WR3ZTLING

[T200]

I never heard of him dying.

[T200]

--Buck Zumhofe, who is to be sentenced today after being convicted of 12 felony counts in relation to sexual conduct with his daughter starting from when she was a teenager, had a 13th count added for attempting to escape from custody. Zumhofe tried to run after being declared guilty, but was tackled by guards on Wednesday..

[Turdacious]

Posted online after Robinson's passing:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtjpW8pR3HY[/youtube]

[T200]

71 year old Mil Mascaras and his 63 year old brother Dos Caras still getting it done over in Japan:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hXWbED4aLo[/youtube]

Not a good match or anything but posted 'cause you see some old dudes moving well.

Did anyone actually ever lay eyes on any of Mil's strength/combatives courses? Out of curiosity.

[T200]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Rm190R3V4[/youtube]

Nikita Koloff's birthday

Also Rick Steiner's

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8DYvecf4w8[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cVJ2K-GNUU[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUhXQ2p0ap0[/youtube]

[T200]

[T200]

[T200]

[T200]

The Iron Sheik's birthday

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti0hvzbt-2E[/youtube]

[Herv100]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDJQZPitIoE[/youtube]

[T200]

Ricky Steamboat and Jimmy Snuka bodybuilding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH9rpkakmJM

[T200]

Dave Meltzer on Buck Zumhofe

Former 80s AWA star Eugene Otto Zumhofe (Buck "Rock'n'Roll" Zumhofe) was convicted on 3/5 in a Minnesota court, of one of the most heinous series of crimes in modern wrestling history.

Zumhofe was convicted on six counts of first degree sexual conduct and six counts of third degree sexual conduct, all involving his daughter starting from when she was 15. The convictions could put the 62-year-old former wrestler away for the rest of his natural life.

Zumhofe also now faces a 13th count of attempting to escape from custody was added after he attempted to flee after the verdict was read. Zumhofe reportedly attempted to run from the courthouse, but was tackled by security officers. He will be held without bond, pending sentencing, which is scheduled for 5/7.

Judge David Mennis heard arguments the next day from prosecutors attempting to garner a lengthy sentence, one that would put him away for the rest of his life. Kandiyohi County (Minnesota) Attorney Shane Baker said that there are factors which could double prison time, plus the judge can sentence him to consecutive terms for each individual charge. The prosecution brought up the particular cruelty of the sexual abuse as well as his pattern as a sex offender with underaged girls, including convictions of sex crimes in both 1986 and 1989, while he was working for the AWA.

The maximum penalty under normal circumstances for a first degree sexual conduct charge is 30 years in prison and a $40,000 fine.

Zumhofe's daughter testified against him, but Zumhofe in his testimony, denied all charges. His daughter also testified after the verdict, answering questions from Nathan Midolo, an assistant county attorney who was the prosecutor. She said that she wanted to remain a virgin for marriage and talked about injuries caused by Zumhofe's frequent sexual contact with her.

The daughter, now 29, was born on May 6, 1984, a date that Zumhofe, was wrestling on one of the biggest wrestling shows of the era, at Texas Stadium, the night of Kerry Von Erich's NWA championship win over Ric Flair. On that show, Zumhofe teamed with Iceman King Parsons, billed as the Rock & Soul Express, to win the American tag team titles from the masked Super Destroyers (brothers Scott & Bill Irwin).

The daughter had testified of sexual abuse starting in May 1999, just after her 15th birthday, until June 2011, when, at the age of 27, she stopped it. She estimated there were 1,800 separate acts of sexual abuse during the time period, including a time where she believed she was possibly impregnated by her father.

She testified that Zumhofe had sex with the victim's mother in Minnesota in 1983 when he was working for the AWA, in what was described as a one-night-stand. There was a paternity test after her birth to establish him as the father. Zumhofe had never met his daughter until 1998, when he contacted her at school when she was 13, and expressed a desire to meet her. She spent her spring break in 1993 at Zumhofe's home in Kandiyohi County.

A year later, she claimed Zumhofe contacted her again, saying he wanted to reunite with her family, both her and her mother. In April, he gave her a two-piece bathing suit on her 15th birthday, and encouraged her to sunbathe with it on and insisted on rubbing baby oil on her, including under her swimsuit bottom, claiming he wanted to make sure she didn't get funny tan lines.

She moved in with Zumhofe in June 1999, and her mother was to move in a few weeks later. She testified that the first night she was at the house this time, Zumhofe began touching her breasts, and took off her clothes and began touching her in intimate places. She claimed that within two weeks, it had escalated to oral sex and he also taught her to masturbate him, as well as asked her to dance in front of him in her underwear and watch pornography with her.

She claimed that escalated into intercourse within two weeks. The charges against Zumhofe were only related to the period between July 1, 1999, the date she claimed they first had sex, and May 5, 2001, the day before her 17th birthday. She claimed Zumhofe wanted to have sex with her two or three times daily, injuring her and never giving her time to heal. She claimed early on, it took eight weeks for the bleeding to stop because of the non-stop sexual abuse.

The victim's mother moved in, but upon finding out about the abuse, she moved out in September 1999 and wanted to take her daughter with her, call law enforcement officers and leave the state. She claimed that she stayed with her father because he threatened to kill himself.

She claimed for years, he continued to have sex with her multiple times a day in the early years, and two to three times a week in later years.

Starting in 2000, she was part of Zumhofe's independent pro wrestling troupe, called "Buck Zumhofe's Rock & Roll Wrestling," which ran shows in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois playing upon the fame he had from the AWA.

At the time of Zumhofe's arrest, Kandiyohi County attorney Jennifer Fischer noted to us that she was astounded that so many people within wrestling could see what was happening and that nobody ever came forward. One person from the promotion testified in the trial and sided with Zumhofe, and was bitterly attacked by those who supported the daughter that they would do such a thing.

She said during that period she was afraid to say anything for fear of reprisals from those in wrestling.

Another woman came forward, saying that in 2001, when she was 17 and his daughter was 15, and they were living in Cyrus, MN, said that Zumhofe wanted a threesome with her and his daughter and that she had witnessed Zumhofe inappropriately touching his daughter when she turned down the offer.

Other witnesses told authorities they had seen Zumhofe both french kissing his daughter and dirty dancing with her at a New London/Spice High School dance. Several witnesses told prosecutors that they knew Zumhofe shared a bed with his daughter.

The victim was married and moved away in June, 2011, and said Zumhofe became violent, threatening both her and her new husband, as well as once again threatening suicide.

Zumhofe spent 36 months at Stillwater Prison in Stillwater, MN, after being convicted on January 23, 1989, of fourth degree sexual assault with an unrelated underage girl. He was AWA light heavyweight champion when he was sent to prison, a championship Verne Gagne essentially created for him, since he was a very popular undercard wrestler, but considered too small to be a main eventer. He also had a 1999 conviction for violating a domestic violence order for protection in Kandiyohi County involving a previous girlfriend that he broke up with just before he talked his daughter into moving in with him. He had another conviction and served time in 1986.

During the 90s, he worked as a television enhancement talent for WWE, including losing matches to Undertaker and HHH.

Zumhofe was originally trained by Gagne, Billy Robinson and Khosrow Vaziri (The Iron Sheik) at Gagne's 1975 camp. The camp had a reputation for being physically brutal, with many top athletes not able to get through it without quitting. But it also had an incredible track record for success from those who did survive. Only four men were able to complete the camp, Zumhofe, Richard Blood (Ricky Steamboat), Jan Nelson (who only had a short career as a pro wrestler) and Scott Irwin.

He was sent on the road, working as a prelim wrestler for Roy Shire in Northern California, Don Owen in the Pacific Northwest, and Al Tomko in British Columbia.

His fame came in the AWA, when he wore a white jumpsuit and carried a big boom box to the ring. While he was supposed to be a modern character, the boom box usually played songs from when Gagne was younger from the likes of Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry. He was the second AWA wrestler to come out to entrance music (The Crusher, coming out to the Beer Barrel Polka, was the first).

It was really telling about the differences in times and the wrestling culture that Zumhofe, who was never a major headliner, continued to work regularly in the business after arrests and convictions. He was, at best, a popular prelim wrestler with better name recognition in his territory than almost any prelim wrestler in the early 80s. When the AWA starting coming to San Francisco and Oakland in 1981, even though Zumhofe almost always worked the first or second match and wasn't a good promo, and was okay as a wrestler but hardly a standout, the gimmick and name Rock'n'Roll Zumhofe had tremendous name recognition.

Early in the run, when getting off the plane, Verne Gagne would tell a story about how he was the AWA world champion and be going through the airport and girls would run past him and mob Zumhofe like he was a rock star. In that era, Zumhofe worked a seemingly endless program with Bobby Heenan, and they often had the best or second best matches on the shows. Every few years, Heenan, and after he left other heels, would break his boom box and he'd be out for revenge. Later, when he was perennial AWA world light heavyweight champion, they would do the gimmick where Heenan missed weight and would then beat him, but fail to get the title, setting up rematches.

The reality is that during the territorial era, sex with underage girls in different cities hit regularly was a staple of the pro wrestling environment. It was considered one of pro wrestling's fringe benefits that made up for the often bad pay. Part of the job of virtually any promotion of the era was cleaning up the mess if somehow the girls came forward, or their parents found out, which has continued even in the modern era. Still, Zumhofe, with his daughter, was a completely different level of deviant behavior.

[Holland Oates]

Jeezus tits! That's fucking horrible.

[T200]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_OUlkfBPZA[/youtube]

[T200]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-bEbg0luDI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3EksOFtILs[/youtube]

[Bob Wildes]

The Iron Sheik's birthday

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti0hvzbt-2E[/youtube]

I drank in the same bar that was frequented by the guy that murdered one of his daughters in 2003.

[Turdacious]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_OUlkfBPZA[/youtube]

The Yin, and the Yang:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzE9UgLGjWs[/youtube]

Jake has not gotten enough love on this thread.

[T200]

[Herv100]

FUJI VICE!!!!!!

[Koko, Beware]

Muraco gets overlooked sometimes. Damn, he was a great heel.

[T200]

Don Muraco getting so much done he can only wear half a shirt

[T200]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrsRjJP1TiA[/youtube]

[Herv100]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MzaqCImYu0[/youtube]

[T200]

Looks like Meltzer wrote a bigger/better Billy Robinson obit...97,400 characters

There’s a scene in the original movie, “The Wrestler,” from 1974, where Billy Taylor, the best technical wrestler in the world, a character both based on Billy Robinson, and played by Billy Robinson, was in the wrestling office. There, he met Mike Bullard, the legendary longtime world champion, a character based on and played by Verne Gagne.

Even though he clearly recognized the two were on a collision course, he had clear admiration for the aging champion and said, “It’s a shame a great wrestler has to grow old.”

Of course that happens to everyone. Robinson, who passed away on 2/27 at the age of 75, himself could relate to that line, even 40 years ago when the movie was being filmed and he was still a wrestling and conditioning machine.

For years, in England, he trained and competed with a man named Bob Robinson, no relation to him, who was better known as Billy Joyce, the longtime British and European heavyweight champion. In Robinson’s mind, and he’s seen and been around more than just about anyone, there was and still has been no greater submission wrestler that ever lived. He claimed he used to see Bob Robinson just toy with Karl Istaz, who later became known in Japan as the God of pro wrestling and toughest man alive, as Karl Gotch. Gotch himself called Joyce the greatest British wrestler ever.

“If you grappled with Billy Joyce, and pulled on his leg, he wouldn’t resist, and he’d effortlessly take your leg,” said Billy Robinson. “He never wasted energy picking guys up. He would tell me, `Billy, the idea is you don’t lift a big man up, you help him down.”’

But then, in the mid-60s, Joyce was in his late 40s. By that time, the younger Robinson was able to beat him and had replaced him as the king of Billy Riley’s gym in Wigan, known as the snake pit, a rundown facility that, by legend, produced the toughest men in the world of its time.

