10 British Wrestlers Who Had Profound Impact In America

4. Dynamite Kid

One of the toughest men to ever lace up a pair of wrestling boots, Tommy Billington was a survivor of a Lancashire training school run by Ted Betley. Debuting in the UK in 1975, he quickly became a favourite of the television audience, and won the British Lightweight title just two years later, in a very fast ascendancy. Joint Promotions had a working relationship with Stu Hart€™s Stampede Wrestling in Canada at the time, and the Dynamite Kid travelled across the Atlantic many times, often with his cousin Davey Boy Smith. He was a sensation in Canada and was then booked in New Japan Pro Wrestling, where his legendary feud with the original Tiger Mask changed the face of junior heavyweight wrestling in the early 1980s. He won the WWF Junior Heavyweight title, which, despite its name, was primarily competed for in Japan, in February 1984, but this led to the WWF offering him an exclusive contract to wrestle for them. In August of that same year, Dynamite made his WWF debut, teaming with his old Stampede and New Japan colleague, Bret Hart. However, before long, he and Davey Boy had been put together in a tag team, as The British Bulldogs, complete with their own pet bulldog, Matilda. Their feud with The Hart Foundation really put tag team wrestling on the map in the WWF with fast paced and hard hitting matches that hadn€™t been seen in the WWF before. In fact, the tag team division was so successful that in both 1987 and 1988, the annual Survivor Series event saw a ten team elimination match. Just imagine trying to do that today! The Bulldogs won the WWF World Tag Team Championship at WrestleMania II and held them until February 1987, when they dropped them to the Harts after Dynamite had suffered a debilitating back injury caused by the combination of drug abuse and his unique but hard style of wrestling. Dynamite€™s style was unrelentingly hard. His top rope diving headbutt was spectacular, and he occasionally did the move to the outside of the ring! His snap suplex was the fastest in the industry. His style influenced many great wrestlers of future generations, most notably WWE champions Chris Benoit and Daniel Bryan. Bret Hart has previously stated that Dynamite was the best wrestler he ever saw. The Bulldogs left the WWF immediately after the 1988 Survivor Series and returned to Japan, where Dynamite enjoyed further success. But his American adventure was over. Today, he lives in a council house in his native Lancashire. Since the late 1990s, he has been confined to a wheelchair and in 2005, it was reported that he had to have a leg amputated. But in his autobiography, Pure Dynamite, he says that he wouldn't change a thing.