Dogged duo took on world to get grip of championship tag
Now family carry on the legacy of popular wrestling cousins
ANYONE who grew up watching professional wrestling in the 1980s and 90s will know who the British Bulldogs are.
Draped in Union Jacks and accompanied to the ring by their pet bulldog Matilda, Davey Boy Smith and the Dynamite Kid brought a quintessentially English flavour to the larger than life and extremely American WWF (World Wrestling Federation).
For fans growing up in England, the Bulldogs were obviously huge stars but their popularity transcended that and, in 1985, they were crowned the best tag team in the world by the hugely respected Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
The pinnacle of their career as a tag team came a year later when they won the WWF World Tag Team Championship from Greg ‘The Hammer’ Valentine and Brutus ‘The Barber’ Beefcake, at Wrestlemania II, while Ozzy Osbourne watched on from their corner.
But despite being billed from places such as Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester, both of the Bulldogs’ careers started in Golborne - a small mining town outside of Wigan.
Indeed, it was to avoid working in the coal mines that Dynamite Kid decided to get into professional wrestling in the first place.
The Kid, real name Tom Billington, grew up in a family of fighters his dad Bill and uncle Eric were boxers in their youth and his grandad Thomas was a bare-knuckle boxer.
Despite being smaller than the average professional wrestler, at 5ft 8in, Dynamite Kid made up for it with his speed and agility.
Initially training under ‘Dr Death’ Ted Betley, he made his debut in 1975 and would go on to be a regular on ITV’s iconic World of Sport wrestling segments. Often, he would wrestle alongside his real life cousin David Smith - at that time using the name ‘Young David.’
Bruce Hart, a Canadian secondgeneration wrestler and a member of the legendary Hart wrestling family, scouted Young David and Dynamite Kid and took them to Canada.
It was in Canada the cousins were trained by Stu Hart at the notorious Hart Family Dungeon and became huge stars in Stampede Wrestling. Young David changed his name to Davey Boy Smith and they formed the British Bulldogs tag team.
Between moving to North American and joining the WWF, Dynamite Kid competed in the first ever wrestling match to be awarded five stars by acclaimed wresting journalist Dave Meltzer.
His match against Tiger Mask, in Japan, in 1983, is still highly regarded and only 180 other matches in the past 28 years have achieved the rating since.
Both men joined the WWF in 1984 and had four successful years in the company and a number of memorable feuds with the likes of The Hart Foundation, until their final appearance in 1988.
They returned to Canada but broke up in 1990; it was at this point that their careers followed completely different trajectories.
Davey Boy, wrestling under the name ‘The British Bulldog,’ won the WWF Intercontinental Championship in a match against his brotherin-law Bret Hart, in front of 80,355 people at Wembley Stadium, in the main event of Summerslam 1992.
To this day, the crowd is still the fourth largest in the history of the company and the match itself is regarded as a bona fide classic.
As part of the annual Wrestlemania week, he was posthumously inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, following his death from a heart defect, aged 39, in 2002.
His widow Diana, daughter Georgia and son Harry - also a wrestler accepted the honour on his behalf.
Making a speech on stage, Harry, who wrestles under the name the British Bulldog Jr, said: “What an incredible athlete and performer he was. He was versatile. He could do it all - a power house, who at the same time could be agile and athletic.
“He had a huge physique but what was even bigger was his heart and his wonderful personality.
“I’m glad to carry on Davey’s legacy, every time I step foot in squared circle know he’s there with me in spirit.”
Dynamite Kid’s career, on the other hand, was cut short due to health problems in 1991. He made a few brief comebacks, but in 1997 he lost the use of his left leg and he died on his 60th birthday in 2018.
Now, his nephews are carrying on the family legacy. Namesake Thomas, 20, and Mark, 18, have called themselves the ‘Billington Bulldogs.’
Their dad, also called Mark, is Dynamite Kid’s brother who said: “They both said to Tom, ‘one day, we are going to be wrestlers like you’ but I’m not sure if he believed them!
“They’ve already done many shows all round England and have even been to Austria. They are in talks with Japan now and are planning to go when it is safe to travel.
“They’ve only been doing it for three and a half years and in that time it’s quite unbelievable where they’ve been and what they’ve done.”