The Great Billy Robinson

Yesterday last year after the news broke of Billy’s passing I spent 3 days tied to the computer. Just reading everything that was posted about Billy. Reading all the articles and news that broke out around the world about his passing. It seemed like that was all I could to to mourn his loss and deal with his going away. I broke down and cried once and had to coach a kid the next day how to stand up the Billy Robinson way the way Billy taught me to stand up. At that time (and still currently) I was teaching 2-3 martial arts classes and or private lessons a day. For the next week after that every time I showed someone something Billy had taught me my mind would go back to the exact moment in time I had learned it. I could hear Billy’s voice in my mind and remembered how it felt to finally discover the position or movement he was trying to explain to me. For several weeks something would come up in training and I’d say in my mind I’ve got to ask Billy that and then I would be reminded that I can’t. I’ve been a martial artist my entire life. I never identified myself as a Jiu-Jitsu guy I never did just that exclusively I was always working on my Boxing, Karate Kicks, Wrestling and everything else I felt had value that I could pull off in an actual fight or a match. Billy’s stuff was gold to me. If anyone could master Billy’s techniques to the level of perfection he wanted them performed that person would be unstoppable. Billy was the most knowledgeable martial artist I’ve ever met. I wouldn’t say he forgot more than most people ever learn because Billy remembered everything! He knew more about wrestling than anyone else on the planet. He knew about bare knuckled fighting, boxing, street fights, European History, Wrestling History, he’d talk to me about what it was like to Wrestle the highest level Judoka’s in Japan, taking on olympic wrestlers who didn’t believe Catch Wrestling would work. He told me about Viking stories his father read to him as a child containing “beautiful depictions of Saltos and Suplexes” We discussed things such as Battle Axes and Strong Holds, Japanese Comic Books and Cartoons of which he was the subject of, even talked once about how to draw anatomy, the things Billy knew about never ended and everything was some how always brought back to wrestling. I wasn’t just sad that the training was gone but that the person was gone, the conversations and stories the jokes and now even the yelling and swearing.