in the arse end of Wigan for the rest of his life. While he was able to walk at first, his back soon gave out and he was confined to a wheelchair.

He did meet a woman, though, who made his final years more enjoyable. He married Dot, a local woman who had no idea who he was and was not a wrestling fan. They married in 1997, only a few years removed from his WWF run and just a year after his final match.

Tom Billington rarely left his flat if he could help it, going nowhere except doctors’ appointments. He hated people seeing him and taking pity on what he’d become, preferring them to remember the dynamic and charismatic Dynamite Kid they saw in the ring all those years ago.

He looked like a man twice his age and was wasting away in his small flat, watching his classic matches and reliving his glory days. There is a moving clip of the original Tiger Mask sending him a video message a few years before his death, which is worth a watch.

The Dynamite Kid’s Death and Reunion With His Daughters

While his whole life had fallen apart after wrestling, there was a glimmer of hope just a few years before his death. In 2016, he was reunited with his daughter Bronwyne in Wigan. He hadn’t seen her in decades, since he was first sent back to England, and had given up hope of reconnecting with his family.

She made numerous trips to Wigan to be with her dad in the years that followed, which they both enjoyed. In the book Dynamite and Davey, she recalls their most memorable meeting, when they hugged each other and cried as Tom Billington apologised for all those years apart.

He even got to speak to Amaris, his younger daughter, at last. Her mother was pregnant when Billington left Canada and neither party had made the effort to meet. They finally spoke over Skype, which Bronwyne thinks made it easier for him to say goodbye when he passed away.

The Dynamite Kid passed away on his 60th birthday, 5 December 2018. His death prompted numerous tributes from people like Bryan Danielson and Harry Smith, although because of his personal problems he was not given an extended memorial by WWE.

His death was tragic, but Tom Billington at least got to reconnect with his family before he died.

The Dynamite Kid’s Legacy in Wrestling

The legacy of the Dynamite Kid depends entirely on who you ask. Anyone who knew him personally would likely admit he was a great wrestler, but not somebody to be trusted or to put your faith in.

He was cussed and rude at best, and downright aggressive and violent at worst. If his worst ribs had been reported to the police, he would undoubtedly have spent a long time in prison, let alone for what he did to his poor wife and children. He even broke a child’s kneecaps to claim insurance money.

However, if we look at him from a purely wrestling perspective, there was nobody finer. Nobody moved as quickly and as crisply in the ring as the Dynamite Kid, and he almost created an entirely new way to wrestle. His dedication to his craft and his work ethic were unmatched as he gave 100% of himself to professional wrestling.

That is what ended his career, as he had no regard for his own safety in pursuit of perfection – something that would never come, no matter how perfectly he wrestled or how much danger he put himself in.

In the ring, the Dynamite Kid was unmatched in two ways. Nobody could ever do what he did the way he did it, and by God, nobody should ever try to again. Chris Benoit did, and look where that left him. Tom Billington was a one-of-a-kind wrestler who should not be imitated but should still be admired.

Sources

Some of the sources used to learn about the Dynamite Kid include:

• Pure Dynamite – Tom Billington
• Dynamite and Davey – Steven Bell
• Physical Chess – Billy Robinson
• Hitman – Bret Hart
• Straight from the Hart – Bruce Hart
• My Life in Wrestling – Gary Hart
• Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling – Heath McCoy