Art imitated life. In those days, the tradition in England, dating back to Bert Assirati, was that the toughest guy would hold the British heavyweight title, and he wouldn’t lose it until somebody tougher came along. Joyce was picked as champion in 1958 when Assirati left Joint Promotions. It wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule, in the sense Joyce did lose the title several times, usually to very legitimate wrestlers like Dennis Mitchell or Geoff Portz, but he always regained it and everyone in wrestling always knew he was the top guy. By the early 60s, everyone expected his successor to be Robinson, a wrestling prodigy. At the age of 17, Robinson placed third in the British amateur championships in the 192 pound weight class. At 18, he captured the title.

At 19, Robinson entered the 1958 European championships in both the 192 pound weight class, and as an undersized heavyweight. In the light heavyweight division, he defeated 30-year-old Gerry Martina of Ireland, who had come off placing fourth in the 1956 Olympics, in the finals. In the heavyweight finals, he lost to 32-year-old Ken Richmond of England, who won a silver medal in the 1952 Olympics as a heavyweight and was top five in the 1948 and 1956 games. Robinson claimed to have later beaten Richmond in a YMCA match a few weeks later.

When he went back to Wigan, expecting that Riley would congratulate him, instead, Riley said, “Listen son, you’ve won all the cups and the medals, why don’t you take me out? I taught you how to wrestle. Take me out and buy me a steak dinner.”

Robinson said he’d love to, except he couldn’t afford to.

“It just goes to show you, kid, you can’t buy steaks with medals. It’s time to turn pro.”

Robinson was attending college at the time, but quickly the travel of pro wrestling led to him dropping out. But he did say that in hindsight, while he was glad he became a pro wrestler, as it allowed him to travel the world as a star, he wished he would have waited until after the 1960 Olympics.

He rose to stardom in 1960, and by 1961, captured the Royal Albert Hall heavyweight tournament, and was a consistent main eventer. His first championship match with Joyce, on May 18, 1963 at Kings Hall in Manchester, was won by Joyce in 42 minutes. He established himself as the top contender that year. A title rematch went to a 45 minute draw. Through the rest of the year, Robinson scored a number of non-title wins, and draws in title matches.

So there was even more meaning when Joyce first put Robinson over on June 12, 1965, for the European heavyweight title, winning in 21:00 with a double-arm suplex, and again, on April 23, 1966, for the British heavyweight title. And that tradition continued. Robinson did lose his title to Ian Campbell, as a way to get the title back on Joyce without him beating Robinson. Their January 28, 1967, match in Manchester is the one most remembered, because it was clear this was the real passing of the torch and most saw it as the sign that Robinson had clearly surpassed his idol, and was the end of the Billy Joyce era.

Robinson didn’t lose either title, because the belief was that nobody at the time could beat him, even when he left the country as his home base in 1968 for the first time to go Japan. He eventually vacated both titles in 1970 when he gave word he was moving to Hawaii and leaving England for good.

“Billy was one of a number of fighters who would never allow himself to be defeated unless he was convinced that man was capable of beating him,” said Jackie Pallo, one of the two biggest television stars of British wrestling in that era, in his autobiography.

Even then, Robinson loved coaching. Before he left England, one year in the late 60s, the team he coached won the national amateur championships in seven of the ten weight classes. One of the members was future British pro wrestling star Marty Jones.

It wasn’t that many years after that scene in “The Wrestler,” where Robinson himself got old. His pro wrestling career wound down in the mid-80s.

By that time he was drinking heavily. Eventually, according to Jake Shannon, who ghost wrote Robinson’s autobiography, “Physical Chess: My Life in Catch-As-Catch-Can Wrestling,” Robinson hit rock bottom.

During his run in the 70s and into the early 80s as one of the best and highest paid pro wrestlers in the world, he, like so many of the wrestlers of his generation, never paid taxes. Eventually, the IRS caught up to him. Between that and a messy divorce, his in-ring career was over, pro wrestling had forgotten about him, and there was no interest or venue for what he knew better than almost any man alive.

He was still living in Minneapolis after his wrestling career ended, working as the manager of a convenience store at a gas station.

Eventually, he migrated to Las Vegas, where a wrestling connection was able to get him a job in security at the Gold Coast Hotel. As coincidence would have it, TNA announcer Mike Tenay, who grew up a huge wrestling fan and knew of Robinson’s reputation as a wrestler and street fighter, was working at the Race & Sports Book at the time.

“You don’t know how comforting it was going to work on the late shift, knowing that if there was any trouble, that Billy Robinson was ten seconds away,” said Tenay.

But the man who had wrestled in front of Ernest Hemmingway, The Shah of Iran, The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, and hobnobbed with The Beatles, Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren, was now in his 50s, living in a small apartment near the casino. Robinson was described as a great guy to be around, except he had a dark side if he’d been drinking, which at the time, was very often. Usually after work, he was a regular at the bar that Mike’s wife Karen worked as a waitress. When he drank, he had a hot temper. Once, he got drunk at the Gold Coast, caused a scene, and ended up being let go. It’s hard to say what would have happened to him, but those close to him just remark it’s fortunate things changed.

What probably saved his life was getting a gig with a Japanese wrestling promotion, the UWFI (Union of Wrestling Forces-International), that was doing shoot style wrestling built around one of the best workers of the era, Nobuhiko Takada. Lou Thesz worked for the promotion, and he chose Robinson and Danny Hodge to be the figurehead legendary shooters who endorsed the product and the wrestlers, proclaiming them to be the toughest and most well trained wrestlers in the world, and different from the pro wrestling that everyone in Japan knew. Thesz was out there, reliving his own glory days, and issuing grandstand challenges to all the pro wrestling world champions to come and face Takada. Robinson was also there to train the wrestlers in both working and shooting.

The UWFI started in 1991, a little over two years before the start of the UFC and Pancrase, which popularized legitimate matches. It was an offshoot of the UWF, which started as a pro wrestling promotion in 1984. The UWF was started by former New Japan Chairman of the Board Hisashi Shinma, who was credited with building that company into being the strongest wrestling company in the world from 1981 to 1983, until being kicked out of the company due to an embezzlement scandal. He was looking at recreating New Japan, using Antonio Inoki, his longtime business partner, as the legend, but grooming Akira Maeda as the younger successor. But after promising Shinma he would leave New Japan shortly after the new group started, Inoki reneged and stayed with New Japan.

Maeda, a disciple of Karl Gotch, wanted to take the company into more of a shoot style promotion. Maeda had a strong karate background. He learned the submission wrestling game in the New Japan dojo from Gotch, and his top pupil, Yoshiaki Fujiwara. At the time, Maeda’s “little brother” was an even more talented junior heavyweight, Takada. With the endorsement of Gotch, they worked a stiffer and more realistic style of pro wrestling, that most of the audience believed was legit. The built it around the kicks from karate as the high spots to get the crowd up, along with open hand slaps, a variety of suplexes, and usually finished with submission wrestling moves like armbars or half crabs. Most of them were legitimate moves, and some they did back then didn’t really work in true combat.

Gotch never liked the kicks, but the Japanese felt they were necessary to break up the matwork, that much of the audience didn’t find entertaining. The group had a cult following in Tokyo in 1984 and 1985, but couldn’t draw on the road due to not having television. The company folded at the end of 1985.

Eventually the stars of UWF went back to New Japan, which drew great at the box office in 1986, but did not do nearly as well with television ratings because the casual TV viewer didn’t understand the submission style. Maeda was a big star in New Japan, but they were loaded with big stars. He refused to put over Inoki, so the big singles match, which would have been the biggest bout in Japanese wrestling at the time, was never made.

As time went on, Maeda grew more frustrated. There was the incident where Andre the Giant was sent to put a hit on him to humble him, which backfired and turned into a quasi-shoot. He got mad when asked to put over Bam Bam Bigelow, who New Japan wanted to push as its new top foreign superstar. He cooperated, losing the match, but not without spitting in Bigelow’s face, which Bigelow, not knowing the politics, didn’t understand why that was happening.

The frustration came to a head at a match at Korakuen Hall, where Maeda was booked to do a double count out with Kerry Von Erich. Korakuen Hall was the UWF’s home base, and the Maeda fans expected that he would destroy a fake American wrestler. When he didn’t, it was as if he had sold out.

The frustrations exploded during a six-man tag match in late 1987. Riki Choshu, the company’s most popular wrestler, except for Inoki, had a scorpion deathlock on Maeda’s tag team partner, Osamu Kido, which meant his hands were tied up. Maeda kicked him in the face as hard as he could, for real, breaking Choshu’s orbital bone.

Maeda was fired, but by this time, he had two years of prime time television getting his style over. The cheap shot actually made him more popular. In reality, it was a bullshit move in a worked environment. But to the fans in Japan, Maeda was fired because he did something real. The idea of reality in pro wrestling had always been strong among the Japanese fan base, because of how it was presented.

The second UWFI, from 1988 to 1990, was far more popular than the first. They were so popular that when they booked their first show at the Tokyo Dome for November 29, 1989, even though they had no regular television show, they sold 50,000 tickets in three days. The U-Cosmos show was the first time pro wrestling ever sold out the building, and set what was at the time, the largest gate in pro wrestling history.

But issues led to that group splitting into three different groups by 1991. The most popular was the UWFI, built around Takada. Robinson was there to not only attend the big shows with Hodge and Thesz and to endorse the product, but to be a trainer. He had two prized students. Kazushi Sakuraba was a very good college wrestler, an excellent technician of amateur style coming in, who loved pro wrestling. Kiyoshi Tamura would go on to be, as a worker, the equal of anyone in pro wrestling in the 90s. But he was not as much of a fan of traditional pro wrestling as Sakuraba, but more enamored with the UWF style he saw as a teenager. Thus, he refused to be part of the UWFI vs. New Japan feud, one of the most successful feuds in pro wrestling history. Tamura would have been positioned as the No. 2 man behind Nobuhiko Takada on the UWFI side, and thus gotten key matches high on several Tokyo Dome shows, and had the most show stealing potential as anyone. He instead migrated to Maeda’s RINGS group.

Tamura was an early MMA star, best noted for a 30 minute shoot draw with Frank Shamrock at the time Shamrock was UFC’s under-200 pound champion and its biggest star, and also beat UFC champions Maurice Smith and Pat Miletich in shoot matches, although he was a natural welterweight walking around at 190. Like Sakuraba, who was naturally even smaller, in constantly fighting bigger guys, they suffered injuries that took their toll on both by the time the heyday of the Pride came around, although Sakuraba was its biggest star for a time and Tamura was a key part of some big shows.

“We chatted on Sakuraba and Tamura lots,” said Harry Smith (Davey Boy Smith Jr.), who was, along with UFC fighters Josh Barnett and Shayna Baszler, Robinson’s best known current proteges. “He said Tamura was in a fight to not just win, but to hurt you also. On the other hand, Sakuraba was a nice guy and just wanted the win. He also said that Tamura was the type who would do something totally wrong in a shoot, but somehow could get lucky and get away with it. Despite Tamura having beaten Sakuraba in their MMA match, Billy said Sakuraba was the better fighter and could beat Tamura seven out of ten times.”

An example of Robinson’s temper, and how much he loved his students, was a story involving the late Gary Albright. By this point, Robinson was almost 60. Albright was a 340-pound teenage world champion as an amateur, and an All-American at Nebraska, who went on to become the top foreign star of UWFI and Takada’s main event rival for their world title. Robinson and Thesz both spoke highly of Albright, feeling that for his size, he had an incredibly loose back and had some of the best standing throws and suplexes for a heavyweight in the world. The two got into an argument at Narita Airport when Albright was bad mouthing Sakuraba and Tamura, saying he could beat both of them. Robinson, naturally, took their side and challenged Albright to a fight right there. Both men stood up, and Hodge had to intervene to keep both from getting into far too much trouble, and told them both to calm down.

