Physical Chess

by Billy Robinson

  It’s maybe four or five o’clock in the morning, and Jack and I have been talking wrestling all the while. So, I’ve stripped off and am in my underpants, showing him different holds. We hear a noise outside, so Jack says, “Oh, that’s the paper, Billy. Go get the paper for me.” So I walk out into the hallway in my underpants to pick up the paper, and he locks the door. I’m in the best hotel in the whole of Australia, full of rich and educated people, trying to call down to get the key to my room. I go upstairs. I manage to get upstairs by taking the safety stairs, and not the elevator, because there were people going in and out. I’m trying to hide from everybody. Well, somebody did see me sneaking around in my underpants, and they sent security up. I tell them my story; they laugh and open the door for me and leave.

  Another funny incident happened when I was in Calgary wrestling Dory Funk. We got invited to an evening with the premier of Alberta at his house. He wanted to take us to Banff, a big banquet with tuxedos and bow ties and the whole deal. So the premier’s wife said, “So now, don’t forget, Billy, tomorrow.”

  I reply, “Yes, I’ll come and knock you up about eight o’clock.” Now, in England, that’s a common expression for “I’ll see you at eight o’clock.” There we had professional “knocker-uppers,” people that used to come to the tiered houses and knock on the bedroom window or beat on the door to get people up in time for their shift. Of course, I didn’t know what that meant in America or Canada until they explained it to me. I was extremely embarrassed.

  Gordienko was really the best in America in those days. Of all the guys I’ve wrestled around the world, he was probably the naturally strongest that I’ve ever met. He was very strong in a number of ways. I don’t know anything about poundages and stuff, but by wrestling strength, he was the strongest man I’ve ever met on the mat. The Hungarian Josef Kovacs came next. He was second in the World Amateur Championships when he was like 17 or 18. He was naturally strong, just unbelievably powerful.

  Gordienko was to become the nwa heavyweight champion, but then he got blacklisted and had to leave the U.S. Joe Pazandak, a very good old-time catch wrestler, had trained him and brought him into pro wrestling. Gordienko was married to Pazandak’s daughter. She was the head of the Communist Party in that area of America, and George Gordienko married her during the McCarthy era, when a lot of sportsmen, showmen, and movie stars—like Larry Parks and Paul Robeson—had their careers ended.

  To train for the 1948 Olympics, Gagne wanted sparring partners, and George wasn’t a pro wrestler at this time. He was just working out with Pazandak. Verne didn’t like Pazandak because he was a lot older, and a much better catch wrestler. Verne knew it, and he didn’t want anything to do with Pazandak. So he brought George over; George was young in those days. Verne said, “Okay, go down. I’ll get behind you. Try to escape.” And Gordienko went bam! He exploded and escaped. So then Gagne got down for Gordienko, and said, “Okay. Now I’ll escape. You try to hold me down,” and Gordienko held him down until Verne quit. He just held him down. Verne no longer wanted to spar with him.

  When Gordienko’s wife got in trouble for being with the Communist Party, Gordienko was kicked out of America. He went back to Manitoba, and from there he went to England and taught at an art school. He was a great artist.

  Gordienko knew quite a bit of the old catch-as-catch-can, so they wanted to see if he would stand a chance against Bert Assirati. The promoters were going to pay, so they brought Billy Joyce down from Wigan to London and got Gordienko, who was living in London, to the gym. Gordienko was supposed to work out with Billy Joyce (they were paying Billy to spar with him), but he didn’t want to. Billy said to him straight, “Look. We’re not going to hurt each other. They just want to see how capable you are. Just go in and feel me out and let me feel you out.”

  I don’t know if George didn’t trust him or if he thought Billy Joyce would beat him, but George got very nervous. Billy would have done just enough to prevent George beating him and to show he was in control, because Billy was that type of guy. George was so nervous that while he was having his rice pudding, he got hold of some ketchup and put it on the pudding. That’s a true story. I was there. He just didn’t want to have anything to do with Billy Joyce. It was good business for him not to take the chance of getting beaten. Real catch-as-catch-can wrestlers, the real pro wrestlers, weren’t scared of anybody or anything. Joe Pazandak, Ed Lewis, Stanislaus Zbyszko were very good. His brother Wladek was technically better than Stanislaus, but I’ve heard that he didn’t have the heart.

