THE Dynamite Kid

Anyone who saw Tom Billington's very humble origins would have thought his nickname a cruel joke.

Born in a room without heat in Wigan, a small mining town in Northern England, he was, however, likely to become a fighter. His father and uncle were professional boxers. He came from a tough family where a minor misdemeanor earned him a punch in the head.

A Natural Athlete

A local trainer saw Tom had a natural athleticism – he had excelled at soccer and rugby, and had a special talent as a gymnast.

Tom began to train six days a week. He dropped out of school by the age 14, and two years later, his trainer and mentor christened him with the name he would retain for the rest of his wrestling life: Dynamite Kid.

His father drove him all over the north of England for his matches, until he was old enough to drive himself. But even after winning championship belts, he was earning little more than $25 a match.

A Career Move to Canada

It took little convincing for Tom to leave England to work for Stu Hart at Stampede Wrestling in Calgary.

In April, 1978, Tom packed his bags and flew to Calgary with only $50 in his pocket. He told his father he'd be back in June. But it would be 13 years before he returned.

Stu Hart was nonplussed at the sight of the wee lad from Wigan, who weighed little more than 170 pounds.

But Dynamite had skills of which Hart was as yet unaware. In Wigan, he had been primed in the art of submission holds. But, Dynamite also brought a high-flying acrobatic style which infused the sport with a new kind of energy. Seeing him do flips and leap from the top ropes with an intensity seldom seen, Stampede fans were bringing their friends back for the next match, and the half-filled Stampede arena began to fill once again.

Speed and Steroids, then Pain

Dynamite, ever conscious of his small stature in the company of large men, began to use speed and steroids not long after he arrived, in 1979.

Later that year he took the wrestlers' well-worn path to Japan, where good performers could earn lots of money and perfect their skills before returning to North America.

Billington experimented with ever-riskier moves. He ignored the pain that increased with every collision, and the demanding fans of Japan rewarded his efforts with wild applause.

"But whether it was the constant pounding on my back from all the suplexes and piledrivers, or whether it was the steroids…at the age of 25, my back was starting to give me some serious pain," he writes in his autobiography, Pure Dynamite.

"Sometimes my ribs, my kidneys, my whole body, just ached. But I never thought of cutting the high-risk moves out. Never. They were what the people paid to see."

In the mid-1980s he returned to Canada and to Stampede Wrestling, where matches became increasingly violent. Wrestlers used chairs, two-by-fours and bottles. Blood flowed to the delight of thousands of fans.

Dynamite increased his steroid intake, injecting testosterone "in each arse cheek every day." And it was producing results: his weight ballooned from 170 pounds to more than 250 pounds.

Frequent 'Roid Rage

Dynamite's temper worsened as the cumulative effects of years of steroids went beyond making his body bigger. They affected his mind.

His wife, Michelle, recalls run-ins with her ex-husband as though it were a shopping list. "He took me in holds that would leave no marks….He held a shotgun to my head for six hours while he interrogated me, asking why I didn't answer the phone." (read more of Michelle Billington's interview)

Pure Dynamite makes no mention of the abuse, saying only that they had "grown apart." When asked about the shotgun incident in a recent CNN documentary, Billington replied that it wasn't loaded.

Joining the WWF Empire

Dynamite joined the WWF (later the WWE) in the mid 1980s with his young cousin, Davey Boy Smith, and together they became the British Bulldogs tag team.

Their arrival was timely. The WWF was growing from a side-show to a North American entertainment empire.

In a sport dominated by big men who wrestled at the ground floor, Dynamite sprang from the ropes across the ring, launching aerial assaults the likes of which had scarcely been seen before. His high-impact style opened the door to subsequent, small wrestlers, who invariably borrowed from his arsenal – no one more than Chris Benoit.

Injury in the Ring

But Dynamite's hard hits were already taking their toll. In December, 1986, he ruptured two discs in his back. Mid-match, he fell to the floor and could not get up.

At the age of 28, Dynamite's health was in jeopardy. He ignored a doctor's warnings to find a different line of work, and resumed wrestling.

By now he was addicted to painkillers and consumed a cocktail of other drugs.

In his autobiography, he writes: "A normal working day for me was: speed to wake me up in the morning to catch an early flight, valium to make me sleep on the plane, Percoset just before the match, then we'd wrestle, hit the beer, and the cocaine, until the early hours, before taking another valium to sleep at night."

"I was in good company, because the majority of wrestlers all shared more or less the same lifestyle."

End of a Marriage, Back to the UK

At home, Tom's abuse of Michelle had become so bad that in January, 1991, while six months pregnant with their third child, she presented Dynamite with a one-way ticket back to the UK.

