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RIP to Tom 'Dynamite Kid' Billington


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2 minutes ago, Swiftian said:

Without wanting this to turn into a sleaze thread, what are the arguments against Dynamite Kid as a person? I know I've always been aware of his surly reputation, but I'm not sure I've ever known why he is disliked so much. Was it just cruel ribs like Fuji? Or was he a racist old shit?

In pure dynamite he acknowledges that he abused and terrorized his wife.

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5 hours ago, J.T. said:

Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.

- Mephistopheles, Faustus Act 2; Scene 1.

The problem with being miserable is that you want others to be as miserable as you are.  It would not be so bad if you were just miserable on your own and kept the life breakage to the bare minimum.

Basically, this.

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I read Pure Dynamite about nine years ago. I've known people worse than Dynamite with none of the pluses. 

To his credit he owned up to bad things he did, probably too much. Without the anger and pain, we would not know who he is and maybe he would be happy. Or maybe he would still be miserable. But that is life isn't it, we live with the choices we make. Whatever the case, Dynamite paid for every bad thing he did.  But good or bad we end up in the grave. 

As a talent you can't really deny him. Every undersized wrestler owes him a debt. He had a good mind for wrestling. Unlike a lot of talent, he did not only care about carbon copies of himself. He could see the value in every type of wrestler. 

I'm disappointed the turn this thread took. I don't think we needed a crash course in the bad things he did. 

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You're going to get honesty one way or another when people pass away, Vic, it's just the nature of how these things are. If people weren't honest about how they felt about him, this thread would be pretty empty and full of meaningless platitudes. No one wants to actively bash the dead, but if that's how they view the person, they have every right to express it in a public forum if they so choose. That's how I feel anyway. Take the good with the bad if there's a lot of it.

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What I would say is that he contributed enough to wrestling, we can find positive things he did without being negative.  I can't even properly describe why this bothers me like it does. He created all of his adult miseries and left himself a lonely miserable man. Maybe I find that sadder. I hope he is at some sort of peace now. 

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14 hours ago, NikoBaltimore said:

I'm trying not to be too negative about Dynamite considering everybody's said it better than I can.  But while he influenced so many I can't help but wonder if it was truly worth it.  Could he have been a little safer?  Or was this his only option to stand out from other "smaller" guys in that era.  Either way while his stuff was really great I just can't appreciate it due to the toll it took on him.  And since he greatly influenced Benoit which led to what happened with him that makes it even worse.

See this pisses me off. Do you feel the same about Mitsuharu Misawa? I doubt it 

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6 hours ago, CreativeControl said:

See this pisses me off. Do you feel the same about Mitsuharu Misawa? I doubt it 

I didn't intend to piss you or anybody off with that and I'm sorry you took it that way.  Looking back instead of saying 'appreciate' I should have said it's hard for me to get into his matches anymore knowing the toll it took on him.  There was definitely a time where I did though.  And I have a ton of respect for Misawa and enjoyed his matches.  But I'd rather not risk derailing the thread, if you feel so inclined you may message me.

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17 hours ago, Swiftian said:

Without wanting this to turn into a sleaze thread, what are the arguments against Dynamite Kid as a person? I know I've always been aware of his surly reputation, but I'm not sure I've ever known why he is disliked so much. Was it just cruel ribs like Fuji? Or was he a racist old shit?

I'm not about to clutter up an "In Memoriam" thread with all the verifiable foul shit that he did. I can't find it in me to praise him as a human being, but he was one of the three greatest wrestlers of my lifetime (and the only one that wasn't Japanese). I'm sure that he went out the same way he lived, a miserable hard bastard to the very end. Thanks for all the great matches, DK, hope you find some peace now.

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Probably because I'm a person with many, many interests I find the single-minded overachiever to be a fascinating subject, my favorite baseball players include well-known pricks like Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, and Steve Carlton. Three more unpleasant people you'd have a hard time finding; you'd also have a hard time finding three people better at what they chose to do. Wrestling, yeah, DK, Misawa, and Jumbo are my Holy Trinity. One died in the ring and one busted himself up so badly that he was in a wheelchair while I was out playing softball. (Yeah, I'm a year older than DK, but I didn't turn my bones into jelly trying entertain a bunch of marks.) Had DK not been so driven, (and I first got to see him live in Portland), wrestling would still be just lumbering oafs doing punch-punch, kick-kick, go for the absurd finish. 

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23 hours ago, Matt D said:

If Dynamite wasn't such an asshole, he wouldn't have achieved what he did. It drove him. It basically drove him and hundreds of guys who followed him off a cliff, but they were sure going fast in a bright red sports car along the way.

But bright shiny things that go really fast are KEWLLLL!!!!

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So, aside from the Tiger Mask matches, how much of the best of DK is floating around? It seems he's one of those mythological guys where a lot of his legendary stuff was house shows or stuff lost to the ether of time. I came around for the tail end of his Bulldogs run in '86-87 when I was a wee child and aside from the Mask matches have never stumbled across stuff (though I recall liking his run in the Wrestling Classic).

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4 hours ago, Hagan said:

So, aside from the Tiger Mask matches, how much of the best of DK is floating around? It seems he's one of those mythological guys where a lot of his legendary stuff was house shows or stuff lost to the ether of time. I came around for the tail end of his Bulldogs run in '86-87 when I was a wee child and aside from the Mask matches have never stumbled across stuff (though I recall liking his run in the Wrestling Classic). 

There's quite a bit from New Japan, the WWF, and Portland. There's not a whole lot from Stampede, and what does exist is heavily clipped because Ed Whalen was the worst. Not sure about All Japan.

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17 hours ago, Victator said:

What I would say is that he contributed enough to wrestling, we can find positive things he did without being negative.  I can't even properly describe why this bothers me like it does. He created all of his adult miseries and left himself a lonely miserable man. Maybe I find that sadder. I hope he is at some sort of peace now. 

I understand. Like, there's a difference between going on about a guy like Hulk Hogan, who's reward for a life of shitbaggery is to be a multi-millionaire, as opposed to Dynamite, who spent the last quarter century or so destitute in a wheelchair. Tommy did his time.

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30 minutes ago, HumanChessgame said:

So does he go in the HOF in the upcoming class? I'd figured Vader would be a lock and they might not want to do two deceased wrestlers in the same year.

Might depend if Dwayne is going in or not. 

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