Answering A Good Question

I have been attempting to catch up on the issues of the Pro Wrestling Torch that have built up over the last few weeks. It seems I just hadn't given myself enough time to read them and I had three to four issues to read at once.

I would finish one issue and then another would arrive at my door. It was an endless cycle. I managed to catch up yesterday so I am now back on track. There was one article in these issues that gor me thinking. I thought it would be a good topic to write about.

One of the newer weekly articles in the Torch is called 'Good Question' where writer, James Caldwell dissects the voting on a question that is asked to readers of the newsletter and website.

In issue 953 the question asked was 'What is the best wrestling book you have read?' The runaway winner with fifty-one percent of the votes is Mick Foley's first autobiography, Have a Nice Day.

I agree with this result. Foley was the first, and so far only, wrestler who has written his own autobiography without the aid of a ghost-writer. The book made it into first place of the New York Times Bestseller list and paved the way for other wrestlers to put their names to books about their careers and lives.

I agreed on the inclusion of Foley in the first place of reader's voting but there is one book that comes a very close second that doesn't seem to have made an impact on the concensus of voters minds as it only made five percent of the votes and finished in fifth place.

The book in question is Pure Dynamite by Tom Billington. The wrestler was one half of the British Bulldogs tag team that was popular in the eighties during the WWF's first wave of popularity.

Pure Dynamite discusses the darker side of the business. It highlights the author's attempts at being the top guy in a foreign company. It has no happy ending, either. Billington is now in a wheelchair and back home in his native land.

I wrote a review of it on the Amazon website back in 2000. Here it is;

If you grew up watching the WWF during the early 80's this book is for you. It is the autobiography of Tom Billington who left his job working the British wrestling circuit and headed to find fame and fortune in the Canadian Stampede federation. Eventually, he and his cousin Davey Boy Smith (The British Bulldog) end up in Vince McMahon's WWF and become the popular British Bulldogs tag team. In the federation he earned a lot of money and made a few wrong turns into drugs and steroids. But still, he was possibly the greatest performer in the world at that time. Billington details the relationship he had with many of the famous wrestlers from the 'Rock 'N' Wrestling' heyday and is brutally honest with his feelings. One of the down sides to the book is that when detailing his matches in the WWF,Stampede and Japan he refuses to break the hidden code of 'KAYFABE' and makes the matches appear as if they weren't worked. Despite this, Tom Billington lays the wrestling world straight out before us and proves that there is an even bigger power struggle behind the scenes just as there is on screen. The most moving part is when Tom returns home after this experience and realises that his wallet is filled with the same money he left with. This autobiography is PURE DYNAMITE!