At 75, in some ways, Billy Robinson is not the man he used to be.
Once strong, muscular, and tough, in the height of his career as a professional heavyweight wrestler, this Englishman was formidable. But Father Time is taking him to the mat. These days, he’s moving slower, relies on a cane for steadiness, and gets winded easily. A bowl on the kitchen counter of his apartment holds an array of medicine bottles. He has had both knees and one hip replaced. Three years ago, Robinson, who has lived all over the world, decided to move to Little Rock to be closer to his son Spencer, a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard here.
But in other ways, the former wrestling champion is exactly the man he used to be. His passion for the sport remains strong. So does his desire to teach younger generations the secrets to his success in catch or catch-as-catch-can wrestling (a classical hybrid grappling style developed in Britain in the late 1800s). He coaches three days a week at the Westside Mixed Martial Arts gym in Little Rock and also holds private classes.
A word of warning to those hoping to train under him - they’d better be serious about it. Or they’d better get gone.
Working with a pair of young wrestlers, Scott Jones and Zack Haley, at Westside Mixed Martial Arts gym in Little Rock recently, Robinson meant business, his coaching peppered with orders and explanations.
“First you have to control his wrist”… “Pop the head”… “You walk around to this 30 degree angle” … “All you want to do is trap his shoulder and then you roll”… “Why can’t you cross over?”
To underscore his instructions, an exasperated Robinson jabbed one of the wrestlers’ wayward feet, in the wrong position, with his cane.
But the wrestlers’ respect for the coach was obvious, each one repeatedly responding to his gruffness with a “Yes, sir.”
“This guy is great,” says Jones, who is legally blind and has competed in two Paralympics competitions in judo. “The first time I met him, he blew my mind.”
Jones, who competed with the U.S. team in 2004 in Athens, Greece, and in 2008 in Beijing, adds “He teaches the fundamentals but, overall, it’s about learning to relax and never struggle. If I’m working too hard, that means I’m not doing it right.”
The coach agrees, saying, “The secret is to be in the right positions to begin with; if you’re not, you’ll waste a lot more energy.”
When Robinson first visited the gym to inquire about coaching, co-owner Matt Hamilton didn’t know who he was.
“He was at the tail-end of his career when I became interested in wrestling and had spent a lot of his later years coaching in Japan so I didn’t have a clue who he was,” Hamilton says. “But after I looked him up, I was certainly familiar with the students he’d trained in Japan.”
Some of Robinson’s former catch wrestling students at the Universal Wrestling Federation Snake Pit in Japan include mixed martial arts legends Kazushi Sakuraba and Josh Barnett.
“He’s a coach’s coach,” Hamilton says of Robinson. “He helps the guys who are already good get a lot better; he’s a genius at what he does.”
For the moves that are easier shown than described, Robinson still gets down on the ground to demonstrate, even though it’s difficult for him.
“I know it takes a lot out of him,” Hamilton says. “He’s still got the passion for wrestling. He is a master of his craft and a true inspiration.”
Hamilton says of Robinson’s fame: “For most of his life, he’s been a rock star. I get a lot out of having a beer with him and just listening to him talk.”
FAME WASN’T FLEETING
And chances are their watering hole may run out of beer before Robinson runs out of stories about the experiences he has had.
He once met the governor of Bombay in India when he was brought in for a private amateur match to entertain the king of Nepal. He has met members of the British royal family on three occasions. And back in 1960, he met Sophia Loren. He’s also a movie star himself, having appeared in The Wrestler with Ed Asner in 1974 and in several Japanese films.
Speaking of movies, there was that time when he was assigned to serve as a policeman (wrestling lingo for a bodyguard) for fellow wrestler Harold Sakata (an American Olympic heavyweight wrestler who starred as the villain Oddjob in the James Bond film Goldfinger). Robinson explains that Sakata was being harassed by someone wanting to challenge him and the two were paired together so the troublemaker would have to take Robinson to the mat before getting to Sakata.
“And this guy wasn’t going to be able to do that,” Robinson says, chuckling.
Then there’s that street fight in which he knocked out Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s grandfather “High Chief” Peter Maivia, a fellow wrestler who challenged and attacked Robinson after a boozy night out.
Robinson served as the inspiration for a Japanese superhero, Robin Mask, a character from Yudetamago’s manga comics and anime series Kinnikuman.
