Background

William Wayne "Billy" Blanks was born on September 1, 1955, in Erie, Pennsylvania. He was the fourth child of a family of fifteen. His father, Isaac was a factory worker and his mother, Mabeline was a homemaker. He grew up in a poor, crime-ridden area of Erie and suffered at school because he had dyslexia and could not learn normally. He was awkward because he had an anomaly of the hip joints so he was often teased by both his peers and his siblings.

During this time, dyslexia was not commonly understood. Billy was placed in the same class as children who were mentally handicapped and children with deformities. Around this time, his life changed. He saw a martial arts film with Bruce Lee and that is when he decided to start martial arts training. Because of his hip joints that made him seem clumsy, his family and coaches did not think he would achieve much with his martial arts.

Relationships

Billy met his wife when she was 17 and she had a daughter named Shellie who was two years old from another relationship. Billy was 20 at the time and they decided to get married after dating. Soon after they got married, they had a son and named him Billy Blanks Jr.

It was only when his wife started suspecting that he could be suffering from dyslexia when he was 37 did he discover he was dyslexic. The way she found out that he was dyslexic she asked him to read a sign at the mall and he read it backward. Billy and Gayle got divorced in 2008. He then started dating Tomoko Sato. Tomoko Sato was a Japanese interpreter. After a romantic relationship, they ended up getting married. They had a daughter named Angelika Blanks. She had two children from a previous marriage named Erika Peterson and Marriott Peterson.