But then UWFI folded. Robinson would have likely been long forgotten, but one of his students, Shigeo “Yuko” Miyato, opened up a gym in Tokyo. Because of Gotch and Robinson, the Snake Pit in Wigan was far more famous in Japan than it actually was in England. His idea was to create a gym, call it the Snake Pit, and have Robinson as the head coach. Robinson stayed in Japan from 2001 to 2007.

“Miyato really saved me,” said Robinson. “I had started to drink too much and put on too much weight as a result of the divorce. On top of that, my knees and hip all had to be replaced. My nervous system was wrecked from years of wrestling, and I couldn’t train anymore.”

Shannon arranged for Robinson to do seminars and become the legendary face of his attempt to revive Catch Wrestling, after the death of Gotch in 2007.

Josh Barnett and Smith were among the regulars who trained at the Japanese Snake Pit when they were in the country. At around Christmas time in 2007, Robinson opted to leave Japan to move to Little Rock, where he son, Spencer Robinson, 46, a military helicopter pilot, West Point graduate and a Lt. Col. in the National Guard, was based, because he wanted to be near his son and granddaughter.

“My dad was a man’s man, a man of principle, and he lived by example,” said Spencer Robinson to the Manchester Evening News. “He was a tough coach. Almost to a person, his students were all afraid of letting him down and doing a move incorrectly. And when they got it right, he would tell them, `Do it again.’ He would be serious during training, and then would have a beer and laugh and be jovial afterwards. He could tell beautiful, funny stories and had a great wit.”

“He was known around the world for his wrestling career and later as a coach,” said his granddaughter, Jennifer Robinson. “I feel so lucky to say that I knew him as neither of those things. I knew him as my grandad, Bill, the kind English gent who loved me.”

“I knew Billy as a legendary pro wrestler, but I learned about Billy the man. Billy was to me, a coach, shooter, wrestler, teacher,” said Barnett. “The legend of Billy Robinson didn’t really matter to me. He was already more important than that to me as a coach.”

“One of the things he taught me, that he used to stress, is you have to learn how to learn,” said Barnett. “So many people have to learn how to learn, how to make the most of learning, how to use the opportunity of learning to become better instead of taking in a few things. It’s a lot deeper than that.”

Robinson taught classes at a gym in Little Rock to a handful of students. Most were scared off because of how demanding he was, but those who stuck it out swore by him. He would sit in a chair with his cane. He would yell and scream, and hit people with the cane when they were doing moves wrong. He was very rare with praise, because his own coach, Billy Riley, virtually never praised him, even when he was representing the gym and winning championships. But the ones who weren’t scared off, spoke of him reverently. Eventually, when the gym couldn’t afford to pay him, he continued to teach, because it gave him a purpose in life.

“When I was first learning techniques, I would screw something up, and then would stop halfway through,” said Harry Smith. “Billy would get furious at me for it, and I understand why now. He said, `You practice and train how you fight and spar. If you keep stopping with a technique halfway through, one day you’ll be sparring and you’ll do the same thing and the guy will beat you.”’

He believed in hours upon hours of repetitious training. It was how he learned in Wigan, and how he taught.

“I used to have nightmares of Billy Riley saying, `Do it again,’” said Robinson. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night and hear him. It was terrible.”

He was badly crippled from injuries stemming from his years as a shooter doing marathon joint mangling submission wrestling sessions in the gym. In those days, he would have high level sparring partners alternate in and out on him for two hours plus, when he was preparing for high level contests. That was compounded greatly by more than 25 years as a pro wrestling star. He had two artificial knees. He had an artificial hip, And he had serious nerve damage from neck injuries that left him with limited ability to use one arm. It was painful for him to get off his chair and onto the mat to personally demonstrate things, although he would still do so at times. Shannon described himself as the marionette for Robinson at their seminars. A lot of top grapplers and MMA fighters attended the seminars, as well as many pro wrestlers, including Bryan Danielson.

“When I think of a wrestler, I think of Billy Robinson,” said Danielson in a WWE web site story.

He put on a happy face to everyone in the public, laughing and joking while going out to the bars every night. But in private, he was living with tremendous pain.

Shannon named his youngest son after Robinson and considered him like a family member, saying it was a few days before he could even talk without his voice quivering after Robinson’s death. He noted in all the time they spent together, he never saw how much pain Robinson was living in until the two roomed together for a couple of weeks, three years ago, when he had set up seminars for him to return to the United Kingdom.

“I never knew how much pain he was in until I was in the room with him,” said Shannon, who described Robinson in England as being like hanging with someone like Keith Richards. “He couldn’t sleep because of the pain. He’d be up for days at a time. Finally he would get so exhausted he would pass out. That’s what would happen, and when he would pass out, it could be for days at a time.”

The two were usually in daily contact, but then, when Robinson finally would be so tired he would sleep, Shannon wouldn’t hear from him for a few days. It had been more than a few days since he had heard from him on 3/3, longer than usual, and he wasn’t answering the phone or returning phone calls or e-mails. When Shannon called his apartment complex, he got the girl working at the desk and told her that he needed to talk to Robinson. She said she’d check on him and get back. When she couldn’t get an answer at the door, they opened the door up and found him dead. Shannon never heard back, and then called. The woman then handed the phone to the police, who were on the scene, telling him that Robinson had passed away.

The belief was that he had passed away in his sleep on the previous Thursday night. He had canceled his class during the week, because he had a date, which surprised his students when he told them.

“Hey, I’m not dead yet,” he joked, given a longstanding reputation as a notorious flirt, when he was being teased about it.

Smith, who wrote an article on the passing of his mentor, recalled how strict Robinson would be training with him, yelling and screaming at him, but after, he’d be joking with him at the pub.

“Billy was a real social butterfly, always flirting with women. Once he got a few pints in him, Billy would start giving me some great advice on how to chat with women. When the bill would come, a nice-looking waitress would ask, `Would you two gentleman like anything else?’

“Billy would kiss the girls’ hand and reply, “Yes, your telephone number, dear.”’

When he was living in Japan in the 2000s, he had the reputation of being this approachable legend who older people all knew from television wrestling. He would go out to pubs and talk all night to strangers, often to the point of excess.

“I really did enjoy hanging out with Billy,” said Barnett. “He was a great person to be around. He was a master mechanic of submissions. Knowing that type of person isn’t around anymore is inevitable, and yet when it happens, it isn’t something dismissed very easily. It’s a really great loss. A lot of people will never get to know what it’s like to train with him. There are a few of us lucky enough to have spent real time and keep some of what he believed in alive.”

“His experience with submissions and the way people would react, even knowing the body well enough to know how a person would react,” said UFC fighter Shayna Baszler. “He taught me a move, moving the way my thumb was, and it completely changed the submission from this could work a lot of times to it’s so painful you’ll put them in something that will work, the minutest detail like that. When I met him and worked with him, he wasn’t able to go on the mat and demonstrate, but he had so much experience he could watch, sit on the edge of the mat in his chair with his cane, and be able to correct the move. He corrected the degree of angle my leg was bent. He was very detail oriented.”

To those in North America, Robinson was best known for his run in the AWA during the 1970s, as the perennial top contender to champion Gagne, and later Nick Bockwinkel. He went other places, always as a headliner, but never had the lasting impact he made in the Midwest. After the mid-70s, while still considered a major star and among the best workers in the business, he wasn’t able to have long runs in other territories because, after signing a lucrative deal with Giant Baba in 1976, he would leave territories regularly since his Japanese deal made him one of the highest paid pro wrestlers in the world.

Robinson was originally planning to follow in the footsteps of his great grandfather, uncle and father as a boxer. His father, retired from the ring, was working as a grocer in Manchester, England.

He would go to the YMCA with his father, where he witnessed greats from both boxing and wrestling training with each other. Benny Sherman, an American who was known as an all-time great submission wrestler, sometimes trained with Robinson’s father, who had a reputation as a great street fighter, on techniques. As a kid, he knew boxers Randy Turpin, a Hall of Famer in that sport who once beat Sugar Ray Robinson to win the world middleweight title, and Henry Cooper, a two-time British heavyweight champion who twice fought Muhammad Ali, when he was known as Cassius Clay. He also watched pro wrestling’s Ricky Starr, a noted shooter, train boxing techniques with Rocky Graziano, a noted boxer of that era.

But a freak accident that at the time appeared to kill his dream, opened up a new world for him.

“One day, when I was 12 or 13, I was working at my dad’s shop after school, straightening out crates and potato sacks to take back to the market the following morning,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Other kids were playing with some Coca-Cola signs and spinning them through the air. Somebody shouted, `Look out Billy!’ I turned around, and one of the spinning things hit me in the eye. I don’t remember much after that. It tore the retina from two o’clock all the way around to ten o’clock, and I was in the hospital for six months. That, of course, ended my boxing dream. There was no way I could get a boxing license with the eye injury.”

After getting out of the hospital, he wanted to try wrestling. His uncle, who became a successful pro wrestler after his boxing career ended, wanted him to learn pro wrestling, but his father insisted he did amateur wrestling first. He was a natural at it, and he was beating everyone at the local gym, his father told him to go to Wigan, about 17 miles away, to go to Billy Riley’s gym, because it was considered the best gym on the continent for learning not just amateur wrestling, but catch-as-catch-can submission style.

Billy was already familiar with it from a few years earlier, from a house guest, Karl Istaz from Belgium.

His father and uncle attended the 1948 Olympics in Belgium, and met Istaz, who was called “Chesty” behind his back because he walked around with his chest sticking out. Later, his uncle was wrestling in Belgium on the same card with Istaz and he told him that the toughest wrestlers in the world trained at Riley’s gym in Wigan. At first, Istaz thought it was all romantic folklore, but Alf Robinson convinced him to come to England to see for himself.

“My father and my uncle introduced him to Billy Riley’s gym” remembered Robinson. “He came out of the Olympics, and when he got to Wigan, everybody beat him. He lived in my house for a while, and then lived in my uncle’s house, and then he got a place in Wigan. He was there for years.”

“Karl looked at (Jack) Dempsey (not the boxer but a famous British pro wrestler in the 50s), (John) Foley (who in his older days was heel manager J.R. Foley in Stampede Wrestling), then Billy Joyce and George Gregory,” said Robinson. “He thought they were too small or too old. After a short while, they had all beaten him easily.”

Istaz lived in Wigan and trained there religiously for the next six or seven years, becoming one of the top guys there, although Robinson said Istaz was never the top guy there.

Istaz went to Japan, where nobody could touch him. Later, promoter Al Haft, in Columbus, OH, renamed him Karl Gotch, after Frank Gotch, and the name stuck. Gotch became famous in Japan because Rikidozan would tell reporters that Gotch was the one man that he couldn’t beat. Gotch was hired to train the younger wrestlers, and would constantly talk about The Snake Pit in Wigan, where he learned his submissions, and created a portrait of a mythical place where the greatest wrestlers in the world learned secret submissions and were a step ahead of everyone. He would tell the story about coming out of the Olympics and thinking he was good, and going there and being humbled by everyone, being fascinated by it and staying and learning.

In 1968, Isao Yoshihara, a former judo champion who had tried once to run an opposition promotion to the established JWA, formed a second group, called the International Wrestling Enterprises. At the time, the JWA blocked him from getting any American talent. Fascinated by Gotch, who was affiliated with the JWA, and hearing the tales about Wigan, England, he found a contact in Europe, who told him the best wrestler in the Wigan gym, and the best pro wrestler in all of Europe, was Billy Robinson.

Robinson, debuted in Japan on April 3, 1968, in Yokohama, using his double-arm suplex, a move that had never been seen in Japan, to beat Masao Kimura (later known as Rusher Kimura) to retain his European heavyweight championship. He learned that move from Hungarian Greco-Roman champion Gideon Gida, who learned it from Wolfgang Ehrl, who used the move to win silver medals in the 1932 and 1936 Olympics.

