To begin with, there's the Xerox method of integrating a career influence into one's formative approach to wrestling. It's well known that Chris Benoit chose to model everything after his idol, Tom 'Dynamite Kid' Billington. Not just his high-risk move set (the flying headbutts, the vicious snap suplexes etc.), but also the intensity and the commitment to hard-hitting technical excellence in pro-wrestling storytelling. Given how starstruck Benoit was by Billington, it was fortunate for him that they were such a good match. They shared a similar size and, bell to bell, a ridiculous level of disciplined intensity, quite apart from their phenomenal talents as technical wrestlers and their steroid-enhanced musculature. But Tom Billington wasn't built to be anyone's mentor. Even though Benoit met Billington in Calgary as a teenager before he even began properly training to be a wrestler, there was no way that the mean-spirited, bullying Dynamite Kid would ever have taken him under his wing. Like ships that passed in the night, the two men would seem to wrestle where the other wasn't; by the time Benoit debuted in Stampede Wrestling at the age of eighteen, the Dynamite Kid was working in the WWF. By the time Benoit went to Antonio Inoki's New Japan Pro Wrestling, Billington was working for Giant Baba's All Japan Pro Wrestling. As Billington's career was winding down, the injuries and addictions having taken their toll, Benoit was hitting his stride Stateside, making a name for himself in WCW. While Benoit would have nothing but good words to say about Billington, Dynamite was typically blunt when it came to his mini-me: he'd casually mention the younger star in passing, claiming that it was essentially him out there, not Benoit.
"Have you seen Chris wrestle? Well, if you see Chris wrestle, you see me." - Powerslam, December 1998
That didn't end with Benoit, either: when details of the appalling tragedy of the Benoit murder-suicide came out, Billington took every advantage of the publicity it created to detail in interviews how he'd warned Benoit to be careful, and about how his wife and son had paid the price for his failure to listen. The truth was somewhat less palatable. Billington's ex-wife has been very candid on the reason why their marriage failed:
"I realised what the future held, and when Tom left for a couple of days after New Year's (1991), I contemplated ending it for myself, my kids, and the baby growing inside of me. I couldn't do it, though; I couldn't do it because I couldn't guarantee that no-one would survive... I knew I had to try and save my kids. I bought Tom a one-way ticket to England, and paid for it with the last $3,000 we had in the bank. When I gave him the ticket, we had a big argument, and he put me in holds that popped out my jaw, and stretched me in agony. He told his brother to go get his gun, because he was going to shoot me if I didn't gather up the kids and leave for my sister's in fifteen minutes." - Fighting Spirit Magazine
The explanations for their disturbingly similar actions seem to be significantly different: following retirement, Billington is broken physically, unable to walk, while autopsies on Benoit's brain revealed advanced degenerative issues similar to patients on their last legs with Alzheimer's. Billington was always a pointlessly vicious, evil-minded individual. Benoit's issues were a secret to even his closest friends.
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.
