Dynamite Kid

If you want to understand what modern professional wrestling owes to one person, watch footage of the Dynamite Kid from the early 1980s and try not to have your jaw drop. Thomas Billington from Golborne, England was doing crisp snap suplexes, diving headbutts, and lightning-fast chain wrestling decades before any of it became standard. His matches against Tiger Mask in New Japan are legitimately some of the greatest in the history of the sport, and his WWF tag run with Davey Boy Smith as the British Bulldogs gave him a mainstream audience he probably deserved ten times over. The guy was genuinely revolutionary — a small, technically gifted worker in an era that mostly rewarded size. He died on his own 60th birthday in 2018, which feels almost too on-the-nose poetic. Complicated man, but the ring work? Untouchable.

Name (English)

Dynamite Kid

Name (Japanese)

ダイナマイト・キッド

Reading

だいなまいと・きっど

Born

December 5, 1958 – December 5, 2018

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Dog

Origin

Golborne, United Kingdom

Height

173 cm

Occupation

professional wrestler

Awards & achievements

• Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame
• World Tag Team Championship

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%80%E3%82%A4%E3%83%8A%E3%83%9E%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AD%E3%83%83%E3%83%89

Tags

• professional wrestler

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.