Five days later he retained the title going to a double count out with Japan’s 1964 Olympic Greco-Roman heavyweight, Thunder Sugiyama.

The older wrestling fans in Japan remember the initial impact of Robinson from that 1968-71 period, noting he was, as described by Lord James Blears in “The Wrestler,” “the fastest and most scientific wrestler in the world.” Another generation may remember him for his 70s run, the December 11, 1975, match with Inoki, or his All Japan matches with the likes of Giant Baba, Jumbo Tsuruta, The Destroyer, Abdullah the Butcher and many others. But he was older, heavier, and his knees were already going out by then, even though he remained a big name.

Robinson is remembered for moving to Japan, and being on television almost every Wednesday night at 7 p.m. on TBS. While the JWA had the bigger name wrestlers, the IWE drew big ratings, the older people in Japan at the time of his death noted the tradition from 1968-70 of eating dinner with the family and watching Billy Robinson. He was a legitimate household name in the culture during those years, the country’s most popular wrestler with the exception of Baba and Inoki, because his technique was so advanced and he never lost. He’s also remembered for the fact he teamed with the Japanese, and not against the Japanese.

“To grasp how big he was, in Kinnikuman, one of the most famous cartoons in Japan, the character Robin Mask is Billy Robinson,” said Shannon, about the series which had a pro wrestling background and also patterned characters after Dusty Rhodes and Abdullah.

Most recall Robinson being on the Japanese side as immediately, but it actually took several months. In 1968, Robinson had singles matches that the older fans swear was him at his best against foreign wrestlers like Tony Charles, George Gordienko (reputed by many to be the toughest wrestler in North America during his prime in the 50s and the man Lou Thesz wanted to drop the NWA title to, and may have been champion except it was the era of McCarthyism and there were ties of Gordienko to the communist party and he wasn’t allowed in the U.S.), Peter Maivia, John DaSilva (a former Olympian who was the top star out of New Zealand), Ray Golden Apollo (the top star from Trinidad) and Billy White Wolf (a world class amateur who a generation later became Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissie in AWA and General Adnan in WWF). But it wasn’t until he won the First World Series at the end of 1968, becoming IWE’s world champion, that he became a regular on the Japanese side in tag team matches starting in January, 1969.

However, to the fans, with his style and being the gentleman from England, he was a babyface from his first night in the country.

The world title tournament came down to Robinson, Gordienko and Toyonobori, the top star of the JWA after the 1963 death of Rikidozan, but who had since been supplanted by Baba and Inoki, and left the company. Robinson beat Sugiyama on December 15, 1968, in Kofu, and then Gordienko the next night in Nagano, to put him ahead on points, since Gordienko and Toyonobori had a double count out on December 14, 1968, in Tokyo. When Robinson and Toyonobori went to a 60:00 draw on December 19, 1968, in Okayama, Robinson won the tournament and became the group’s first world champion.

“Billy was the first Geijin (foreign) hero in Japan,” noted historian Koichi Yoshizawa. “He trained Isamu Teranishi, Animal Hamaguchi (who later coached the Japanese women’s national team and whose daughter won two bronze medals), Mighty Inoue and others.”

He retained his world title against White Wolf, Stan Stasiak, Kimura and Great Kusatsu. He also won the second IWE World Series tournament, beating Strong Kobayashi in the finals on May 14, 1970, in Tokyo, before losing the IWE title on May 19, 1970, in Sendai, losing via count out to Sugiyama. He dropped the championship since he was leaving Japan.

It was at that point that he moved to Hawaii. The scene in “The Wrestler” of Lord James Blears, a British wrestling star who moved to Hawaii and became as much a fixture on that island as the sand on Waikiki Beach, showing up at the wrestling office in Minneapolis with reel-to-reel of Robinson, and wowing the promoter half of Verne Gagne, played by Ed Asner, wasn’t exactly how it happened in real life. But it wasn’t a big stretch.

Blears actually called Gagne and told him that he had the greatest pro wrestler in the world living in Hawaii, and wanted Gagne to see him to bring him to the AWA.

“My father met Billy in Hawaii,” said Greg Gagne to Bill Apter, shortly after the death of his original pro wrestling trainer. “He was wrestling over there for Ed Francis and Lord James Blears. Lord Blears told my father, `We have a guy from England and we think he’s fantastic and we think he’d be a great asset to the AWA.”

Robinson had actually worked some in Hawaii between IWE tours in 1969. He also worked during that year in Stampede Wrestling, where he won the North American title in something that wasn’t planned, and in Australia for Jim Barnett, where he held the IWA world heavyweight title twice. There was a period in late 1969, while in Australia, where Robinson held, at the same time, the IWE world title, the IWA world title, the European title, the British title and the Stampede Wrestling version of the North American title. He was the top champion of four different promotions on four different continents. But almost nobody in the United States, except those who read the foreign reports in Ring Wrestling, or read the newsletters of that era who would proclaim him as perhaps the best wrestler in the world, even knew the name. Well, that and NWA world champion Dory Funk Jr.

“We rode in the parade, Billy, his wife and I, on the back of an open Cadillac convertible with the top down,” remembered Dory Funk Jr., as they were part of the Calgary Stampede parade, promoting the match with IWE world champion, British and European champion, and North American champion, against the NWA world champion at the Corral in Calgary.

“I was in the Calgary territory for eight days,” said Funk Jr. “I wrestled Billy to a one hour draw in Calgary, to set up the return the following Friday. Saturday in Edmonton we wrestled to a one hour draw and the same in Regina, Saskatoon, Lethbridge and somewhere else on Thursday.

“That week with Billy Robinson was a learning experience in a different style of wrestling, not amateur style, but shoot style. Billy had a for real mentality and physically was as tough as they come, like a champion should be. The skills I learned from wrestling Billy Robinson helped me tremendously through my next four years as NWA world champion. My thanks and appreciation to Billy Robinson, a real friend I will remember forever and cherish the time we were able to spend together.”

Funk Jr. took a lot of new moves and a profound respect for Robinson, taking a number of moves like the bolo forearm and double-arm suplex, which became two of his trademark moves, out of that series of matches. He also asked Robinson to please come to the Amarillo territory. Robinson did, but his schedule was so packed that is wasn’t for another six years.

“He first came over in June of 1969, on the recommendation of Dave Ruhl, who was the booker for Stampede Wrestling for many years, to my dad,” said Stampede historian Ross Hart. He had worked together with Billy on a tour earlier that year for the IWE promotion in Japan. My dad had heard of Billy a little through George Gordienko and Bob Leonard, who was a correspondent for Ring Wrestling, which was published in Europe. My dad thought Billy would be a nice addition to our crew and could work with Archie Gouldie (who wrestled in the United States as The Mongolian Stomper, but since he was from Alberta and people knew him, used his real name in his home territory), who was our top heel and North American champion at the time.

“Archie was expected to work against Dory Funk Jr in July during the Stampede week for the NWA world heavyweight title,” said Ross Hart. “ He had fought against Dory weeks earlier (June 6, 1969) in a wild brawl which ended in a double disqualification. The stage was set for them to meet again in a Texas death match.”

Robinson’s debut in Calgary was the same night. He tore down the house with a style never seen before, beating veteran Jack Bence.

“He was put over strong and booked to work with Archie, which was intended to be a two week program,” said Hart. “While it was initially planned for Archie to ultimately go over and work with Funk Jr. again for the world title, it didn’t end up that way. In their first match in Calgary, on TV, their styles clashed. A headstrong Archie seemed uncomfortable working against someone with a European style which he was quite unaccustomed to. Anyway, Archie walked out in the middle of the match and stormed back to the dressing room, losing via count out. He ended up quitting the promotion on the spot, vowing he wouldn’t work against Billy again, or for my dad again. My dad called Archie’s bluff and supported Billy, who was named the new North American champion. Billy ended up working against Dave Ruhl, who was the No. 2 guy, the following week in Calgary. Billy went over strong and was booked against Dory for the world title.”

“The incident with Archie Gouldie was a mess,” said Leonard. “Archie was cued up to work with Dory in Calgary during Stampede week, having done a hot DDQ with Dory a month earlier. I believe Archie, as the top heel and one of the best draws we’ve ever had, was to go over Billy, one way or another, in Calgary, in his run up to Stampede week. The two just did not mesh at all, and Archie abruptly walked out in mid-match, and gave Stu his immediate notice. Whether Billy was no-selling or shooting a little or what, I don’t know. All I can tell you is Archie was bitterly disappointed the Stampede week plan didn’t turn out as planned as he had great chemistry with Dory.”

Seeing Robinson make Gouldie, who everyone in the territory knew as an unstoppable guy who would never quit in a fight, real or otherwise, walk out, put Robinson over so strong that even though he had only been in the territory for four weeks, his match with Dory Funk Jr. sold out the Corral on July 7, 1969, and was one of the four biggest crowds in the long history of the promotion. They also sold out Edmonton twice that week, doing two different 60 minute draws in that city.

“Considering they had never worked with each other, or even met until that week, it was amazing how well they blended and literally traded hold after hold,” said Hart of the first Calgary match. “Billy took the first fall with his double arm suplex and Dory used his spinning toe hold to gain the equalizer before 60 minutes expired. It still remains one of the most memorable matches in the history of the promotion.”

“The highlight of his run was matches with Dory Jr. in July 1969, four one hour draws and a long match in Saskatoon, where Robinson lost by count out, are arguably among the best matches in Stampede history,” said Leonard, who handled publicity for the promotion and covered the area for Ring Wrestling.

Funk Jr. called the Calgary match the most grueling match of his career, because of the pace Robinson kept in going 60 minutes. A year later, on August 8, 1970, the two had a title match at the HIC Arena in Honolulu, another 60 minute draw before a sellout of 9,000 fans, which was remembered as the classic wrestling match of the era in Hawaii.

“His incredible success with Stampede and the AWA also led to the British invasion by many more stars from the United Kingdom to both Canada and the U.S. in the early 70s, including Danny Lynch, Hans Steiger, Les Thornton, Tony Charles, Geoff Portz, Black Angus Campbell, Kendo Nagasaki, Al Hayes, John Foley, Sean Reagen, and later, Dynamite Kid, Marty Jones, Davey Boy Smith, Steve Wright, Chris Adams and many others,” said Hart. “But it was Billy who first successfully introduced the European style in North America and paved the way for so many British stars to follow.”

But as always, there was the other side. Six days after his arrival, he worked in Regina with a very green Croatian weightlifter, Joe Perusovic (who later became famous as Bepo Mongol and Nikolai Volkoff). The two had words in the dressing room, with Robinson telling Perusovic that if he tried to hurt him with his muscles, “I will break your bones.”

He took exception to something in the ring, backed Perusovic in the corner and smashes his nose in on purpose. There was blood everywhere and they had to go to a quick finish. In the town, it came across that night as an unplanned heel turn.

Also in Regina, he heard a fan screaming “fake,” and he stopped the match, went into the stands, and slapped the fan around viciously, grabbed the mic, and told the fans he would not tolerate disrespect from any of them. Robinson came from England where nobody heckled him or called him fake, and he wasn’t used to the culture where he and the promotion could be sued, because the mentality in England was different.

On July 10, 1969, in a sold out Exhibition Auditorium in Regina, where he and Funk Jr. did another one hour draw, he snatched someone on the promotional staff for an innocent comment that should have amounted to nothing. The backstage employee reportedly just said,“Robinson, you are next.” He responded furiously, “The name is Bill Robinson, and you will address me as Bill, Bill Robinson, or Mr. Robinson, but not Robinson.”

“Dory had to restrain him verbally and physically, something probably only Dory could have gotten by with,” said Leonard.