“If I were to walk down the street in Tokyo right now, I’d have to stop and sign four or five autographs,” Robinson says, not boastfully, but matter-of-factly.
He has also had his share of time out of the limelight since retiring from the ring in 1992, once working as the manager of a convenience store and as a security guard at the Gold Coast Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
Back home at his nearby apartment following the coaching session, Robinson takes out scrapbooks with photographs and news clippings. On one wall, amid vintage photographs of him, hangs the bronze plaque presented when he was inducted into the International Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2003. In a windowsill across the room rests a shadow box displaying the International Wrestling Alliance’s World Championship belt he won in Japan in 1969.
Robinson’s accomplishments are plentiful - he was one of the key influences on the shoot style movement and one of the few wrestlers who was successful on several continents, (Europe, North America and Asia).
A FIGHTING CHANCE
Born in 1938 in Manchester into a family of boxers, he began boxing when he was about 4 or 5 but when he was 12, an eye injury he got while working in his family’s green grocery hospitalized him for five months. He began amateur wrestling at age 14 (with his father lying that he was the required 16). After a year, his father introduced him to Billy Riley, who coached Lancashire catch-as-catch-can wrestling in the nearby mining town of Wigan. The gym Riley founded there in the 1950s, dubbed the Snake Pit, is renowned for producing some of the most skilled catch wrestlers in the world, including Karl Gotch, Bert Assirati, Jack Dempsey (real name Tommy Moore), and Billy Joyce (real name Bob Robinson, but no relation to Billy).
“I spent a lot of time there,” Robinson says of his years with Riley. “His was the toughest camp there ever was.”
In amateur wrestling, Robinson won the British National Wrestling Championship in 1957 in the light heavyweight division and was the European Open Wrestling Champion in the light heavyweight class in1958.
As a professional wrestler he won numerous championship titles through the years and wrestled in Great Britain, Japan, Australia, Canada, and the United States which he made his home in the 1970s, moving to Minneapolis and continuing to excel with Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association.
He was listed as Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s Most Popular Wrestler of the Year in 1974 and was inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum in 2011.
In later years, Robinson spent two decades living in Japan, coaching young mixed martial arts fighters in catch wrestling. He owned five gyms through the years - two in Japan, one in Canada, and two in England (in Manchester and in Wigan).
RINGSIDE REFLECTIONS
Looking back on his career, he considers his biggest win to be his victory against mentor Billy Joyce.
“He is the greatest wrestler I’ve ever wrestled,” Robinson says, his voice filled with respect.
His biggest loss?
“Old age,” he replies soberly. “I’d still be wrestling today if the body was still good.”
To date, he has recounted his experiences in the ring in three different books; one written in German, another in Japanese and his most recent one published last year in English - Physical Chess: My Life in Catch-as Catch-Can Wrestling, co-written with Jake Shannon.
From all his accomplishments, Robinson is proudest of his reputation as the most knowledgeable catch wrestler still living.
“And it’s all because of Billy Riley,” he says of his former trainer.
“I used to have nightmares of him telling me ‘Do it again! Do it again! Do it again!’ He later told me, ‘I didn’t really teach you how to wrestle; I taught you how to learn.’”
Robinson says Billy Riley was the ultimate taskmaster who didn’t dole out compliments sparingly. In fact, he didn’t dole them out at all.
“I once asked him, ‘All the time I was wrestling with you, you never said to me “Good [job].” Even when I won the world title. Why is that?’
“He told me the biggest mistakes most coaches make is to tell the kids how good they are; because when they do, then they stop trying.”
Riley’s lessons served Robinson well. In his heyday, no heavyweight wrestler could execute a suplex slam - or just about any other move - like he could. Instead of being a show wrestler, Robinson was considered to be one, the real deal.
He recalls the time he took on - and injured - a wrestler from the Lebanese Olympic team.
“He was 350 pounds and I was about 191,” he says. “But within 30 seconds, I’d broken his leg in two places.”
Why? The other wrestler failed to signal when he’d had enough and “tap out,” or give up.
“I felt bad about it,” Robinson says earnestly. “But he didn’t knock out.”
What does he think of today’s wrestling on TV?
“It’s a show,” Robinson says in disgust. “It’s a comical, physical soap opera.”
And in his corner of this world, the former wrestling champ works to offset the direction his beloved sport has taken; making the short drive to the nearby gym at least three times a week to teach younger generations in the ways he was trained.
Style, Pages 29 on 12/10/2013