I was recently able to get hold of a heap of wrestler biographies and autobiographies, so I leapt at the chance. And so I have gone from reading the autobiographies of Australian sports people, classic sci-fi, the latest Stephen King book, and too many short stories, to a sudden and complete immersion into other people’s worlds in the squared circle.
The first of this new crop I have tackled is ‘Pure Dynamite’ by Tom Billington (1999).
At 200 pages (paperback) it’s hardly a challenging read; I cleared it off in 3 days between doing a heap of other things. The language is conversational, and in my head it did not take long for a laid back English accent to start narrating the words I was reading. This relaxed style also meant there were errors in grammar and syntax, and I’m not really sure what the editor was going for there. However, this conversational tone contributed to it being a really easy read.
The other thing that made it easy to read was that it was so damn interesting. He says at one point that he only wrestled for 13 years, and yet to read this you’d think he’d wrestled for so much longer. His tales of the ring seemed to occasionally slip into kayfabe territory, but he actually managed to get some of the feel of being in there into his words. And his honesty is, at times, uncomfortably frank, especially when it comes to drugs and some of his assessments of other people.
There were so many anecdotes in here that I had never heard before. I’m not saying they’re not true, just that maybe some one has finally had the guts to say exactly what he wants without fear of retribution.
Two things, however, stick in my mind about this book. One is how badly Davey Boy Smith comes out of it. I mean, really badly. Stupidly badly. And I wonder if he read this before he died and what he made of it… The second is how he wrestled with so much pain and injury because, as he said, he knew nothing else. It makes me look at my two destroyed knees and how much grief they give me in a ring and wonder if I’m not being a wimp.
He talks about a lot of people. Many of the Japanese wrestlers come out of the book well. Not so much too many members of the Hart family. Bret seems to come out mediocre, Stu as mainly incompetent, and Owen as good, but the rest of them… Ouch. Vince McMahon does not come out of it too badly at all, especially when compared to the other promoters mentioned, although ‘Giant’ Baba comes out very well. And the reader is left in no doubt as to what Billington thinks of people, none at all.
And then it ends in a wheelchair. Quite suddenly, within 5 pages, he collapses, then he’s in a wheelchair and the book’s over.
It feels like a sad book, but not one filled with regrets. I almost got a depressed feeling from it. But that does not mean it is a book to be avoided, far from it.
This is a superb book and maybe should be something every up and coming wrestler should read, to see just what went on before and the sacrifices that were made by those who led the way. And maybe to let them know that listening to their body is the way to go.
Really good book – thoroughly recommended.
