Joseph Hamilton (August 28, 1938 – August 3, 2021) was an American professional wrestler, promoter, and trainer. He was best known as one half of the tag team The Assassins where he was called "Assassin #1". When the Assassins ended, He wrestled as "The Assassin" and "The Flame" both while wearing a mask.

Hamilton teamed up with Tom Renesto in late 1961 to form the masked heel (bad guy) team known as "The Assassins" and, for over a decade, he and Renesto wrestled all over the world with great success. Once Renesto retired, Hamilton kept the Assassins team alive by partnering with wrestlers such as Randy Colley and "Hercules" Hernandez under the trademark gold and black masks of the Assassins.

In the late 1980s, Hamilton founded Deep South Wrestling (DSW), where he also wrestled until a back injury forced him to retire in 1988. After Deep South Wrestling closed, he worked extensively for World Championship Wrestling both on the booking team and later on as a trainer at WCW's Power Plant training facility. In 2005, he reopened Deep South Wrestling, this time as an affiliate of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), to train wrestlers the WWE had signed to developmental contracts. In 2007, WWE abruptly ended their contract with DSW and the promotion suspended operations later in the year.

Hamilton was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri. Before turning professional, he was a promising amateur boxer, but instead of continuing his training, he decided that he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his older brother Larry Hamilton. Larry was a professional wrestler billed as "The Missouri Mauler". Hamilton started working for "Gust Karras Promotions", a professional wrestling promotion based in Kansas City, Missouri, where he made his debut against Rip Hawk in a 40-minute match. By 1957, he had started teaming with his brother Larry and worked as a full-time professional wrestler. The Hamilton Brothers worked for the New York, NY, based Capitol Wrestling, (the precursor to World Wrestling Entertainment), where they were put in a storyline with the top tag team of the promotion Antonino Rocca and Miguel Pérez. In May 1958, the Hamilton Brothers faced Rocca and Pérez in the main event of a Madison Square Garden show making Jody, age 19 at the time, the youngest man to ever co-star in a main event at Madison Square Garden.

After the Hamilton brothers time in New York, Jody Hamilton decided to strike out on his own working as a singles wrestler. As a singles wrestler, he first got a promotional push by NWA Western States booker, Doc Sarpolis, who billed him as "Silent" Joe Hamilton. Hamilton has revealed in recent years that the "Silent" moniker was because he was not very good at interviews and promos. After working in Texas, he worked in Oklahoma and Florida. When he left Florida in 1961 he intended to return to Oklahoma but an offer from Georgia Championship Wrestling (GCW) would change the direction of Hamilton's career.

The original plan for Hamilton was that he was going to wrestle under a mask as "The Iron Russian", but once he got to Atlanta the plans had changed and instead, he became “The Assassin”. After working as a singles competitor Hamilton was given a partner in late 1961, another masked Assassin, Tom Renesto. Renesto had teamed with Hamilton's older brother Larry but the two did not know each other before stepping into the ring in December 1961. The team worked well together from the onset and soon moved up the card towards the main events. For over a dozen years Hamilton and Renesto teamed together as the "vile" Assassins, a team hated for their "rulebreaking ways" wherever they wrestled. The Assassins, or the Masked Assassins as they were sometimes billed, worked all over the world for promotions in Georgia, California, Australia, the Far East, Japan and Canada. The only place the duo did not work as the Assassins was in the Carolinas where they were billed as "The Great Bolo" (Renesto) and "The Mighty Bolo" (Hamilton) because Renesto had worked for Jim Crockett Promotions as The Great Bolo before teaming up with Hamilton, and was more known in that region under the Bolo name.

The Assassins longest stay with one promotion was from 1968 to 1972 where they worked for Georgia Championship Wrestling and held the NWA Georgia Tag Team Championship a record-breaking 12 times. While in Georgia the team worked storylines with teams such as ”the Torres Brothers” (Ramon and Alberto), Terry and Dory Funk and the team of Ray Gunkel and Buddy Fuller. Their most successful and profitable feud came against the team of ”Tiny” Smith and Luke Brown known as "The Kentuckians". The matches between the Assassins and the Kentuckians drew sellout crowds up the east coast of the United States from Florida to the Carolinas. At times the Assassins would be backed up by Jody's brother the Missouri Mauler to take on the Kentuckians and their "fellow hillbilly" Haystacks Calhoun.

During their time in GCW Renesto became more and more involved in the booking of the promotion in the hopes of turning a decline in attendance around. Renesto is credited with turning the territory around with a series of hotly contested angles that brought the fans back. In 1972 after GCW owner Ray Gunkel died Gunkel's widow Ann Gunkel split off from the National Wrestling Alliance associated GCW and started her own company, called "All-South Wrestling", with Tom Renesto as the head booker. With his backstage responsibilities expanded Renesto cut back on his wrestling dates as Hamilton was pushed as a singles wrestler. In October 1972 Renesto unmasked on television, rumor had it that GCW was going to publish pictures of the Assassins without their masks on and Renesto wanted to beat them to the punch. After the unmasking Renesto would still occasionally team with Hamilton both with and without the mask but the glory days of the Assassins ended when Renesto took off the mask.