Billy Who?

"Never meet your heroes" is not a piece of advice I agree with. Certainly there are people who you (yes you) have probably built up in your mind so much that there's no way that they could actually live up the expectations you have for them; but I don't think this rule applies one hundred percent of the time.

That being said though, there is one hero of mine, who is probably held so high in my regard because I never met him: Billy Joyce. There's a good chance you haven't heard that name before. If you have, good on you, but I'm going to go into a little bit of history anyway: Billy Joyce was the ring name of Bob Robinson, apparently one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. When I say apparently, it's because - aside form never meeting the man - I have never actually seen Mr Joyce wrestle. I have only heard stories from the old time Wigan wrestlers, who described a genius of the craft. This craft was catch-as-catch-can wrestling.

The two most prominent names that I heard of coming from the infamous, original snake pit gym, in Wigan, were Billy Robinson and Karl Gotch. It is primarily because of their influence on professional wrestling that I knew their stories. And it wasn't until a year or so of actually training and learning about the history that I heard the name Billy Joyce, or "Bob Robby", mentioned. So imagine my surprise when I hear of the heavyweight Gotch, who even after years of training, was toyed with, by the significantly smaller Joyce. "He'd let you arm drag him, and you'd end up pulling him onto your leg."

The legend of a man who was the epitome of the idea of grappling being a game of human chess, was built up in my mind. Never the biggest, strongest, nor fastest, here was a man that simply outwrestled everyone. But it's not solely because of that that I consider him a hero; the biggest influence on the legend, for me, was a story I heard from the other big man, Billy Robinson:

"I asked Billy Riley, my trainer, who was the worst student you ever had? And he said without a doubt it was Billy Joyce. He would come week in and week out, and he was just terrible. Could barely teach him a thing. Until one day it all clicked, and he started timing his moves, countering people, knowing his set ups, and beating everyone. But it took him years to get there."

That's not word for word, as it's from memory, but the gist of it is there.

Because I've never met this man, and I've never seen him go to work on the mats, I have only my imagination, fueled by the stories of others. If I'd have met him, or actually had the chance to witness his wrestling, I don't think the legend would live up. This is the story of someone who was not a natural born genius, who, from the first moment of being on those horse hair mats, knew what he was doing. This was the worst student they'd ever had, who simply worked at it. That kind of story gives me hope.