  Another name that is worth mentioning is Bob Meyers. According to Billy Riley, Meyers was even better than Benny Sherman. Billy should know, because he wrestled them both and worked out with them both. Benny Sherman was the heaviest and Billy was the smallest of the three. Meyers took up the middle. They met up and did what the old carnies did—they went to South Africa, to the gold mines and the diamond mines, challenging everybody.

  Even Frank Gotch did this. He would send one of his guys to the lumberjack areas of Minnesota and Canada to get into a camp. Once the guy got in, he would start to work out, wrestling. Then the lumberjacks would get interested, because everybody was bored. There’s nothing to do up there; we’re talking late 1890s, early 1900s. Eventually, the guy would say, “I need to get ready to wrestle Frank Gotch for the championship. I need somebody to spar with.”

  He’d get the youngest and the strongest, the best there, and then he’d work with them every day. After they’d finished their chopping and eating, they’d get out and spar. Everybody’d be watching them, and during this period of time, some of the guys would be getting better and better and better, to where it was taking Gotch’s guy an hour to beat them, or maybe he wouldn’t beat them at all. Then, two or three days before Gotch was going to come up for the match, the guy would start sparring with them and he’d pretend to hurt his leg, so now he couldn’t wrestle. He’d let everybody in the camp know that this kid hurt him.

  So while a few would be for cancelling the fight, everyone else would be saying, “Oh no, this is one of us. He can beat Gotch because he’s beat this guy.” There would be a lot of money bet on the match. Well, Gotch was so far superior that he’d arrive and just play with the guy without anybody knowing that he was really in total control. Gotch would let it go long enough; then he’d just beat the guy, and they’d pick up thousands of dollars, and in those days, that was a tremendous amount of money. That’s how they would make money. This was before the promoters got involved. Back then, there were no regular weekly matches, where you go to the arena. The money was not generated selling tickets to an event. It was made on bets. When you had those types of matches, you burned your body out so much with the training plus the actual match that guys got hurt all the time. You couldn’t wrestle three or four times a week in those kind of matches.

  Also, remember, there were no airplanes in those days. To go to India, you’d get the Great Eastern train from London through Europe, all the way through Turkey into Arabia. It would take months to get around the world. Guys like Waino Ketonen, Billy Riley, and Tom Connors brought catch wrestling to America and the world. Japanese jiu-jitsu guys did the same. They couldn’t make any money in Japan, because it wasn’t done that way there. So they went around the world, challenging people. That’s when they got beat by catch-as-catch-can wrestlers. That’s where they picked up the double wristlock and the figure fours (which they call a triangle now), because those were very common holds in catch wrestling.

  Pro wrestling in Japan started with Al Baffert beating Rikidōzan. Baffert was a very good American catch wrestler. He, along with wrestlers from various units in the U.S. Army, put on a show for the American soldiers in Japan. Sumo wrestlers wanted to watch the show, so the Americans got invited to meet with the sumo association and sumo champions. They met at a big, beautiful Japanese-style hotel, with tatami mats. They sat on the floor talking, and finally, they said, “This boy wants
to challenge you.” That boy happened to be Rikidōzan, who was a young sumo champion at that time. When the young Rikidōzan was asked, “Which wrestler do you want?” He pointed directly at Tosh Togo.

  The Great Kusatsu, Billy Robinson, “Thunder” Sugiyama, and George Gordienko in Japan in the late ’60s.

  Taking nothing away from him, Tosh Togo (a.k.a. Harold Sakata) wasn’t a good real wrestler; he was more of a professional wrestler, a showman. He was a very powerful weightlifter, winning a silver medal for weightlifting in the Olympics. He was also scared to death of sumo wrestlers. So Al Baffert took up the challenge from Rikidōzan.

