RIP to Tom 'Dynamite Kid' Billington

[MORELOCK]

1 hour ago, odessasteps said:

Might depend if Dwayne is going in or not. 

Why would that affect it one way or another? It's not like they're going to say "Oh, we can't get Rock this year so we'd better put Dynamite in."

Not a chance that Dynamite goes in before Davey Boy - and doubtful that they'd be inducted as a tag team. I'll be surprised if he goes in at all.

[AxB]

And it's unlikely they'd put Davey Boy in unless Harry Smith comes back, because they aren't going to want a non-contract talent getting all that camera time. I mean, his sister could accept, but you'd think Harry would be there.

Maybe if they sign young Brian Pillman, that'll be how Brian senior gets in.

[OSJ]

10 hours ago, Ryan said:

I thought your holy trinity was Umanosuke Ueda, Kim Duk and Marko Stunt.

You "thought"? With what, exactly?

[Ryan]

Your brain, I took it out and washed it while you were asleep. Pretty dirty, lots of old beer cans. It spoke to me and told me the truth.

[BurningBeard]

14 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).

For the most part the 70s/80s NWA style or Mid-South hoss brawls is my thang, but this type of hard hitting fast paced action has a special place in my heart and Dynamite and Rocco invented, perfected and excelled at it:

 

[OSJ]

10 hours ago, Ryan said:

Your brain, I took it out and washed it while you were asleep. Pretty dirty, lots of old beer cans. It spoke to me and told me the truth.

Nice comeback, those beer cans have to be over thirty years old, I haven't had a beer since 6/26/88

[Guest Edwin]

22 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).

One of my favorite DK matches:

https://vk.com/video-68098508_170618943

DK, Abby and Baby Face vs. Inoki, Fujinami and TM.

[OSJ]

10 minutes ago, Edwin said:

One of my favorite DK matches:

https://vk.com/video-68098508_170618943

DK, Abby and Baby Face vs. Inoki, Fujinami and TM.

It's been mentioned, but you must see his World of Sport matches with Rollerball Rocco, incredible stuff. 

[Ryan]

1 hour ago, OSJ said:

Nice comeback, those beer cans have to be over thirty years old, I haven't had a beer since 6/26/88

That was the joke, sir. I know about your sobriety and commend you for it.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

20 hours ago, AxB said:

And it's unlikely they'd put Davey Boy in unless Harry Smith comes back, because they aren't going to want a non-contract talent getting all that camera time. I mean, his sister could accept, but you'd think Harry would be there.

Maybe if they sign young Brian Pillman, that'll be how Brian senior gets in.

My ultimate hope for the Hart Foundation is Martha finally agreeing to let Owen be inducted, and have Bret accept with Nattie, Davey Boy, Jr., Pillman, Jr., and Owen's kids. 

Dynamite also deserves to be in. If personal character and ethics actually mattered, there wouldn't be a lot of people in the WWE HoF. I think the biggest thing that will keep Dynamite out is the Benoit connection. I mean, you can't really look at one without thinking of the other. At least, I find it very hard to.

[OSJ]

3 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

My ultimate hope for the Hart Foundation is Martha finally agreeing to let Owen be inducted, and have Bret accept with Nattie, Davey Boy, Jr., Pillman, Jr., and Owen's kids. 

Dynamite also deserves to be in. If personal character and ethics actually mattered, there wouldn't be a lot of people in the WWE HoF. I think the biggest thing that will keep Dynamite out is the Benoit connection. I mean, you can't really look at one without thinking of the other. At least, I find it very hard to.

Not to pick on you, bro; but can we please stop pretending that the WWE HOF has anything to do with merit and everything to do with whatever is currently pulling VKM's dong? The WON HOF is legit, I may have some problems with the way votes are broken up and Dave has at least listened to my suggestions for improvements with an open mind, so who knows, things may change for the better not that they are bad now, it's just a matter of how to characterize eras that people watched. As the WON demographic gets younger, the "old timers" become the folks we watched in the 1990s, which seems mighty strange, but then I've been watching for fifty+ years, about thirty-five of that with a critical eye toward what I was seeing. Someone born in 1990 is (God forbid) 28 years old now and could conceivably have been reading wrestling discussion on the Internetz pretty much their entire life. Dave's going to need to alter his "I watched wrestling in so-and-so eras" to accomodate younger voters. There is no vote or anything else of relevance attached to the WWE HOF, it's a cash cow for VKM to drag a few people out of the mothballs for an evening and get a huge pop for "doing something" for the old timers.  

[Nice Guy Eddie]

Oh, I know WWE HoF has nothing to do with personal character and any sense of morality. The company is owned by Vince after all. Yes, if he wants to put Dynamite in, he will. I don't place any importance on the WWE HoF.

As someone born in 1980, started watching wrestling in 1988, and starting in 1996, I've been reading wrestling discussion on the internet for 22 years now.

[cav]

Anybody reccomend any decent AJPW matches involving the bulldogs that are online ?

[AxB]

This one:

 

[cav]

Thank you sir. 

 

What was their best year as a tag team in japan ?

 

 

[OSJ]

On 12/7/2018 at 8:39 PM, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Oh, I know WWE HoF has nothing to do with personal character and any sense of morality. The company is owned by Vince after all. Yes, if he wants to put Dynamite in, he will. I don't place any importance on the WWE HoF.

As someone born in 1980, started watching wrestling in 1988, and starting in 1996, I've been reading wrestling discussion on the internet for 22 years now.

