Anyone who knows me knows that I love pro wrestling. I watch it all the time, attend live wrestling shows on a regular basis, and 80% of anything I say is a wrestling reference of some sort, Mean Gene (there was one right there). Now that I have a blog that I've been writing in regularly for the past week or so, I'm going to use it as my forum to occasionally talk some 'rasslin'. Starting........NOWSo, when I was around 4 years old, my family took a trip to Disney World. When we were in boring fucking Epcott Center, we went into a gift shop that was selling little flags of all the countries of the world. My brother and I both picked the same flag.Was it for Italy or Ireland, places where our family had roots in? No. Was it for the good old USA, where we R.O.C.K'd in all the time? Nuh-uh, plus I think everyone has an American flag already. Maybe we picked a Bosnia and Herzegovina flag, yeah, that was it. No fucking way! We got the Union Jack for England, son! The only reason we both picked it- we loved the WWF tag champs at the time, Davey Boy Smith and the Dynamite Kid, collectively known as the British Bulldogs.
The British Bulldogs were so awesome. I watch matches now and am floored by them, so you could only imagine how it was for little me then. I wanted to meet them and be friends with them so badly. Of course, little did I know that they were both apparently mean spirited jerk-offs in real life and Dynamite probably would have headbutted me in the face while Davey Boy threw me head first into a brick wall if I had even approached them for an autograph. But who cares? Watching the Bulldogs wrestle teams like the Hart Foundation and the Dream Team or just merely destroy jobbers were some of my fondest early wrestling memories. One thing that will always haunt me is never owning the Bulldogs LJN action figures (pictured at the top of the blog). Easily, the worst part of my childhood.
Dynamite Kid was probably the best wrestler in the world at the time and I loved his snap suplex and diving headbutt. Years later, I finally saw Dynamite's pre-British Bulldogs series of matches with the original Tiger Mask in Japan and witnessed the groundwork for the light heavyweight wrestling of years to come being layed down. Dynamite Kid was a key influence for a lot of wrestlers that came to prominence in the 90's and 2000's (most notably, Chris Benoit, who idolized Dynamite Kid. He would later out-scumbag Dynamite Kid by killing his family, but that's a whole other story.) and every wrestling fan should own some sort of Dynamite Kid best-of tape or DVD.
Davey Boy Smith was the powerhouse of the team and would go on to become one of the most popular wrestlers in the world in the decade to come. He adopted the moniker of the British Bulldog and stuck around the big leagues while Dynamite retired due to mounting injuries (It should also be noted that Dynamite hated his real life cousin Davey because of this and I don't think they ever spoke again). He became a top singles wrestler in the WWF and WCW and at one point sported weird braided hair extensions that would fall off and be strewn about the mat during his matches. Davey Boy was in some of the greatest matches of the 90's, including his Summerslam '92 Intercontinental title win over his brother -in-law Bret Hart in front of a rabid crowd of his countrymen in London's Wembley Stadium.
Now, sadly, Dynamite Kid is confined to a wheelchair somewhere in England and Davey Boy Smith died in 2002 at only 39 years of age. When I watch the British Bulldogs wrestle separately or as a team, I try to block the sad, sad fate of the British Bulldogs out of my mind. You kinda have to do that a lot if you watch wrestling, try not to think of what's to come for some of the guys that are on your screen at that moment. The British Bulldogs are a big reason I love pro wrestling now. They were a great tag team.
-On a much lighter note, I drew this picture of my girlfriend's cat Wiggles using that graffiti feature on Facebook. Wiggles is a cute cat and I think I really captured that with my artwork here. Courtney said it looked like a spider, but those are 2 legs and a tail. If Wiggles is reading this, check out my artisitic rendering of you. I hope you like it!
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