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Dynamite Kid Passed Away


The Four Horsemen

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3 minutes ago, Brewster McCloud said:

 

And you know what? I have a serious point to make about this but this isn't the time or the place. If I'm not banned again, I'll take you up on this some other time. Later! This is just me saying that a death threat might not be the place for petty squabbling.

I don't think this is petty squabbling - it's just reasoned debate, one of the reasons we're here. After all, of all places in which this sort of discussion will arise, I think a wrestling forum is probably one of the most likely and frequent.

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6 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

You realise Los Angeles is 8 hours behind us, right? Its barely 8am there currently. 

Yes, I just found it slightly amusing that we were all talking about it before him. Just one of those weird quirks, nothing against Melttzer. I willl be interested, however, to see if Dave actually takes Billington to task over the many, many, shitty things he's done, or weather he's just like "He had so many 5* matches in Japan!" Meltzer can sometimes overlook the awful things done by guys he has a wet spot for.

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1 minute ago, Brewster McCloud said:

Yes, I just found it slightly amusing that we were all talking about it before him. Just one of those weird quirks, nothing against Melttzer. I willl be interested, however, to see if Dave actually takes Billington to task over the many, many, shitty things he's done, or weather he's just like "He had so many 5* matches in Japan!" Meltzer can sometimes overlook the awful things of things done by guys he has a wet spot for.

Out of the seventeen Billignton matches Dave rated, only one was 5 stars (vs Tiger Mask, April '83) and his average match rating across all seventeen matches is 2.82 stars. I haven't been Meltzer's biggest fan for the past few years but his tributes tend to be pretty fair. 

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Just now, Accident Prone said:

Out of the seventeen Billignton matches Dave rated, only one was 5 stars (vs Tiger Mask, April '83) and his average match rating across all seventeen matches is 2.82 stars. I haven't been Meltzer's biggest fan for the past few years but his tributes tend to be pretty fair. 

Top investigative journalism, there!  Nice one!

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14 minutes ago, Accident Prone said:

Out of the seventeen Billignton matches Dave rated, only one was 5 stars (vs Tiger Mask, April '83) and his average match rating across all seventeen matches is 2.82 stars. I haven't been Meltzer's biggest fan for the past few years but his tributes tend to be pretty fair. 

Oh, totally! I'm 38 years old and I still get the Observer emailed to me. Thanks for actually giving some proof, man!

Edit: that was in no way meant to sound sarcastic.

 

LIke I say, though, it'll be interesting to see if Meltzer goes gooey for Dynamite's matches in Japan or, for once, does his job as a wrestling journalist and bites the hand that feeds him by writing about how horrible Dynamite was and how the business made him so. He's missing an opportunity if he doesn't. Come on Dave, you've made your money... stop apologising for wrestling and blow the lid off.

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It's strange to think about but Dynamite's body giving out on him and his career basically ending at the age of 33 probably extended his life by many years, if he'd have been able to keep wrestling I think he'd have been dead before 40 like Davey.

The local paper in Wigan has a story on him, complete with a picture I hadn't seen before of Bret and Bryan Knobs visiting Dynamite while on a WWF UK tour in 1993.

 

 

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RIP Dynamite Kid. 

With all the talk of his classic battles with Tiger Mask, I want to point to out that his influence on the junior heavyweight scene started a year before his series with Sayama started. His brilliant match with Tatsumi Fujinami on February 5, 1980, ****, was when the New Japan fans where first introduced to the more reckless style of wrestling. Came at the end of the "first generation junior heavyweight era" of Fujinami before he went heavyweight and the junior division was handed to Tiger Mask in 1981. Dynamite Kid had toured for IWE n 1979 and was instantly picked-up by New Japan after the match against Ashura Hara caught peoples attention.

Besides the Tiger Mask series (with my nerdy ratings):

April 23, 1981 - Tiger Mask -vs- Dynamite Kid [*** 1/2]
January 1, 1982 - Tiger Mask -vs- Dynamite Kid - (WWF Junior Title Decision) [*** 3/4]
January 28, 1982 - Tiger Mask -vs- Dynamite Kid - (WWF Junior Title) [**** 1/2]
July 23, 1982 - Dynamite Kid -vs- Tiger Mask [*** 1/4]
August 5, 1982 - Tiger Mask -vs- Dynamite Kid - (WWF Junior Title) [**** 1/2]
August 30, 1982 - Tiger Mask -vs- Dynamite Kid - (WWF Junior Title) [*** 1/2]
April 21, 1983 - Tiger Mask -vs- Dynamite Kid - (NWA Junior Title) [*** 1/2]
 

...there were some interesting tag matches that often gets neglected in the feud:

January 22, 1982 - Tiger Mask & Kantaro Hoshino -vs- Dynamite Kid & Brett Hart [***]
February 11, 1982 - Tiger Mask & Kengo Kimura & Tatsumi Fujinami -vs- Dynamite Kid & Bret Hart & Babyface [**** 1/4]
July 16, 1982 - Dynamite Kid & Brett Hart -vs- Tiger Mask & Kengo Kimura [*** 1/4]
July 31, 1982 - Tiger Mask & Tatsumi Fujinami & Kengo Kimura -vs- Dynamite Kid & Greg Valentine & Bret Hart [*** 1/2]
August 13, 1982 - Tiger Mask & Kantaro Hoshino -vs- Dynamite Kid & Brett Hart [** 3/4]
 

Post-Tiger Mask, meaning 1984, he continued to have good matches, but not many of the same caliber. Most of what was good was either with or against Davey Boy Smith. Unfortunately his jump to AJPW wasn't as successful. He jumped at the worst time, when EVERYBODY jumped to AJPW, and the promotion had their hottest year - 1985. That resulted in the British Bulldogs being put in the shadow of Japanese biggest stars and basically became a mid-card attraction. One match does stand out in his 6 years in All Japan, and that's when the British Bulldogs challenged for the AJPW Tag Titles held by Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu on May 24, 1989, *** 1/2.

He had one hell of a downfall after he was one of the most experimental in a very experimental era. Karma is a bitch, but the bastard was stubborn enough to fight on until the grand old age of 60.

 

--PUNQ--

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Gone but not forgotten by the hardcore fans I'd wager. By all accounts a huge cunt but his in ring work was unbelievable and ahead of its time. I'm not his biggest fan but you will struggle to argue against the quality of his matches, some of which really stand the test of time. 

dynamite-kid-autobiography.jpg

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