The Dynamite Kid passed away at the age of 60 on his birthday earlier this month and Mike Mooneyham of The Post & Courier took a look at the wrestling career of Tom Billington. Mooneyham breaks Dynamite’s career down by writing of his talent, how his body failed him, him being an underrated talent, his substance abuse and notoriety for being a cruel bully backstage. The article includes quotes from Bruce Hart and other members of the Hart Family that Mooneyham curated. Quotes from the article are below:
Bruce Hart on The Dynamite Kid’s potential exceeding others:
“I was almost in disbelief. How could no one else have seen that potential? He was lights out when I first saw him. If you were trying to teach other guys that kind of stuff, it was way beyond their capability. With him, it was natural. He just had that special gift of athletic ability. He almost saw it as being obligated to the fans to do it (steal the show) every night.”
Billington, who worked out obsessively, never had to get a pep talk from Bruce or Stu to “go the distance.” It was The Dynamite Kid who often pushed other wrestlers to up their game.
“He’d tear into the other wrestlers in the dressing room and say, ‘There’s only 50 people out there tonight, but if you guys busted your (behinds), maybe there’d be 500 next time.’ My dad had a lot of appreciation for that. He was a great role model to have in the dressing room. It was hard for anyone else to refuse to do anything if he was putting his body through that, doing 60 minutes or getting color, while everyone else had to follow suit.”
On Kid being a cruel bully backstage:
“He had a bit of a malicious streak in him. That was kind of the impetus of that episode with (Jacques) Rougeau,” says Hart, alluding to legitimate heat between the two and backstage fights that eventually led to Billington being released by the company.
“I pulled as many pranks and ribs,” admits Hart, “but my idea of a prank and a rib was slightly different from Dynamite’s. Mine were more to ease the tension and lighten the drudgery on the road. Nobody ever got hurt. There were never any casualties.”
On Kid’s abuse of steroids:
“I remember having a conversation with Dynamite after his run in WWE,” said Hart. “I told him that even though he got bigger and all that, by my estimation neither he nor Davey were anywhere near as good after they got that big. They were more cumbersome and didn’t have the explosiveness. They tended to blow up quicker. When I first met Dynamite, he could go 60 minutes five or six days a week. When he got bigger, he’d blow up after 20 minutes. All of the performance-enhancing drugs sure didn’t enhance his performance. He was nowhere near as good after he got bigger.”
“A lot of pills, a lot of steroids, a lot of alcohol contributed to that,” says Hart. “To some degree it’s surprising that he lasted as long as he did. He was in a bad state 20 years ago. It’s ironic that he outlived (Jim) Neidhart and Davey Boy and Owen and (Brian) Pillman. The last time I talked to him he was pretty frail and didn’t sound good.”
Bret Hart on Dynamite Kid:
“There are people in life that have a ripple effect both professionally and personally,” Hart posted on social media. “Tom ‘Dynamite Kid’ Billington was one of those people. The second professional wrestling match of my career was against Dynamite. I benefited from his greatness and through our matches in Stampede, WWE and everywhere in between, I became a better wrestler because of him.
“Dynamite truly was the best wrestler ever, pound-for-pound. Tom was family, my brother-in-law, and we were very close. In many ways I felt like one of the few people who truly knew him, both the good and the bad. I saw Tom one final time this past June in England and I can only hope he is finally at peace.”
Bruce Hart on Dynamite Kid’s impact:
“He never got anywhere near enough credit,” says Hart. “To me that was one of the disappointments that make WWE look bad. WWE never knew how exceptional he was. Dynamite and Davey Boy were arguably one of the top two or three tag teams in WWE history, and they’re not in their Hall of Fame. If there was some prevailing reason why they didn’t put them in … but there’s not.
“Dynamite was one of those guys who was always held in awe and the highest esteem by the upper echelon in the business. They boys knew that most of the stuff he did was cutting edge and way ahead of its time, and what he did was damn near better than anyone else. He took the business to another level. Even non-Calgary guys like Shawn Michaels would tell you that Dynamite was one of his first people that he idolized. Dynamite was like a Wayne Gretzsky or Michael Jordan or Bobby Orr to all the Japanese guys like Tiger Mask and (Jushin) Liger. He was that good.”
You can read Mooneyham’s entire article by going here.