  Al told me the story years later when I met him in Japan, where he was refereeing matches. He said, “Rikidōzan was pretty good for about a minute and a half, and then he just faded away.” This made sense to me, since the matches in sumo wrestling only last for a short time. There’s one big explosion for about 15, 20, or max 30 seconds; if it goes into a minute or a minute and a half or two minutes, the referee stops to let them get their wind back, and starts them again from the same position they were in when the match was stopped.

  Before a Japanese tournament; Billy Robinson, George Gordienko, Michael Nador, Ray Hunter, and Peter Maivia (with flag).

  They didn’t know any submissions, either. They were just very well balanced on their feet. Baffert took Rikidōzan down, got him in a control position, and beat him. Of course, the Japanese version of the story is different, where it was Harold Sakata who fought Rikidōzan, but that’s not true. Al Baffert even wrote a book about it, but they wouldn’t publish it in Japan because that’s not the story they wanted to believe. (Rikidōzan was a god over there, like Antonio Inoki. Karl Gotch, too, became the “God of Wrestling” because he taught Inoki. In Japan, everything’s got to have a god and everything’s got to have a name.)

  Travelling in Japan.

  I had a great time in Japan and made a lot of close friends there. Japan is a great country. I got there through the Japanese Olympic Committee. Rikidōzan had died, and in the Japanese Wrestling Association, the top men were Toyonobori and Giant Baba. Antonio Inoki was young and coming up back then. They had Karl Gotch as a trainer, and there was no one that could handle Karl.

  Toyonobori and Giant Baba split after a clash over money: Toyonobori, along with Yoshihara, formed the iwe (International Wrestling Enterprise), while Giant Baba got the big push by the jwa (Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance). Karl was beating everybody and training young Japanese guys in those days. The iwe wanted somebody to counteract him, so they got hold of the Olympic Gold medallist and world champion, Shozo Sasahara. Sasahara called George de Relwyskow (the son of the gold medallist of the same name for England in the 1908 Olympics), who then called Billy Riley to find out who was the best guy in Wigan, and Billy Riley said, “Billy Robinson.” That’s how I landed in Japan. The Toyonobori organization brought me over to counteract Karl, not realizing that Karl was like my uncle, and that, in fact, my uncle had started Karl in catch-as-catch-can, and that Karl had learned his wrestling in the same gym with the same coaches.

  Doing a television interview after winning a match.

  Because Karl and I were in opposition to each other in Japan, there was no way we could openly meet or socialize. But we used to find ways to meet somewhere by accident. We’d take our wives with us, we’d have dinner, and also we’d find ways to have private workouts. We’d go to the gym when there was nobody there and spar with each other. That I found very funny.

  While in Japan, I ended up winning the tournament, and then, I won the World Championship. After that, the Toyonobi organization asked me to move long-term to Japan with my family.

  I was with Karl one day, and I was a bit grumpy. “What’s eating you?” he asked.

  I said, “I’m having a bit of a problem with the Japanese guys.”

  He said, “Why?”

  Billy upon returning to Japan, this time as a coach. Here Billy is helping the Great Inoue with bridging.

  I said, “Well, they’re not learning like I’d like them to. It’s like they’re distracted.”

  Karl asked me if I had hurt anybody yet.

  I said, “No, I’m coaching. I’m not going to hurt them.”

  Karl said this to me: “This is Japan. This is not England or Europe or America. This is Japan.” He said, “Listen to me. Hurt one of them.”

  I said, “Karl, I don’t want to. I can’t do that.”

  Well, whether I wanted it or not, it happened the following week. There was a snowstorm in Tokyo. When Tokyo got snow, their traffic system would grind to a halt. They didn’t have it set up like in America, where everything gets cleared away. As I was leaving for the gym, I had a row with my wife, so I was not in a good mood to start with. The student who was going to pick me up was 30 minutes late because of the snow. I was standing out in the snow, and I looked like a bloody snowman by the time he got there, as there was no shelter where I said I’d meet him, and we had no cell phones in those days.