Also that week, at a large celebration with a few hundred movers and shakers in the province at Stu Hart’s next-door-neighbor’s mansion, with prime minister Pierre Trudeau in attendance, Robinson got mad at someone in the media who used the word “fake.”

“Anyone else would have just ignored it, or verbally dealt with the comment, but Billy instantly planted the guy on the ground and dropped a stiff knee on his ribs,” said Leonard. “As you can imagine, that one took some quick, difficult and likely costly work on Stu’s part to bottle up the story and prevent legal action. And those were just the episodes that I personally saw happen.

“Billy was an amazing wrestler and I got along well with him in his time here, but like most of the boys, I often walked on eggshells around him,” said Leonard.

As best we can tell, it was February 13, 1971, when Gagne, in Hawaii for a working vacation, saw Robinson at close range. Blears had put together a main event of Gagne & Robinson & Cowboy Frankie Laine and Blears’ young protege, Don Muraco (a state champion high school wrestler who was dating Blears’ daughter, who would later become a surfing legend and a few years later was often called the sexiest female athlete in the world), to face the heel crew of island legend Curtis Iaukea & Mad Dog (Lonnie) Mayne & Ripper Collins & two-time Olympian Dale Lewis. This led to a match where the AWA world tag team champions, Mad Dog & Butcher Vachon, beat Gagne & Robinson on February 24, 1971, building to Gagne beating Mad Dog to keep his AWA title on March 13, 1971, and Robinson beating Iaukea in a Pier Nine (street fight) match.

By the time vacation was over, not only had Gagne offered Robinson a spot in the AWA, and planned to put him over as the greatest find in years, but also asked him to train his son Greg Gagne, who, frustrated by being a back-up quarterback at the University of Wyoming, wanted to follow his father into pro wrestling. Verne figured that given Greg’s size, very light for a wrestler in that era, and that Verne wasn’t always the most well-liked guy in the business, but nobody took cheap shots at him because he was so tough, that guys may take out their frustrations on his son. He wanted to make sure Greg had tools prospective bullies wouldn’t know about if somebody wanted to get fancy.

“What Billy taught me was once they were off their feet, how to put a submission hold on them really quick,” Greg Gagne said.

For months, before the legendary 1972 Verne Gagne camp, Gagne would train two hours almost every morning with Robinson to toughen him up.

“It was like hell,” said Gagne. “He was a great technician, he had a great workout routine. The first hour was all calisthenics, then learning some holds. He’d show me some submission holds. The last half hour, I’d have to wrestle him. He’d leave himself wide open to put on one of the three or four submission holds that he taught me that day. But by the time I got there, he had already reversed it on me. I had a good year with Billy by myself. After the Olympics in Germany in 1972, he and my dad trained Ken Patera, myself, Ric Flair, Jim Brunzell, the Iron Sheik and Bob Bruggers, six hours a day, six days a week. We had to do 1,000 Hindu squats non-stop at the end of camp. By that time, we could all do them. By then, we weren’t afraid to go into the ring with anybody.”

“It was really tough,” said Flair. “But Verne was just as tough on us.”

Flair said he didn’t consider Robinson a great worker, but said e could see why others thought so.

“You work with Stevens & Bockwinkel every night, and people are going to think you’re a great worker.”

“There was nobody better than him and there wasn’t a man alive who could beat him,” said Jack Laskin to me, raving about working with him in the U.K. in the 60s. “Once, when I was hurt, and he was supposed to beat me, he said let’s just go through ten rounds (to a draw), and he made me look like a million bucks doing that.”

Still, a lot of wrestlers from that era, including those he trained, considered him a bully who would take liberties with people, which is probably why the Sailor White story and Peter Maivia stories became legendary in wrestling, even though those who were there at the time noted the White story was sucker attack waiting for Robinson to get drunk, and the Maivia story, while clearly a famous and violent street fight, grew to be greatly exaggerated.

Stu Hart loved him but a lot of the wrestlers in the Stampede promotion didn’t like working with him at all. His friends countered that Robinson spent so much time learning wrestling that if you couldn’t wrestle a little, Robinson felt he couldn’t let you look good at his expense. Those who could wrestle had different opinions, and usually remarked about what a great workout it was to do a match with Robinson because of how serious the wrestling match was, a more physically taxing style than a looser worked style, and that nobody actually wrestled at a faster pace for longer. The feeling was you would have a great match with him if you were able to work within his style, but if you couldn’t, things were different.

The idea of long matches appealed to him from his mentality about the sport aspect of wrestling. Robinson was a student, almost savant-like when it came to wrestling and submissions, and had very good mechanical knowledge of boxing since he studied it as a youth and came from a boxing and street fighting family.

Robinson thought the Pancrase and UWF wrestlers in Japan made a mistake in eliminating pins from the sport, as he felt fighting to stay off your back makes for a better fight and more taxing fight then just accepting the takedown and resting and defending in the guard. But biographer Jake Shannon noted that Robinson was a big fan of modern MMA, even if he would have liked the rules to be different, feeling that fighting to stay off ones back opens up more submission opportunities. He also said Robinson liked the longer five round fights more than the three round fights.

As time limits were shortened and more rules on what was illegal were put into place in amateur wrestling, Robinson lost a lot of interest in it, feeling both the skill and stamina were sacrificed for a sport that relied more on raw power.

Robinson, who did have good things to say about the Gracies, but was always vocal about the idea that there was anything new they discovered, saying all their submissions were around hundreds of years ago, and hated that the double wristlock in MMA was called a Kimura, or that the figure four head scissors was called a triangle, noting the original names had been used for hundreds of years.

“There were no catch wrestlers left,” he said, regarding the rise of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in MMA competition. “The Gracie name in Jiu Jitsu came up, very strong, and deservedly so. I’m not cutting the Gracies down, but they had no real competition, no real wrestlers who knew submission wrestling. You had great amateur wrestlers, but they had become just power guys who could wrestle hard for five to seven minutes. You had no technical catch wrestlers left.”

“There is nothing done today that hasn’t been done hundreds of years before,” he said. “What happens is you revamp everything. The people see some champion beat somebody with something, and they all want to learn it. Then they forget and drop what was working before, so the changes are like a big circle.”

He also noted that Mitsuya Maeda, the Japanese judo expert who taught the Gracies, a world traveler, and gone to Wigan and the guys in that era took him apart. He said how Tom Connors from England came to the U.S. in the 1880s from Wigan, introduced catch-as-catch-can wrestling to the country and beat everyone in the U.S., was viewed as the greatest shooter of his time, but in Wigan, there were plenty of guys better.

Robinson’s debut in both Australia in 1969 and the AWA in 1971 was identical. He made his debut in Australia, for Jim Barnett’s World Championship Wrestling, on September 27, 1969, at the TV tapings in Sydney. He was an unknown, positioned as a new job guy, facing world champion Killer Karl Kox in the last match of that week’s television show.

“As soon as Robinson began to wrestle, the audience realized they were witnessing a master matman,” said Australian historian Kirk Beattie. “The brilliant win over Kox via the double underhook suplex established Robinson in Australia as a star of the highest order.”

In his post-match interview, Robinson stated he was born in Maryborough, Australia, and that his family had moved to Manchester when he was a youngster. That wasn’t true, but it gave the Australian fans, who were already amazed at his wrestling ability, more reason to support him.

What was clever about saying Maryborough, is that there are towns by that name in both Queensland and Victoria, so fans in both states believed Robinson was a native. The next day, on Melbourne television, they did the exact same scenario with Kox.

Over the next weeks, Robinson scored wins over Dick Murdoch, Murphy the Magnificent (later Norman Fredrich Charles III of the Royal Kangaroos tag team in the 70s), Les Roberts and future native superstar Ron Miller. His first main event was only two weeks after arrival, teaming with Mario Milano & Jack Brisco to beat the trio of heavyweight champion Kox, and tag team champions Murdoch & Lars Anderson. He followed with a classic series of wins over Dory Dixon.

To get him over for his title match with Kox, in both Sydney and Melbourne, the gimmick was that he would beat three men in a row, Roberts, Johnny Boyd and Miller. Then on TV, he did the same, squashing Miller and Roberts one after the other.

Continued next

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Kox won the first title matches in every city by using a foreign object in the third fall after ref bumps. But that only strengthened the program and built the house, because the next week, on October 31, 1969, in Sydney, he beat Kox in two straight falls, winning the first fall with the one armed backbreaker (later known as the Billy Robinson backbreaker) and the second with the double underhook suplex. After dropping the title, he regained it on November 24, 1969, in Perth, once again in two straight falls. After retaining the title over Fred Blassie, Milano, Roy Heffernan, Klondike Bill and King Curtis Iaukea, his long-awaited match with Jack Brisco took place on December 5, 1969, in Sydney. Robinson beat Brisco in Sydney and Melbourne that week, and beat Brisco the next week in a rematch in Melbourne.

With him headed back to Japan, he dropped the title to Iaukea on December 17, 1969, in Brisbane, and then lost a television match in his last day in the country three nights later to Buddy Austin.

“Robinson’s 1969 tour of Australia produced many notable matches and introduced the classical British style of wrestling to World Championship Wrestling,” said Beattie. “Billy established himself as the greatest technical wrestler to compete in the WCW era, and his matches never ceased to thrill the local fans. In particular, Robinson’s bouts against his three top rivals, Kox, Brisco and Iaukea, produced many outstanding contests.

“In closing, I would like to say that Billy Robinson was the greatest technical wrestler that I have ever seen live in action.”

It was during that tour that the Robinson/Jack Brisco confrontation at the Southern Star hotel in Melbourne took place. There was no animosity, and both men described the situation similarly. It started with them clearing out the furniture and demonstrating their respective techniques. As the beers flew, both suddenly felt that their wrestling styles were superior. Brisco was a national champion from Oklahoma State who only lost once in high school and once in college. Robinson was the kingpin at the toughest gym in Europe. Before long, they had moved all the furniture out of the way, stripped down to their underwear and going at it. It started with each demonstrating on each other, but as the beers flew and egos built, it got serious. Robinson got submissions on Brisco, but didn’t attempt to injure him seriously, although both ended up hurting each other. But Brisco would insist on continuing, and kept using the folkstyle tactics on Robinson, and Robinson would go for submissions. It went on till about 4 or 5 a.m., and they heard a noise at the hotel room door, which was the morning paper. Brisco asked him to get the paper, so he went out in his underwear, picked up the paper, and Brisco shut the door, locking him out of the room. He wouldn’t let him back in. Robinson, not wanting to be seen in his underwear, with his room key in his pants inside Brisco’s room, pounded on the door and Brisco wouldn’t let him in. Robinson tried to scamper around and not be seen in nothing but his underwear, took the stairs to his room, and eventually hotel security, after asking him what was going on, let him into his room.

Robinson recalled one week earlier being in a hotel room in Australia with Brisco and Murdoch, watching the Texas vs. Oklahoma football game on television. The two were chewing tobacco and drinking bourbon and Coke. Brisco introduced him to chewing tobacco. He was doing it, had it in his mouth, and asked,“What do you do then?”

They told him to swallow the juice and spit out the tobacco. So he drank the juice, and puked all over the room.

After leaving Hawaii, but before starting in the AWA, he had one last commitment to the IWE, being booked in the third World Series tournament, a tournament still talked about today by historians, because the top three men were Robinson, Gotch and Monster Roussimoff, who later became Andre the Giant. The three men all beat everyone, except each other.

Robinson and Roussimoff did four 30 minute draws on the tour, and Robinson and Gotch had two 30 minute draws already on the tour. But the Gotch vs. Roussimoff match ended when Gotch picked Roussimoff up with a perfect German suplex, and had him pinned, but the referee had been knocked out of the ring. After holding Roussimoff for several seconds, Gotch let go to look for the ref. Roussimoff attacked Gotch from behind, and gave him a Hans Schmidt backbreaker and got the three count.

