Also known as The Destroyer
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For years serious wrestling fans have tried to work out the goings on of professional wrestling in those days before it became pure entertainment. Until the 1970s professional wrestling was shrouded in mystery and illusion. It was a real sport with real rivalries and genuine danger, but slowly it dawned that everything was not quite how it appeared.
A legitimate sport marketed with entertainment principles inevitably resulted in a world of contradictions and dichotomies. Those with an ability to entertain and impress the fans were often not the ones respected and admired by wrestling colleagues, and vice versa. Which brings us to one of the Lancashire shoot wrestlers of the post-war era. Billy Chambers was born on 3rd August, 1936. In the wrestling world he was known as Jack Fallon.
Dynamite Kid trained at Jack Fallon’s gym, and in his book, “Pure Dynamite” tells the reader that he learnt a lot – and it hurt! Eddie Rose also tells of pain inflicted by Fallon, who would use his deafness as a reason for not breaking when students submitted. Jack Fallon’s philosophy was that enduring pain was an essential part of learning to wrestle. Much respected by his fellow wrestlers he could have done many of them a great deal of damage if that had been the name of the game. Jack himself learned to wrestle at Billy Riley’s gym. According to The Who’s Who of Wrestling (1971) Jack Fallon spent fifteen hours a week at Riley’s gym. Riley’s successor, Roy Wood, is another who has testified to Fallon’s shooting abilities.
Sadly as far as the fans were concerned it was a different story. For most fans Jack Fallon was a routine jobber of the sixties and seventies whose style never caught their imagination. Even pulling on a mask and calling himself The Destroyer was not enough to create much interest and he was destined to remain a supporting wrestler throughout his career. Maybe the choice of a more original name might have helped; there had been numerous Destroyers before Jack and the name was already devalued. But then the promoters never did do Jack any favours. For the most part those promoters were Wryton Promotions, Billy Best or Jack Atherton.
Between 1970 and 1972 Jack made five televised appearances, with opponents Pat Roach, Pete Roberts, Bobo Matu, Tibor Szakacs and Ray Glendenning. At the time of writing (August 2021) the match with Szakacs is available on You Tube.
Jack Fallon was last seen working for the independent promoters in 1974. There are reports that he worked in Germany also during that year. He died on 26th August, 2010, aged 74, the husband of Dorothy, and father of five children.
Page added 16/08/2021
Page reviewed 27/07/2022
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