  When I got to the gym, I was in a real bad mood. One of the top Japanese boys mouthed off about something. “That’s it,” I said. I lined them all up, and I wrestled them all, and every time I came to him, I turned on the gas a little bit. Finally, he went mad and actually tried to hurt me. So I broke his arm. As soon as I hurt him, it was like Karl said: a change came over the Japanese boys. The whole situation changed. They took me to the shower, washed my clothes, took me out to eat. As bizarre as it was to me, in Japan, if you’re the boss, nobody questions you. In a violence sport or martial arts sport, you’ve got to prove you’re the master. It’s not a “he said” deal. Karl knew that, and he tried to tell me, but I didn’t believe it until this incident happened. After I established I was the boss, coaching the Japanese was very good.

  Billy, while working for All Japan, wrestling Jumbo Tsuruta (and beating him) for the championship.

  Billy starting a double arm suplex on Inoki as John “Red Shoes” Dugan officiates.

  It’s a very different culture; when they need something from you, you’re god. They’d do anything for you. But when they’ve got what they need, then they are the boss; they order you around like dogs. Karl couldn’t stand it. Toward the end of my stay in Japan, I couldn’t stand it, either. They’d say, “I’m finished with you. Now you can go.” You don’t do that, not to a European or an American.

  The Japanese really helped me when I was at the end of my wrestling career; I had gone through a divorce and got on a bit of a drinking spree. When I was in Minnesota, Inoki called me up and said, “Billy, will you come to Japan?” I was thrilled. Things had gotten so low by that point that I was a manager of a store at a gas station. That was the most boring, miserable job I’ve ever had in my life.

  Inoki brought me over to Japan again for the celebration of 30 years of combat sports: boxing, wrestling, everything. Many have called the match between Inoki and me the best match of all time, or at least in the last 30 years. And it was just after my knee operation; I could hardly get in the ring and stand up.

  Yuko Miyato had gotten in touch with me even before Inoki. I was in Las Vegas working as a security guard, and I was coaching other security guards. He sent for me to go to Japan. I did an exhibition match with Nick Bockwinkel. I was in no shape to do it, and neither was Nick, but we went over and did it on one of the big uwfi fight cards.

  After that, Miyato asked me to go to Nashville and coach the uwfi guys from America and other places who were sent there. They’d fly me over to Japan four or five times a year just to be at the matches. The fighters would come to Tennessee to work out with me. Guys like Billy Scott, Gary Albright, and Gene Lydick used to come and work out. Then that split up because, in Japan, when guys get good enough, they split up and form their own promotions. At that time, in the early ’90s, I think there were probably close t
o 39 or 40 different promotion companies in Japan that were coaching real catch wrestling and submission fighting. Every wrestler that had been taught by Karl Gotch or by me was a champion—Miyato, Takada, and others.

  Through Miyato, I became the head coach of the uwfi, and that’s where I got to teach Sakuraba, Takada, Tamura, Inoue, and many more of those guys. The uwfi brought in Lou Thesz because he had the belt and was a famous name, but I coached them. Then I became the head coach of the Snake Pit Gym and lived in Japan for 15 years. Miyato really saved me because I had started to drink too much and put on too much weight as a result of the divorce. On top of that, my knees and hip all had to be replaced, my nervous system was wrecked from years of wrestling, and I couldn’t train anymore.

  Visiting a hospital in Japan at Christmas.

  It was because of people like Miyato that other people realized that I was still around. For example, when I was in Japan, Jake Shannon asked me to come back to the United States to do a seminar on catch wrestling; that was because of Miyato. I’ve got to thank Miyato very much, as well as all the other Japanese people that helped me over there.

  Another victory in Japan, this time of Sean Reagan.

  Coaching the Japanese wasn’t easy because they had a mindset that we’ve never had in catch wrestling. They were used to the belt system, where a brown belt goes up against a black belt, and if there are outsiders watching, that brown belt will not do anything against the black belt. The brown belt has to lose because of their custom. Well, in wrestling, we don’t have that. I mean, if you can beat the best guy when you’re on the mat, you beat him. So the mindset is a lot different.