The indelible legacy as a wrestler he left behind is summed up by another famous grappler, Bret Hart. Tom became, in Bret Hart's words, "pound for pound, the greatest wrestler that ever lived."

Once back in England, Dynamite wrestled in small halls throughout the UK, for a hundred or so pounds a night, sometimes more – nowhere close to the thousands of dollars he used to earn in Japan and North America.

As he soldiered on his health worsened dramatically. Even after having seizures and waking up in hospital, he continued to wrestle. In 1997, the nerve and tissue damage to his lower back and legs was so extensive, he can no longer walk.

He now lives close to where he grew up, near Wigan, a recluse, bound to his wheelchair.

As a child, Michelle Billington went to wrestling matches with her father in Regina. As her sister Julie married Bret Hart, she was meeting the pro wrestlers she used to watch from a distance. She was particularly enamoured with Dynamite Kid, Tom Billington, whom she married at the age of 16. But in 1991, after years of abuse, she gave him a one-way plane ticket back to Manchester, England. She went back to school to become a teacher. She was interviewed by fifth estate producer Morris Karp. Watch the interview online.

Interview: Michelle Billington

Michelle Billington: One night Tom came home from the bar. It was New Year's. He was drunk and there was a great big cut on his face and you could see the bone, like someone had kicked him in the face and the flesh was just hanging. There was blood all over his white sweatshirt.

My kids had never seen their father like this. They had never seen him drunk, they'd never seen him out of control. Like I was an enabler. I made sure they didn't see it, that they were in bed. I'd clean up you know the booze and the bottles and the ashtrays in the morning before they woke up. And Bronwyn said to me Mummy, what's wrong with Daddy? And Tom looked at her and he said I fell down little girl, I fell down. It just broke my heart. It's like where are we going. I'm six months pregnant. What kind of role model is he?

And I just didn't care anymore about myself, I didn't care, and I didn't want my kids to live how they, how things were going. I didn't want to continue it.

Morris Karp: What did you do?

Michelle Billington: Well I put them on the bed and I went to get one of Tom's guns and contemplated shooting them, wondering what order I should do it in. First the - Bronwyn, then Merrick, then myself.

But I kept thinking, what if one of us lived, because number one, I didn't want anyone to live with him anymore. I couldn't pull the trigger because I couldn't guarantee us all to be gone and I just couldn't imagine them living with their father.

Way in the back of my mind, I remember at neighbour once telling me that she had been depressed once and she phoned the mental health clinic and you know I didn't know there was such a thing. You could open a phone book and there's people there that can help you. So I went to the phone and I talked to a kind voice on the other end and she told me to come in right away and to bring the kids and she told me I was trapped in a cycle of violence and there's three outs.

Number one, perpetrator gets professional help. And I said you know, I've been asking for ten years now and he won't, he just won't. And she goes or you kill yourself, and I'm like well I can't do that. Failed at that. And she goes no, no, that was your survival instinct. She goes or you leave him. You know, I was a grade 9 dropout. I you know, Tom made $250,000 a year. How can I support these children? What kind of life could I give them? She told me I could back to school you know and social services will help me. There's student loans and just the whole world brightened. And so that gave me strength to buy a one-way ticket and walk into my kitchen and hand it to him.

Morris Karp: What did he say?

Michelle Billington: He got very angry, extremely angry. He put me in some holds. He popped my jaw. He could put you in a submission hold and not leave a mark. Like things that are really painful, and not leave a mark so you could never prove it, dragging me around the kitchen by the hair. This is all the while my daughter Bronwyn and Merrick and watching, and they're holding each other screaming, like calling each other, "Bronwyn, Merrick," hugging each other.

He said he told his brother Mark who was still there, go get my gun. And he told me you got 15 minutes to get out or I'm gonna shoot you. And I phoned the RCMP. I wanted to stand my ground. I'm like I'm six months pregnant. I have our children. You need to leave. So I phoned the RCMP and they told me to leave. They said you know if he's telling you to leave, you should leave. Then accused me of being drunk.

Morris Karp: And how did he make his way to Manchester?

Michelle Billington: Well I did leave. I did make it under the 15 minute mark. I drove to my sister's house, Bret and Julie's. Knocked on the door. I was hiding quite, quite a bit of the violence from her. She knew something was wrong. She knew what his temper was like. But I didn't let her know how extreme it had gotten over the years. And you know, you live in shame. Especially you have people of status, if they're suffering from domestic violence, there's a lot of shame, stigma attached.