Sorry, missed your reply last week. Sort of my point exactly. You are a knowledgeable wrestling fan and have been watching/reading about the subject for over two decades. But for you, 1980s and 1990s would be "classic years" or whatever, but you sure don't think of them as "modern era", nor should you. That's why I think it makes sense for Dave to make some brackets based on eras. Dave is the same age I am and when we say "modern wrestling" we mean something entirely different from what you do. That's all I'm getting at with wanting Dave to change how the question is asked. Of course, I'm talking about the WON HOF, which has tons of credibility, as opposed to the WWE HOF that would have us believe that anything that happened last year is "classic" and that the Attitude Era is "historical".

[dragonzombie]

[BloodyChamp]

How did I miss this? I’ve been on typical social media and all for years but inside wrestling stuff not so much even though I used to be really into it. What did DK do to make everybody so mad? I know he was an ahole but that seemed to be generally accepted as just another thing by all his fanboys on forums and stuff. Then I remember him making sort of a mean joke about the Benoit situation as soon as he resurfaced to talk about that. I want to say that was written off too but it’s been years so maybe I’m wrong. 

I agreed with a little sympathetic something Bret Hart said about him somewhere in the middle, that what he was was about as broken and beaten of a man that could possibly be alive. If a guy ever paid his debts before actually dying through pure pain and suffering it was him. I’ll always have a soft spot for him.

[sydneybrown]

1 hour ago, BloodyChamp said:

What did DK do to make everybody so mad? 

Read his book. 

[BloodyChamp]

I remember his book. I seem to remember everybody except Bret writing that off too, and Bret of course went on to forgive him when he calmed down. Maybe there were a few exceptions like The Honkytonk Man but yeah.

[BurningBeard]

It's mainly stuff from his book as well as 'rib' stories that have come out from various shoot interviews over time. As a result he seemed like a walking billboard for karma. I try to separate the artist from the art as much as possible, a lot of wrestling fans struggle to do this objectively

[Matt D]

In ring, around here, he wasn't well served by either the initial WWF 80s project or the NJPW one.

[OSJ]

6 hours ago, Matt D said:

In ring, around here, he wasn't well served by either the initial WWF 80s project or the NJPW one.

I dunno, we have a lot of folks here who are pretty good at watching older stuff and putting it in context. That said, DK is one of those rare performers where I sort of think you had to be there to fully appreciate what he brought to the table. He's really poorly served by his tagteam with Daveyboy Smith, only rarely did they get to shine (as they did against the Malenkos in Japan), the WWF stuff is pretty much a vast wasteland of VKM not really knowing what to do with them, ("Hey pal, let's have some skits of them with a bulldog farting, it's gold, I tell ya!")

If you were lucky enough to see DK live (as I was), it was unforgettable, how good was he? He could get decent matches out of people like Rip Oliver and Billy Jack, even the great Playboy Buddy Rose struggled doing that. Tape traders babbled over Tiger Mask, but it was obvious on the second or third watching that it was DK that held the match together and gave it some ebb and flow and curtailed TM's goofier tendencies. 

Yeah, by all accounts he was a nasty bastard and tears shed over him are likely misplaced, but he remains the most incredible in-ring performer that I've ever seen.

[BloodyChamp]

Eddie, Benoit, Chris, and a ton of others out of that mold sure thought he was good. Bret Hart was a different kind of wrestler/entertainer but he said DK was the best. 

I still love pretty much any match of his that was serious. His Hapan stuff, some WWF matches (not all for other reasons like already said), just a pile of good wrestling. He great.

Notice I said pretty much any match. There is 1 serious match that I can name, that most others can name that was just meh. I’ll go ahead and name it so’s not underrate everything else he did by virtue of everybody thinking of this match - vs Bret in 1985. It’s popped on on a bunch of comps. Just a boring, punch kick stalling match.

[Matt D]

2 hours ago, OSJ said:

I dunno, we have a lot of folks here who are pretty good at watching older stuff and putting it in context. That said, DK is one of those rare performers where I sort of think you had to be there to fully appreciate what he brought to the table. He's really poorly served by his tagteam with Daveyboy Smith, only rarely did they get to shine (as they did against the Malenkos in Japan), the WWF stuff is pretty much a vast wasteland of VKM not really knowing what to do with them, ("Hey pal, let's have some skits of them with a bulldog farting, it's gold, I tell ya!")

If you were lucky enough to see DK live (as I was), it was unforgettable, how good was he? He could get decent matches out of people like Rip Oliver and Billy Jack, even the great Playboy Buddy Rose struggled doing that. Tape traders babbled over Tiger Mask, but it was obvious on the second or third watching that it was DK that held the match together and gave it some ebb and flow and curtailed TM's goofier tendencies. 

Yeah, by all accounts he was a nasty bastard and tears shed over him are likely misplaced, but he remains the most incredible in-ring performer that I've ever seen.

Sure, sure.

But, if you're a tape watcher, you can watch Buddy Rose outrope-run him despite being a hundred pounds heavier and endless crummy Bulldogs heel-in-peril WWF tag team matches where they ate up their opponents and prevented any drama. He's aged better than Tiger Mask, but at the end of the day, all we can do is watch footage, you know? I believe you, John. I get that it's different, but all we can do is compare one match to another, keeping in mind the time period (and we compare plenty of other matches from the same era with one another. That's what the NJPW 80s project was all about.) Trust me, I'd love to go back in time and see the Tuesday night once-a-month (or twice if business is hot) shows from 79-81 Portland. All we have is the Saturday TV, which means we miss a bunch of blowoff matches and some attractions like Andre and Rose in the same ring. It's the miracle of Buddy's ego that we have what we have.

That said, over all, we have easy access to footage in ways people twenty years ago couldn't have dreamed about (and we get more every day, like the treasure trove of AJPW and NJPW handhelds that people got off Japanese ebay last year). It means how we consume this stuff is different than how people did thirty years ago. It also means we can be more consistent, comprehensive, and analytical about if it we want to.