On May 18, 1971, on the final night at the Tokyo Ota Ward Gym, Robinson and Gotch did a one hour draw, so Roussimoff won the tournament.

Robinson debuted on Minneapolis television, with no fanfare, in the apparent role as the job guy for Shozo “Strong” Kobayashi, but instead beat him with his one-armed backbreaker. There was a bit of subtlety done. When Kobayashi saw Robinson as the job guy, he did make a reaction where he was visually almost freaking out, since Kobayashi had worked with Robinson many times in the IWE. When he did the same on the next week’s TV show to Larry Hennig, he was an instant star. He was already in the semifinal in his Minneapolis Auditorium debut on June 19, 1971, beating Kobayashi in a rematch. In his next show in the market, he beat Edouard Carpentier.

His regular role was high on the card, as a single facing all the top heels like Ray Stevens, Nick Bockwinkel, Blackjack Lanza and Ivan Koloff, almost always winning in singles matches. He also, with various partners, faced Stevens & Bockwinkel, most often ending in either a disputed finish, or with his partner losing the deciding fall. Very early in his stay, Robinson heard a fan say “Bockwinkel can beat you,” and he went into the crowd and slapped the guy around. The promotion avoided a lawsuit by giving the guy a bunch of free tickets, and explained to Robinson that this, which was not uncommon for him in the U.K. where there wasn’t as much of a lawsuit mentality, wasn’t tolerated in the U.S.

On November 15, 1972, in Honolulu, Robinson & Ed Francis beat Stevens & Bockwinkel to win the AWA tag title. The win was only acknowledged in Hawaii. It was expected they would lose it back in a rematch two weeks later, but they won that via DQ. In Hawaii, the story was that Robinson & Francis were stripped of the title for not defending it with the idea that both had schedules that didn’t match up.

Gagne & Robinson beat Stevens & Bockwinkel on December 30, 1972, before 7,091 fans at the Minneapolis Auditorium in a title change only recognized in the Twin Cities. Stevens & Bockwinkel regained the title, with Gagne, not Robinson, losing the third fall, on January 6, 1973, before 10,003 fans at the St. Paul Civic Center.

Robinson had a rematch from several years earlier, doing a 60 minute draw with NWA champion Dory Funk Jr. on January 17, 1973, in Honolulu.

Robinson was positioned from day one similar to the movie “The Wrestler,” as the heir apparent to Gagne’s championship. But it never happened. Gagne vs. Robinson was booked sparingly, but even though it was face vs. face, it always drew well. But Gagne was never going to lose the title to another babyface.

At one point, when Milwaukee was on fire, selling out every month, promoter Dennis Hilgart proposed to Gagne doing a show at Milwaukee County Stadium, with Gagne defending the title against The Crusher, who was from Milwaukee. But Hilgart said for the good of the city, since Crusher would only lose every few years in Milwaukee, and only to a heel who cheated to build up a bigger rematch, that Crusher had to go over. He figured Gagne could win back the title in another city several months down the line. Hilgart promised Gagne the interest in Crusher going for the title against Gagne would be so strong that they would break the Pat O’Connor vs. Buddy Rogers attendance record of 38,622 fans. But Gagne refused to lose the title to Crusher and the match was never done.

The early Gagne vs. Robinson title matches saw Gagne play subtle heel. Robinson would win the first fall with the backbreaker, and then win the second fall via DQ, so the title didn’t change hands. Usually it was Robinson having Gagne on the ropes, and Gagne would throw him over the top rope for the DQ, with Gagne portraying that it was an accident, but the fans could never quite be sure. Robinson had gone through the AWA’s best heels for roughly 20 months, to build up interest in such a match, at a time when babyface vs. babyface matches usually didn’t draw well as main events.

Gagne vs. Robinson drew a sellout of 11,729 at the Ampitheater in Chicago on February 23, 1973, and 10,800 at Midway Stadium in St. Paul on August 25, 1973. On February 13, 1974, in Honolulu, Robinson beat Gagne to apparently win the title before a sellout crowd, but this time Gagne’s leg was on the ropes at the count of three. The fans went home thinking the title had changed hands, only to find out on television the next week when the footage was shown, that the decision was reversed.

They repeated that finish on July 20, 1974, in Chicago. The funny part of that story is that the Chicago match was not taped. On television in Chicago, when they showed the tape that AWA President Stanley Blackburn had to rule on, it was the tape from a few months earlier in Honolulu, a match with a different ref, an obviously different arena and a crowd full of people with Hawaiian shirts on. Evidently, that mattered little. They already had the Hawaii example of how big the rematch would be.

In Honolulu, for their second meeting, which sold out again and was even more anticipated coming off the first match finish, Ed Francis and Blears came up with a more elaborate finish. This involved one of their referees, who had a judo background. The finish would be Gagne getting the sleeper on Robinson in the final fall. He would then switch to a choke, the ref would warn him, and he wouldn’t break, and get disqualified. Gagne protested it was the same sleeper he had used for decades, and claim it was a Hawaiian referee who made a bad call. He brought up that Blears (the booker and television announcer) and Robinson were both originally from Manchester and now living in Hawaii (Robinson was always billed from Honolulu when appearing in the city since he did live there at one time). Blears, as the announcer and face of the company, stuck up for Robinson and referee Wally Tutsumi, noting Tutsumi’s judo background and how he would know the difference between a legal sleeper and an illegal choke. Tutsumi was brought on television to explain his ruling.

The Chicago rematch, on September 7, 1974, was moved to Comiskey Park. Before 22,000 fans, Gagne finally won via count out when Robinson flew out of the ring, got his leg tangled in the ropes, and was hanging upside down and unable to beat the 20 count in. They did the same finish on June 12, 1975, in Winnipeg, with Thesz as referee.

Robinson was Gagne’s favorite opponent, because they could have a believable match, and because Gagne still looked like a stud when he would hold his own with the guy most fans deep down knew was the best wrestler in the area.

“When you watched a Billy Robinson match, you believed it,” said Barnett. “He wasn’t some guy putting on a shtick or going through full motions for a base interest or knee jerk reaction. He’s not that. He’s not doing dance routines. He’s a real wrestler, and when you watched him, you believed that. Him in the ring with a great worker was a thing of beauty. Even people who don’t like pro wrestling would be hard pressed not to be entertained watching it.”

“At his peak, there was really no one in the states quite like him in my opinion,” said ROH executive Gary Juster, who grew up in Minneapolis during Robinson’s heyday. “Not just a shooter, but a hooker, a legitimately tough guy and a terrific performer. Just a pleasure to watch as a wrestling fan.”

Robinson’s success in the AWA led Verne Gagne to bring in two other European stars as regulars, German Horst Hoffman, who was generally considered with Robinson as Europe’s two best heavyweights during the mid-60s, and Geoff Portz. Robinson would both team with Portz, who stayed in the U.S. and his son wrestled for years as Scott McGhee, in going against Stevens & Bockwinkel, and wrestle against him, often in European rules matches, which were conducted with rounds. Hoffman was used as a scientific heel, often as part of a German tag team with Baron Von Raschke, and was another frequent Robinson opponent in European rules matches.

In the end, when Gagne finally dropped the title, it was to Nick Bockwinkel, on November 8, 1975, in St. Paul. Gagne had beaten Bockwinkel for years in title matches and booked the program to where he could always viably challenge for it as a big match. The feeling was that it wouldn’t work as well for Gagne to challenge Robinson, plus there was always the trust factor. Robinson was rarely asked to lose by Gagne, but there was the issue that if he didn’t want to, Gagne had nobody who could make him drop the title. But even that may have been overblown, as Robinson had great respect and was a good friend of Baron Von Raschke, a world-class amateur. He also openly stated on more than one occasion that he believed that if UFC was around in his area, that when Mad Dog Vachon was in his prime, he would have been middleweight champion.

Robinson & Crusher beat Bockwinkel & Stevens for the tag team title, this time with the change sticking, on July 21, 1974, before a sellout of 6,448 fans in Green Bay, in a no DQ match with Greg Gagne as referee. But they dropped them back on October 24, 1974, in Winnipeg.

Although his heyday in the AWA was 1971 to 1975, he still had AWA title challenges to Bockwinkel as late as December 25, 1981, in St. Paul, before 17,000 fans, and April 1, 1984, in Chicago, before 14,250. His last real hurrah was in 1985, in Chicago, when he lost to Ric Flair in an NWA championship match, when for about 12 minutes, Flair’s work in doing a match completely different from his usual style, made it appear for one night that Robinson had just drank from the fountain of youth.

When New Japan Pro Wrestling started, Gotch, as the foreign booker, attempted to book Robinson to appear on the debut show, but politically, since he worked for the AWA, which had started a business relationship with IWE, it was impossible. Robinson got the IWE’s world title a second time, beating Rusher Kimura on June 3, 1974, to win the title vacated when Kobayashi jumped to New Japan. But he dropped the title on August 16, 1974, in Denver, to Superstar Billy Graham, which was largely to set up Mighty Inoue beating Graham for the title in Japan. His biggest match during that period was on November 20, 1974, when he challenged Gagne for the AWA title and they had a double count out in just under 50 minutes, before a poor crowd of 4,500 at Sumo Hall.

New Japan signed Robinson in late 1975, having him beat Kobayashi in Osaka to set up a dream match with Inoki for the NWF title on December 11, 1975, at Sumo Hall. The match, considered an all-time classic in Japan, saw Robinson win the first fall in 42:53. Robinson was about to win, until Inoki clamped on the octopus submission on for a submission with just 48 seconds left in the match.

“Robinson was one of the very few opponents Inoki did not beat in his prime,” noted Fumi Saito. “Inoki and Robinson met only once. The match became so historical. Robinson was able to say `No.”’

Tenay said one of the greatest educations he ever got in wresting was the hour he spent with Robinson, as they watched a tape of the match and he broke down every single nuance of the match.

“If you want to be a professional wrestler, that match has everything, and I understand WWE has a very certain way they want you to wrestle and it’s a very different game, but those things you can make adjustments for,” said Barnett. “Anyone who wants to be a wrestler should watch the two of three falls, 60 minute match. It contains everything anybody needs to be a great worker. It has the ring psychology, the right tempo and pacing, the smaller moves building to the bigger moves, the working body parts, the guy trying to fuck up the other guy. There are so many points that define how you should be as a wrestler it’s not even funny.”

“He did praise (Inoki) as being legitimately tough despite other things he thought about him,” said Smith. “He said he wouldn’t want to bet on who would win between Inoki and (Yoshiaki) Fujiwara (considered the best submission fighter in Japan of that era and Karl Gotch’s top student). He actually put Inoki and Sakuraba on the same level technique wise, but he said Inoki was a finisher and Sakuraba wasn’t.”

Robinson also said he had no doubt Inoki could have beaten Jumbo Tsuruta (a 1972 Olympian who was All Japan’s best wrestler of the era). Robinson clearly had a frustration with Tsuruta, perhaps because he recognized that with his size and athletic ability, he had the potential to be a great legitimate wrestler. Tsuruta never wrestled until he was in college, as he was a basketball star in high school. He had a dream to go to the Olympics, but that wasn’t going to happen in basketball and he then took up wrestling. He was such a natural at it that he won a national title in two years and ended up on the Olympic team. But once he started as a pro wrestler, Tsuruta left competitive wrestling behind. Robinson was enamored with real wrestling, and using it to be a great pro wrestler as well. Inoki had a similar mindset. Tsuruta’s mentality was different, and Robinson, thought Tsuruta never reached his potential because he was influenced by the American mindset.

