Pure Dynamite

There are very few books that I consider to be badly written and still end up enjoying, but the Pure Dynamite is one of those rare novels. This book tells the life story of Thomas Billington, better known as the Dynamite Kid, a professional wrestler of extraordinary talent. Though badly phrased, full of foul language and only semi-coherent, somehow the book is charming in its honesty and facinating in the detail of what goes on behind the closed doors in the Sports Entertainment business.

I've read a lot of autobiographies of martial artists and so-called hard men, but they mainly disgust me, as they just tend to be full of egoistic self-praise of the author's toughness, intelligent and great character. Tom Billington on the other hand does not save himself at all or lie about his bad sides -which are well-documented anyway. Years ago, when I was but a little kid, I had seen him perform under his moniker Dynamite Kid. Even then I could sense that this British youngster was somehow different from the other entertainers around him -he seemed to be driven by something to do things in the ring that no-one else could. What I did not understand then is now clear to me -he wanted to be the best there is in what he does. He wanted to be remembered for his ability in the ring.

What you have to understand is that the professional wrestling is the land of the giants. If you are less than 6' 6" and weight less than 300 pounds, you will find it very, very hard to make a living. Imagine what it was like to Tom Billington, stick-thin English lad some 5' 7" tall and 140 pounds to try to break in -practically impossible. His answer was to work harder and become better at his profession than anybody before him (be it acrobatic high-flying or scientific mat-wrestling), and getting big artificially. By taking truckloads of steroids, Billington packed 225 pounds of muscle into a frame that was never meant to carry even 180. To give you an idea of the amounts he was taking, he went as high as 1,200 mg of testosterone a day when bulking up, and this at the same time he was taking cocaine to stay awake for his late night matches while taking valium to sleep on the planes on the way to matches. Remember that there is no off-season in professional circut, so he could never give his body a chance to recuperate.

A son of a miner and a boxing champion, Tom lived a harsh childhood in England and trained in the notorious Snake Pit (Riley's Gym) in Wigan, a legitimate submission-wrestling school of unparallelled reputation. Here the Dynamite Kid was schooled in all manner of martial arts as well as the tricks of the professional wrestling circuit where the outcome of the matches is pre-determined.

From performing in the dusty little bingo halls of England to the bizarre Japanese wrestling (puroresu) where the foreign wrestlers have to attack their audience for real in order to be thrown to jail, the book charts Dynamite Kid's career highs and lows. With his sense of humor verging on sadistic (Billington thought nothing of setting a sleeping man on fire), Dynamite made lots of enemies. Personal locker room vendettas left him with four smashed front teeth when rivals ambushed him with knuckle-dusters.

There are plenty times of happiness as well which Billington remembers with great fondness: Outselling Pope in the Silverdome, making 20,000 $ in a single match, travelling the world from Hawaii to Middle-East and Japan, comradeship with his fellow performers and his evident joy of performing to the crowd whatever 100 or 93, 000 strong -that never mattered to the Dynamite: as he says, the all paid the same money, and they would get their money's worth.

With his legitimate fighting background, and steroid fuelled rage he finally carved himself a place amongst the legends, becoming 3-time world champion and the other half of the one of the best known wrestling tag teams, the British Bulldogs.

In the end though his lifestyle and steroid abuse cost him dear, and his tag-team partner, his cousing Davey-Boy Smith, betrayed him, leaving him penniless and crippled with his back broken beoynd repair.

But what can you say about a man, who after losing a fortune, his wife and children, his home and worst of all, ended up in a wheelchair, still can claim: Wrestling was my life, and I loved it. No regrets. I had a blast.

So here is to you Thomas Billington. You entertained me mightily when I was young.

The book is difficult to get in your average bookstore, but you can order it through amazon, for example.

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