Davey Boy Smith

Wrestler known as the British Bulldog

David Boy Smith, wrestler: born Golborne, Lancashire 27 November 1962; married Diana Hart (one son, one daughter, marriage dissolved 1990); died Invermere, British Columbia 18 May 2002.

While he never crossed over to Hollywood like The Rock or Hulk Hogan, Davey Boy Smith, alias the British Bulldog, delighted millions of wrestling fans who watched his bouts live and on television throughout the Eighties and Nineties.

Wearing beaded dreadlocks and red, white and blue tights, with his 56in chest, 21in biceps and 19in neck draped in the Union Jack, the 5ft 11in, 18-stone wrestler cut a distinctive figure and floored opponents with his trademark move, the Running Powerslam.

Starting out in the ring as a teenager, Smith went from partnering the legendary Big Daddy (Shirley Crabtree) and then Dynamite Kid (Smith's cousin Tom Billington) to becoming Intercontinental, Tag Team, European Heavyweight and Hardcore champions after moving to Canada and joining the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). In 1992, Smith feuded with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and his brother-in-law Bret "Hitman" Hart whom he beat in the infamous Battle of the Brothers-in-Law held during SummerSlam 92 in front of 75,000 spectators at Wembley Stadium.

Although recently sidelined by back, spine and knee injuries, dogged by allegations of steroid abuse and addicted to painkillers, Smith had been planning a comeback with World Wrestling Entertainment, the organisation which had taken over from the WWF.

Born in 1962, David Boy Smith owed his full name to a mistake at the register office. "The clerk was in a rush – he filled in the first name section with David, but he should have put 'Boy' in the next column where it asked for sex," Smith told Simon Garfield, author of The Wrestling (1996).

I was so skinny – people don't believe me when I tell them now. I'm from Golborne, the other side of Wigan. When I was about 12, my cousin was wrestling for the Crabtrees [Big Daddy and his manager brother Max] and my parents wanted to get me into something that would keep me off the streets.

Soon, the young Smith was delivering fruit for a local grocer to pay for wrestling tuition with the trainer Ted Betley. By 1977, he had joined Big Daddy as tag-team partner. Smith recalled,

I was still at school. You turned the TV on and there I was. Young David Smith. I was the smallest wrestler they had. I couldn't have been 140 pounds sopping wet. I was thin but really fit. With Big Daddy we were selling out everywhere.

In 1988, World Of Sport pulled the plug on a sport which ITV schedulers considered too down-market but Smith had already moved on.

After England, it all began in Japan and then I got the call from the World Wrestling Federation who liked my style, all this high-flying stuff. I began with the Dynamite Kid, my cousin, and the British Bulldogs tag-team just knocked them out.

He moved to Canada and competed with the Dynamite Kid in the Calgary Stampede organised by the trainer Stu Hart until 1989 when the WWF bought the franchise. Smith subsequently joined the extended Hart family, teaming up with Stu's sons Bruce and Owen, and wrestling against Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart and Bret "Hitman" Hart, whose sister Diana he married in the late Eighties. (After the couple divorced, Smith began dating Andrea Hart, the estranged wife of Bruce Hart).

When an injury forced Billington to retire in 1990, Smith got himself a real bulldog as a mascot, patriotically named it Winston and went solo on the WWF circuit. His considerable earnings enabled him to buy a 15-bedroom mansion in Florida but he lost the Intercontinental title to Shawn "The Heartbreak Kid" Michaels and fell out with the WWF. "I left in 1992 and they wanted to keep my name, the British Bulldog," he said. "But I had already trademarked it so they couldn't touch me."

Smith then had two stints with the rival body World Championship Wrestling before rejoining the WWF fold. In 1999 Owen Hart died in an accident while being lowered from the rafters into the ring but Smith struggled on, challenging The Rock for the Heavyweight title several times without success.

In the Nineties, Smith still made headlines when he got into brawls or threatened his ex-wife.

When I go to these little towns, people want to pick fights. They think: "What have I got to lose? If I get beaten by the British Bulldog, maybe I can sue him."

A more sensitive soul than his huge physique would indicate, the British Bulldog would sometimes visit young fans in hospital. "People don't see that side of what we do," he said. "I'm no star. I'm just the guy who got the job to be a professional wrestler."

Pierre Perrone