Physical Chess: My Life in Catch-as-Catch-Can Wrestling

Physical Chess: My Life in Catch-as-Catch-Can Wrestling

Behind the scenes with a pro wrestling and MMA legend In this fascinating autobiography, Billy Robinson recounts his upbringing in post-WWII England amid a family of champion fighters, his worldwide travels as a wrestler, his time as a pro wrestling TV star, and his career as a coach to some of the biggest names in mixed martial arts. For the first time, Billy Robinson sets the record straight on: who won the infamous street fight between him and the grandfather of superstar Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. - how his family was pivotal in introducing “God of Wrestling” Karl Gotch to Billy Riley’s gym and the sport of catc-as-catch-can wrestling. - the accomplishments of some of the greatest competitive grapplers the world has ever seen and that you’ve likely never heard of before. This memoir fills a crucial gap in the history of catch-as-catch-can wrestling and shares the intriguing details of Billy’s life, in his own inimitable voice. “If you are a true fan of professional wrestling history — your education cannot be complete without a good primer on European wrestling. In Physical Chess , legendary British Catch-As-Catch-Can/professional wrestler Billy Robinson and Jake Shannon will treat you to the most concise history of 20th century European wrestling that has ever crossed this reviewer’s desk.” — Wrestling Figs BILLY ROBINSON (born 1939) is a British professional wrestler and catch wrestling instructor. Robinson is one of the few wrestlers who was successful in several continents (Europe, North America, Asia, and Oceania), winning titles in promotions nearly everywhere he wrestled, and is well known in Japan where he has trained MMA fighters in catch wrestling. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. JAKE SHANNON is the author of Say Uncle , the founder of ScientificWrestling.com, inventor of the Macebell, and a master hypnotist. He holds a B.A. in English from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a M.Sc. in financial engineering from Golden Gate University in San Francisco. He currently lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. Physical Chess My Life in Catch-as-Catch-Can Wrestling By Billy Robinson, Jake Shannon ECW PRESS Copyright © 2012 William A. Robinson with Jake Shannon All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-77041-062-6 CHAPTER 1 BEGINNINGS I come from a fighting family. My great-great-grandfather Harry Robinson was a bare-knuckle boxing champion of Great Britain, which in those days really meant world champion. My uncle Alf boxed with the world heavyweight champion Max Baer and wrestled another world heavyweight champion, Jack Sherry, in Belgium. And then there's my father, a street fighter turned pro who fought the black American boxer Tiger Flowers and was once world light heavyweight champion. Tiger told my father that he was the strongest man Tiger had ever fought. In those days, fighters were known around the country. They were the stars, not soccer players, not rugby players. It was fighters and wrestlers—Billy Riley, Joe and Bob Robinson, Charlie Carroll, the Carroll brothers, the Belshaw brothers, Pop Charnock, and too many others to name—that people revered. Those guys were legends, and they were unbelievable athletes. Unfortunately, nobody really kept fight records that long ago, so the names of so many great wrestlers have been lost forever. THE TIMES WERE TOUGH BACK THEN! I was born in 1938. We had just gone through two wars—the Boer War and the First World War—and the third was about to begin. Life was rough. My siblings, both elder to me, would die in bombings during the Second World War. I never got to know them. My granddad—that is, my dad's dad—had died in the trenches during the 1914–1918 war. My dad had to take care of his family when he was about 11 or 12. He got into the green grocery business (green grocery means fruit and vegetables, certain canned stuff and fish and fowl). I remember that I hated Christmas as a kid because my job in those days was plucking and cleaning turkeys, geese, and chickens. That's what I did all through Christmas. I didn't want to look at a table and see a turkey or a chicken that I'd plucked. At one time, my dad had a number of shops. He put all his brothers and sisters into the business, and he would buy for all the shops. It's difficult to explain today how tough it was then just to survive. The industrial age had started, but the unions had not yet got enough power to make life and conditions easier for the working class people. On the average day, a major meal was beans on toast with a fried egg on top, or fish and chips, or a sandwich with a mug of tea. Maybe, on a Sunday, you'd be able to afford a roast, and that was considered a family feast. The average life expectancy for a male in Wigan in the 1920s and '30s was about 23 or 24 years, and for a female it was not much more than 30 (I read this in an old Wigan newspaper when I was training there with Billy Riley). People had huge families, but a lot of children died from