Tom Billington - later to achieve worldwide fame as the Dynamite Kid - was born at the tail end of 1958. His father (uncle to Davey Boy Smith) would frequently take him to see the wrestling, as we tend to call it in the UK, and given that the north of England had a volatile and entertaining wrestling tradition, the young Tom was soon hooked. He was always a feisty kid, and had taken up boxing when he was twelve, but the man whod been training him retired abruptly, leaving him with no outlet once more. At that point, his father introduced him to the man who ran the plant hire company he worked for: Ted Betley, also known as Dr. Death, a former professional wrestler. Billington trained with Betley for three years, until by the time he was sixteen he knew more than any of the grown men he was training with. He debuted only a few weeks after his seventeenth birthday, on Christmas Eve 1975. He was eighteen when he won the British Lightweight Championship, and nineteen when he won the British Welterweight title. A few months later, he accepted the second offer from Stu Hart to go and work at Stampede Wrestling in Canada (the first offer was too low), and he left England to go on a months tour and didnt come back until 1991. Why is the Dynamite Kid number one on this list, ahead of the inspiration for the Divas Revolution, the redoubtable mans man, and Rey freakin Mysterio? Because there was a time - probably the first half of the 1980s - when the Dynamite Kid was one of the best wrestlers in the world, if not the best. The Dynamite Kid could have a good match with anyone, of any skill level. His intense, high-flying and technical style was stiffer than a lead erection, and inspired wrestlers like Bret the Hitman Hart, Chris Benoit (who lifted almost everything from him) and Bryan Danielson to do what they did, the way that they did it. In many ways, the Dynamite Kid helped build the wrestling style you see in todays WWE. Not that he would ever have done so deliberately: tales are legendary of his bad attitude, his backstage bullying and violence, and far, far worse. But as a wrestler, he was, hands down, one of the greatest, most phenomenal of all time. Well, hed been training to be the best since he was thirteen. Who would you class as the greatest ever teenage wrestler? Share your picks below in the comments thread.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