Of course, Inoki wanted a clean win over Robinson, who in seven-and-half years in Japan, had never cleanly lost a singles match. Robinson wanted a contract for $8,000 per week, incredible money in that era, which Inoki agreed to. But when he got back home to Minneapolis, Gotch called and said that $8,000 a week was too much, and that they couldn’t go higher than $3,000 per week, which was still significantly more than U.S. main eventers with the exception of the world champions or Andre the Giant were getting. Robinson told Gotch that they had made an agreement, and that he was going to call Giant Baba, and told Gotch that Inoki had one week to agree to what he had promised.

Gotch told Robinson that he shouldn’t go to work for Baba, saying that Baba was only a show wrestler while Inoki was a real wrestler. Robinson gave him seven days, and when he didn’t hear back, called Dory Funk Jr., Baba’s booker, and told him that he was willing to jump to All Japan for $8,000 per week (other sources with intimate knowledge of this deal said it was actually $7,000 per week). Dory said he would contact Baba and get back to him. An hour later, Dory called back and they agreed to terms. The next day, Inoki, who had probably found out that Baba had made the deal, called Robinson and said they would give him $8,000 per week, and blamed the problem all on Hisashi Shinma, the New Japan business manager.

“No, I gave you my word, I’m going for Baba and I gave you guys a week to figure it out and you couldn’t,” Robinson told Inoki.

While Robinson would never call Baba a great wrestler, he called him a prince of a human being and a great wrestling promoter.

But Baba got what he wanted out of the deal. In their first meeting, on July 24, 1976, at a sold out Sumo Hall with 12,000 fans, Baba retained his PWF title beating Robinson in two out of three falls in just over 25 minutes. It was the only clean pinfall loss in the third fall of a singles match that Robinson had in 17 years of wrestling in Japan. This match was very significant at the time in Japan, and viewed in two different ways.

To the general public, there was always the question over who was better, Baba or Inoki, since each had started their own company in 1972. Baba was the bigger star when both were in JWA, but many considered Inoki as the better wrestler, including hardcore fans and insiders. While Baba beat the top name American stars, and even won the NWA title for a week over Jack Brisco in 1974, Inoki’s wilder angles captured more attention. Plus, he had the big dream match win over Shozo Kobayashi. and got wins over Thesz and Gotch.

Inoki’s claim to fame in 1976 was beating Willem Ruska, the 1972 judo gold medalist, in a worked match that was billed as the first mixed martial arts match, and the draw with Muhammad Ali on June 25, 1976, in a bizarre shoot match. But Baba and his supporters could claim that he beat Robinson in two of three falls, something nobody in Japan had done in eight years, and someone Inoki was barely able to squeak out a draw with. As silly as this sounds today, to a lot of people, this result was used as the proof that Baba was still better than Inoki.

Within the Japanese wrestling business, that result was debated. Unlike Inoki, who had the reputation of booking for ego, while Baba almost never lost, he had the reputation for booking for business. While it was recognized that Inoki had surpassed Baba in popularity with the Ruska and Ali matches, but the Ali match was a disaster. The feeling was that Baba in this case booked beating Robinson on his first tour and in his first major match in All Japan, for ego. The feeling was they could have ran a program of several matches before Baba got his win. That feeling was they could have made more money from the deal, had a series of matches, and in the end, Baba would still have beaten the guy that Inoki couldn’t. Over the years, they had several rematches, all of which ended up draws or double count outs.

What’s largely forgotten is a week before the Baba match, Robinson and Tsuruta went 70 minutes in Fukuoka, the hour, plus a 10 minute overtime that the fans demanded. A rematch four months later was a double count out in just under 43 minutes.

On March 5, 1977, in Akita, Robinson beat Tsuruta to win the United National title. A rematch six days later went to a 60:00 draw, but Tsuruta regained the title on March 23, 1977, in Miami Beach. On June 12, 1978, Robinson pinned Tor Kamata to win the PWF title, but lost it to Abdullah the Butcher in a match stopped because Robinson was bleeding too badly. On May 25, 1979, they tried to reprise the Inoki match, with Robinson challenging Tsuruta for the United National title, taking the first fall in 41:13, and Tsuruta retaining his title by pinning Robinson to get the draw with less than 90 seconds left. On January 11, 1980, they had another 60:00 draw for the title in Kochi, with Tsuruta winning the first fall, and Robinson taking the second for the draw with just over three minutes left.

Robinson came back several more times, including doing the year-end tag team tournament with partners Horst Hoffman, Wild Angus (Ian Campbell) and Les Thornton, billed as the European representatives. His partner would lose the falls and they were never in contention to win.

One would have thought Robinson would have been one of the longtime headliners in St. Louis, but that wasn’t the case. Larry Matysik remembers there were a few issues, some of which were political.

Robinson started working in the city in 1974 but only lasted about six weeks. His style reminded Sam Muchnick of Gotch, which was not necessarily a good thing. Muchnick viewed Gotch as a fantastic wrestler who meant nothing at the box office. Gagne had gotten Robinson over as a draw, and he’d proven with the right scenarios that he could draw in Australia, Hawaii and Western Canada, where he not only had the near-record crowd with Funk Jr., but also had a strong early 1970 North American title program with Abdullah the Butcher, where he put Butcher over and that was credited with really making Abdullah into a super hot heel in that territory. He had become a celebrity in Japan. But Muchnick, with memories of Gotch and the stylistic similarities, didn’t see dollars in him.

Still, as Verne Gagne bought a percentage of the promotion, he wanted some of his guys in. Crusher didn’t get over in St. Louis in the 60s because Dick the Bruiser had come first and had become an icon by that point, so there was no interest in him. On January 4, 1974, he sent in Robinson and Ivan Koloff, one of wrestling’s strongest heels of the era. They were booked against each other with Robinson winning. He followed beating Hans Schmidt a month later, and in a TV match taped that weekend, beat his old nemesis Shozo Kobayashi.

On the other hand, being that he was an AWA guy, the Kansas City end, Bob Geigel and booker Pat O’Connor, lobbied against pushing him. They pushed the line that Gagne would probably be putting the AWA title on him soon, so why push him, because once he gets the AWA belt, it would be hard to get dates on him. Still, Robinson must have gotten over since after just two arena matches, he was already booked in the main event on the February 15, 1974, show at Kiel Auditorium, challenging Harley Race for the Missouri State title.

The show drew 9,462 fans, a great crowd for a show without the world champion, although there were two mitigating factors there. That show featured not only the return of Bruiser after a few years absence, but also the St. Louis debut of Andre the Giant.

The two did a 45 minute draw, with each man winning a fall, in a match that is remembered as being among the best matches in the city during the era.

“One memory sticks out,” said Larry Matysik about that match. “Race put on a Boston crab and Billy did the seldom if ever seen before that time (my first time) escape where he slithered out from under, bent about 50 different directions and somehow ended up with the crab on Race. The crowd was stunned, and impressed. Otherwise, it was a lot of moves not usually seen and the match was fast and entertaining. Of course, he did this with Harley, and there might have been questions if others less talented would work with him as well.”

Two weeks earlier, Robinson and Wahoo McDaniel, who both came in from Minneapolis for both a Kiel Auditorium show and subsequent television taping, bought their tickets at the last minute, and purchased first class tickets. When asked why, they claimed they didn’t know about the booking until the last minute and it was the only things available. When Muchnick called Wally Karbo, furious about the unexpected travel expense, Karbo told Muchnick that both were told about the booking weeks before.

This gave the Kansas City side more ammunition. Robinson got his main event on the next show since the wheels had already been in motion for it. But even with the match being so strong, the Kansas City side, which didn’t want AWA guys filling up the cards for fear it would mean less Kansas City guys would get on them, did an “I told you so,” and it was more than three years before Robinson was brought back. It’s very reasonable to assume had that not happened, that Robinson would have been a consistent top of the card performer and had multiple singles matches on top with the top stars of the era, Dory Funk Jr., Terry Funk, Jack Brisco and Race.

“That trans thing stuck in Sam’s throat because he figured he paid well and was pissed if someone tried to pull something on him,” said Matysik.

When he came back in 1977, he was no longer Gagne’s perennial top contender, and worked in the middle, doing a program just to fill out cards with fellow AWA wrestlers Blackjack Lanza & Bobby Duncum. Robinson teamed with a lesser star, including once with Jerry Kozak, to lose television matches to Bobby Heenan’s team. On one episode of Wrestling at the Chase, Robinson & O’Connor drew with Lanza & Duncum. And when that program was over, he was gone again. Robinson came back briefly in 1981, and did a no contest with O’Connor. It was the old leap frog by O’Connor, not getting high enough and O’Connor selling Robinson’s head hit him with a low blow. Robinson refused to accept the win when O’Connor couldn’t continue. Co-booker Matysik said it was a finish he argued against at the time. Robinson also drew with Von Raschke. But to show how little he was pushed, on November 20, 1981, he was in the second match of the show, going to a 20:00 draw with Gene Lewis, the same Lewis who had lost to Bulldog Bob Brown two weeks earlier.

“I wanted Robinson in,” said Matysik. “But two things. Even Sam agreed with O’Connor that there might be a problem if you asked Billy for a job, even if it was a main event that paid well, and against a big name, but not a title match. Regardless, when we put him with Lewis, I figured a win for Billy, and just move ahead and maybe get him a main event somehow. But that night, O’Connor wanted the draw because Kansas City was pushing Lewis and he claimed if anyone in Kansas City found out Lewis had lost, it would hurt them. Bullshit of course, but it was all part of another issue. And I did understand that getting that win over Robinson at some point could be tricky.”

It was more a reputation thing than anything. Robinson never lost in St. Louis because he was never asked to lose. But he was never pushed on those last two runs for fear of what would happen if asked. Still, by that point in his career, while Robinson wouldn’t lose to just anybody, it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t lose in big matches to top guys in other territories that didn’t pay as well.

“Really the only valid reason (for Robinson never getting another main event in the city or a substantial push on his second and third runs), politics, either local or personal,” said Matysik.

Robinson left his AWA base in October, 1975, for Florida, although he still flew in for some AWA dates. He spent a year in Florida, working as Eddie Graham’s policeman, a role he also had with Gagne. If anyone wanted to be a pro wrestler, they would be invited to work out with Robinson, whose role was to, in no uncertain terms, hurt them to the point that they never considered it again.

He got a number of NWA title shots at Terry Funk, and worked with The Missouri Mauler, Frank Goodish (soon to be Bruiser Brody), Curtis Iaukea, Mr. Wrestling II, unmasked The Destroyer as Killer Kowalski, Stevens, Pak Song, The Assassin, and the tag team of Bob Roop & Bob Orton Jr. He even wrestled Jack Brisco in a babyface match once in Tampa. He left the area in September, 1976. He also worked some Texas around that time.

He was back in the AWA full-time in 1977. While still one of the top stars, he was no longer portrayed as an extra special wrestler. He had his big money Japan deal, and in the AWA, he worked up and down the card. When he would wrestle Bockwinkel for the title, he would mostly lose, and Robinson going after the title no longer meant an almost guaranteed good house. By 1978, he and Verne Gagne were frequently challenging AWA tag champs Stevens & Pat Patterson, and it was usually Robinson who would lose the fall. This led to the storyline where Gagne was frustrated that he teamed with the best technical wrestler to beat Stevens & Patterson and couldn’t get the job done, so instead he did an about face, and called his greatest rival, Mad Dog Vachon, to be his partner.

Robinson worked a lot with Bockwinkel in title matches, as well as Patterson, Stevens, Bobby Duncum, Super Destroyer Mark II (a young Sgt. Slaughter), and Jesse Ventura. In late 1979, he went to Tennessee, where he held the CWA version of the world title on four occasions. His best matches were with Bill Dundee and Tony Charles, and he even defended against a 63-year-old Thesz, doing a 50 minute match in Louisville and another match in Memphis. But he didn’t work as well with a lot of the brawling types in the territory who weren’t very good at wrestling. In Memphis, the Robinson vs. Dundee title program picked crowds up significantly, drawing 8,114, 7,089 and 6,978 on successive weeks, great numbers for shows without Jerry Lawler on the card. But his title loss to Austin Idol only drew 2,642. He left the territory, while still holding the title belt, in March, 1981.

In 1981, when Thesz was helping book for the UWA in Mexico, Robinson went down for several months when business was on fire. He was offered great money to run a gym there and teach both shooting and his style of pro wrestling. But after a few months, economic problems in Mexico with a peso devaluation caused what he was being paid in U.S. dollars to drop drastically, and the deal fell apart.

He had some big matches at El Toreo in Naucalpan, including a March 30, 1981, main event, with he, Thesz & Kuniaki Kobayashi beating Badnews Allen & Ray Mendoza & Shozo “Strong” Kobayashi before 15,000 fans. On April 19, Robinson & Thesz & Kuniaki Kobayashi beat Allen & Strong Kobayashi & Scorpio before 13,000. On April 26, Robinson & Bob Backlund & Gran Hamada beat Perro Aguayo & Dr. Wagner & Babe Face before 15,000. On May 31, Robinson lost to Canek in a UWA title match before 18,000 fans.

Late in his career, he moved to Quebec, where he had a daughter, named Natasha, with a woman from Quebec, who he rarely ever saw.

He came to Montreal in 1982, billed as the British Empire heavyweight champion, a heel, managed by Lord Alfred Hayes, going after the International title held by Dino Bravo. He debuted on May 10, 1982, beating Edouard Carpentier. He followed with wins over Pat Patterson, and then had two wins over Rick Martel, the second of which saw Martel go out on a stretcher and sell an injury angle to build to a rematch nearly two months later. On June 7, 1982, he beat Bravo in a non-title match, although many sources and title histories list this as a title change.

On July 26, 1982, it was the return of pro wrestling to the Forum in Montreal after six years, after a long period with no major wrestling on television, and until International Wrestling built itself up to that level. They had a super card, with Jean Ferre (as Andre the Giant was known in Montreal even up to that time) vs. Stan Hansen, Bravo vs. Abdullah, Robinson vs. a returning Martel and Raymond Rougeau vs. Patterson. Martel got revenge, winning via count out, on a show that drew 14,175, the largest crowd in the city since the glory days in 1974.

They did a suspension angle to take the International title from Bravo, and on August 16, 1982, Robinson won a phantom tournament, beating Martel in the finals. He had a very significant reign as champion, wrestling Raymond Rougeau, Mad Dog Vachon, The Destroyer, Bravo, Martel, Tony Parisi, Jos LeDuc, and had two International title vs. WWF title unification matches against Bob Backlund. On September 13, 1982, Backlund beat Robinson via count out, so neither title changed. On September 20, 1982, the two wrestled 63 minutes to a draw. On November 8, 1982, Backlund won via DQ. While historically significant at the time, the series did not draw well, doing 2,000 to 3,000 fans. On October 11, 1982, Ferre & Bravo wrestled Robinson & Jimmy Snuka and sold out the Paul Suave Auditorium with 7,000 fans. He lost the title on March, 7, 1983, to Bravo.

A rematch, at the Forum, as part of a double main event with Ferre vs. Ken Patera, drew 16,500 fans, with Bravo winning. Robinson had the second longest International title reign of the 80s, behind only Bravo.

“Robinson was a shooter, he had all the credentials, but he was not the kind of wrestler that the people liked at first,” said promoter Gino Brito. “But after a while, they were impressed by the technique he had and the moves he was able to do.

“He was not the kind of wrestler that would make fans go crazy in the crowd, but he was a solid wrestler and a very good technician,” said Raymond Rougeau.

Later, Robinson was managed by Eddie Creatchman. Robinson & Pierre Lefebvre won the International tag team titles from Brito & Parisi on May 23, 1983, but after losing the title, Lefebvre turned heel. Lefebvre showed photos of Robinson, with his face all messed up, and told people he had gotten rid of him. The photos were very likely taken in the aftermath of his beating at the hands of Sailor Ed White.

Robinson then came back as a babyface, working against heels like The Superstar, Lefebvre, Patterson, Blackjack Mulligan and White. On July 28, 1983, Robinson & Brito vs. The Wild Samoans drew 13,000 fans in Quebec City. After losing an AWA title match to Nick Bockwinkel on October 17, 1983, it was said that he dislocated his shoulder during the match, and it was the end of his run. He came back for a few matches in 1984.

It’s barely remembered that Robinson put over Backlund on February 24, 1985, on the first Pro Wrestling USA show at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, NJ. He wrestled sparingly after 1985, with his last matches being February 4, 1988, going to a draw with Tom Zenk in Minneapolis, and his May 8, 1992 retirement match, a draw in Japan against Bockwinkel on a UWFI show. While the match got over well and was praised, noting Robinson doing some of his trademark spots at the age of 53 while heavy and with his knees shot, and Bockwinkel being 57 and both having been retired for many years, Robinson couldn’t bear to watch it, saying it hurt him to see himself moving so slowly.

“The MMA world should remember him as a legend among legends when it comes to wrestling,” said Barnett. “And I don’t mean wrestling as a specific thing, freestyle or catch or pro wrestling, but he should be remembered as a legend among legends when it comes to being an overall professional at fighting, working, coaching and training. And honestly, he is a lost gem. He really is. There are so many people that are never going to understand what they missed out on.”

Thanks to Pat Laprade, Bertrand Hebert, Kirk Beattie, James Zordani, Koichi Yoshizawa, Jake Shannon and others

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BILLY ROBINSON CAREER TITLE HISTORY

PACIFIC WRESTLING FEDERATION HEAVYWEIGHT: def. Tor Kamata June 12, 1978 Ichinomiya; lost to Abdullah the Butcher October 18, 1978 Utsunomiya

UNITED NATIONAL HEAVYWEIGHT: def. Jumbo Tsuruta March 5, 1977 Akita; lost to Jumbo Tsuruta March 25, 1977 Miami

INTERNATIONAL WRESTLING ALLIANCE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT: def. Killer Karl Kox October 31, 1969 Sydney; lost to Killer Karl Kox November 10, 1969, Perth; def. Killer Karl Kox November 19, 1969 Brisbane; lost to Curtis Iaukea December 17, 1969 Brisbane

INTERNATIONAL WRESTLING ENTERPRISES WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT: drew Toyonobori in tournament final to become first champion December 19, 1968 Okayama but winning the tournament via points; lost to Thunder Sugiyama May 19, 1969 Sendai; def. Rusher Kimura in tournament final for vacant title June 3, 1974 Tokyo; lost to Superstar Billy Graham August 16, 1974 Denver

AWA WORLD TAG TEAM: w/Ed Francis def. Nick Bockwinkel & Ray Stevens November 15, 1972 Honolulu (title changed only recognized in Hawaii); In Hawaii it was announced that Bockwinkel & Stevens had regained the titles; w/Verne Gagne def. Nick Bockwinkel & Ray Stevens December 30, 1972 Minneapolis (title change only recognized in Minneapolis-St. Paul market); lost to Nick Bockwinkel & Ray Stevens January 6, 1973 St. Paul; w/The Crusher def. Nick Bockwinkel & Ray Stevens July 21, 1974 Green Bay; lost to Nick Bockwinkel & Ray Stevens October 24, 1974 Winnipeg

AWA BRITISH EMPIRE HEAVYWEIGHT: Billed as champion in various places; lost to Ray Apollon May 24, 1968 Woodstock, Trinidad; no record of regaining it; billed as champion upon arrival in AWA 1971; lost to Angelo Mosca March 10, 1978 Winnipeg; def. Angelo Mosca May 10, 1978 Winnipeg; lost to Super Destroyer Mark II (Sgt. Slaughter) October 25, 1979 Winnipeg; def. Super Destroyer Mark II November 12, 1979 Winnipeg; Title retired when he left the territory

CONTINENTAL WRESTLING ASSOCIATION WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT: def. Masked Superstar to win vacant title April 28, 1980 Memphis; lost to Bill Dundee August 4, 1980 Memphis; def. Bill Dundee August 11, 1980 Memphis; lost to Austin Idol October 6, 1980 Memphis; def. Bobby Eaton October 27, 1980 Memphis; lost to Bobby Eaton November 1980; def. Bobby Eaton November 14, 1980 Middlesboro, KY; Left territory without dropping the title

INTERNATIONAL HEAVYWEIGHT (Quebec): def. Rick Martel in tournament final for vacant title August 16, 1982 Montreal; lost to Dino Bravo March 7, 1983 Montreal

NWA NORTH AMERICAN HEAVYWEIGHT (Stampede): Awarded title when Archie Gouldie failed to show up June 26, 1969 Regina, Saskatchewan; lost to Abdullah the Butcher February 6, 1970 Calgary; def. Abdullah the Butcher February 20, 1970 Calgary; lost to Abdullah the Butcher February 27, 1970 Calgary

NWA NORTH AMERICAN HEAVYWEIGHT (Hawaii): def. The Destroyer (Dick Beyer) December 16, 1970 Honolulu; lost to Curtis Iaukea January 9, 1971 Honolulu; def. Dusty Rhodes June 6, 1973 Honolulu; title vacated when Ed Francis closed up the territory

INTERNATIONAL WRESTLING TAG TEAM: w/Pierre Lefebvre def. Gino Brito & Tony Parisi May 23, 1983 Montreal; lost to Gino Brito & Tony Parisi June 20, 1983 Montreal

NWA SOUTHERN HEAVYWEIGHT: def. Masked Destroyer (Killer Kowalski) December 16, 1975 Tampa; lost to The Assassin (Jody Hamilton) April 13, Tampa

NWA HAWAIIAN TAG TEAM: w/Johnny Barend def. Pedro Morales & Big Ki Lee July 1, 1970 Honolulu; Barend and Robinson split up as a team; w/Ed Francis def. Johnny Barend & Ripper Collins to win vacant titles October 28, 1970 Honolulu; lost to Ripper Collins & Mad Dog (Lonnie) Mayne January 12, 1971 Honolulu

AWA SOUTHERN TAG TEAM: w/Ken Lucas def. The Assassins (Randy Culley & Roger Smith) February 17, 1980 Memphis; lost to The Assassins February 25, 1980 Memphis; w/Ken Lucas def. The Assassins March 2, 1980 Memphis; lost to Paul Ellering & Ali Hassan March 11, 1980 Louisville; w/Ken Lucas def. Paul Ellering & Ali Hassan April 1980; lost to Dennis Condrey & David Schultz April 7, 1980 Memphis

EUROPEAN HEAVYWEIGHT: def. Billy Joyce June 12, 1965 Manchester; Vacated title in 1970 when leaving the country

BRITISH HEAVYWEIGHT: def. Billy Joyce April 23, 1966 Manchester; lost to Ian Campbell May 4, 1966 Perth; def. Billy Joyce January 18, 1967 Manchester; Vacated title when leaving the U.K. 1970

TOURNAMENTS

1961 Royal Albert Hall heavyweight trophy, 1st place

1962 Krefelt, Germany tournament 1st place

(Robinson competed in a number of German tournaments, but records are not available, but tournament finals usually came down to he and Horst Hoffman, at the time considered the two best heavyweight wrestlers in Europe)

1968 IWE World Series - 1st place

1970 IWE World Series - 1st place

1971 IWE World Series - 2nd place

1977 Real World Tag League w/Horst Hoffman 6th place

1978 Real World Tag League w/Wild Angus 5th place

1980 Real World Tag League w/Les Thornton 6th place

1982 Champion Carnival - 6th place

AMATEUR WRESTLING

1956 - British national championships, 192 pounds, 3rd place

1957 - British national champion, 192 pounds

1958 - European champion, light heavyweight, 2nd place, heavyweight

1996 WRESTLING OBSERVER HALL OF FAME

2003 TRAGOS-THESZ PRO WRESTLING HALL OF FAME

2011 PRO WRESTLING HALL OF FAME