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I’ve loved reading the threads I’ve seen collecting black poets, writers, activists, and artists. In that vein, here’s a non-exhaustive thread of important and influential black people in pro wrestling.
In his book Ringside, historian Scott Beekman says that wrestling’s popularity grew in part as an alternative to boxing when those fans rejected Jack Johnson as the black boxing world champion. One of many reasons pro wrestling is bound to conversations about race.
The Big Cat Ernie Ladd played in the AFL and helped organize a walkout protesting racism in 1965. He started wrestling during the off-season as a babyface in the 60s and went full time as a heel in the 70s. One of the all time greats regardless of race.
Many recognize Ron Simmons as the first black world champion in pro wrestling. He won the WCW title in 1992. He later led the Nation of Domination (a gimmick resembling the Black Panthers) under the name Faarooq Asad in WWF, which led to the rise of the Rock.
Everyone knows the Rock. He’s held the WWE championship many times in the late 90s-mid2000s and again in 2013. Some call Rock the first “post-racial” wrestler, but that kind of erases his heritage as Samoan and African American.
Soul Man Rocky Johnson was from Ontario. He teamed with Tony Atlas to form the Soul Patrol. In 1983, they became tag team champs, the first black men to hold a WWF title. He is also the Rock’s father.
Tony Atlas was one of the most popular African American wrestlers in the 80s. As the Soul Patrol, he and Rocky Johnson were the first black men to hold a WWF championship. A bodybuilder, he was a 3x Mr. USA and people called him Black Superman.
Bearcat Wright is believed to actually be the first black world heavyweight wrestling champion after winning in Indiana in 1961. He also won the WWA title in LA from Classy Freddie Blassie in 1963, just 5 days before MLK’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
Bobo Brazil was one of the most over black wrestlers of his time. He won the National Wrestling Alliance world championship from Buddy Rogers in 1962 but refused it because Rogers claimed he was injured at the time. Brazil lost the rematch and was never recognized as champ.
R-Truth is mostly known for his comedy wrestling in WWE now, but Ron ‘the Truth’ Killings is the first (and only) African American wrestler to be recognized as NWA world champion in the title’s 54+ year history. He won it in 2002 and held the title twice.
Another contemporary of Brazil and Bearcat Wright was Shag Thomas, who was tag team champ in Portland and NWA Pacific Northwest Champ twice. The Portland Territory didn’t segregate wrestlers in the 50s-60s.
Sweet Daddy Siki was flamboyant and blonde. He faced Buddy Rogers in the late 50s in what is thought to be the 1st integrated match for a world title, a match that drew Klan protests. Also, Siki’s wife was white, which negatively affected his pay and his booking.
Dark Journey got her start in the 80s as a valet, a black woman escorting Dick Slater (a white man) to the ring in the South. One of the few African American women working in wrestling at the time.
Dusty Rhodes is widely hailed as one of the bedt wrestling talkers of all time, but he was greatly influenced by Thunderbolt Patterson, who was blacklisted in the 70s in part for complaints about racism in wrestling and for trying to form a wrestlers union.
Kamala the Ugandan Giant was billed as a cannibal from Africa and main evented all over the USA. Although he was a great performer and big draw everywhere he worked, Kamala remains an example of the way African Americans (and other POC) have often been caricatured in wrestling.
American hardcore wrestling owes its bloody existence as much to Abdullah the Butcher as anyone. The Sudanese wild man (from Ontario, really) was known for excessively bloody matches and stabbing his opponents in the forehead with a fork.
Koko B. Ware was always a midcard wrestler but he was also a fan favorite. He never held a world title, but most great black wrestlers never did. The birdman was flamboyant and known for carrying a parrot to the ring.
Kofi Kingston is from Ghana but began his career being billed from Jamaica. When he won the WWE title in 2019, he was the first black man to hold that title since the Rock in 2013. They are the only 2 black men to ever carry WWE’s main championship in its 56 year history.
Big E is a national powerlifting champion. Xavier Woods has Ph.D. in educational psychology. With Kofi Kingston, they are the New Day, one of the most successful African American factions ever in pro wrestling.
Junkyard Dog was easily the most popular African American wrestler of the 80s, best known for wrestling in the Mid-South territory and WWF. Notably, JYD also found success in a tag team with Captain Redneck Dick Murdoch, who was rumored to be a member of the KKK.
Already a decorated wrestler when he arrived in WWF, Hacksaw Butch Reed became ‘the Natural’ Butch Reed in WWF and was the first to be eliminated in the first ever Royal Rumble. He also wrestled under a mask as 1/2 of DOOM with Ron Simmons in WCW, but everyone knew who they were.
Sasha Banks of WWE’s 4 Horsewomen was a vital part of the company’s “women’s revolution.” Her work on NXT from 2012-15 helped solidify the viability of women’s wrestling on television in the modern age. She is also Snoop Dogg’s cousin.
TNA Impact wrestling arose in the mid-2000s in great part due to the women in its Knockouts division, which owes so much to Awsome Kong, a monster heel at a time when female wrestlers were almost exclusively slim and model-like. She also plays Welfare Queen on Netflix’s GLOW.
Bad News Brown bronze medaled in Judo at the 1976 Olympics and wrestled as a top heel in the WWF. He once stopped a tour bus after hearing André the Giant throwing aroind the N-word. He challenged André to fight him but André refused to get off the bus and later apologized.
Jazz is a 2-time WWF Women’s champ and was important to the surge in competitive women’s wrestling matches (along with Molly Holly, Trish Stratus, Victoria, and others) during the early 2000s in WWF. She also held the NWA Women’s Championship for 948 days.
As a member of the Harlem Heat With his brother, Stevie Ray is a ten-time WCW World Tag Team Champion.
Booker T is one of the most decorated African American wrestlers ever, including 17 World Tag Titles & 6 World Heavyweight Titles. A commentator for WWE, he runs the Reality of Wrestling Promotion in Houston.
I’ve left out a lot of wrestlers of course. I’ll add more here later when I have time. African Americans have contributed lots to pro wrestling, which remains a generally white industry with a white audience in mind. I figured why not take a moment to try to recognize this.
Ahmed Johnson won the WWF Intercontinental championship in 1996, the first African American to hold the title since its introduction in 1979 and the first African American to ever hold a singles title in the WWF.
Freight Train Jones, or Rufus R. Jones, made his name in Missouri in the 70s and 80s, for the most part, winning the Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Championship as well as a number of other secondary and tag team titles.
Freight Train Jones’ son worked as Slick, the Doctor of Style, maybe best known for managing the controversial Akeem the African Dream, who was obviously the One Man Gang repackaged as a towering white man dressed in African garb who talked in AAVE.
As a member of the Dudley Boyz, D-Von Dudley has been World Tag Team Champion 23 times across multiple promotions. Bubba was white, D-Von was black. They were billed as brothers and the only people who questioned this were people who weren’t wrestling fans.
Mark Henry debuted in WWF in 1996. He is the World’s Strongest Man, a 2-time Olympian, and champion power lifter. He endured a lot of bad gimmicks, most notably ‘Sexual Chocolate,’ before he finally won the World Championship in 2011.
Montel Vontavious Porter (MVP) worked a spoiled rich athlete gimmick. He was in prison when on of the guards got him interested in wrestling and started training with him when he got out. He has held many titles across multiple promotions in the U.S. and in Japan.
Viro Small was a former slave who became a boxer and wrestler after the Civil War. He’s believed by many to be the first black man to wrestle professionally. He might have also been the first black champion in the U.S., but that history is sketchy. They called him Black Sam.
When wrestling was segregated, some territories made “Negro World Championships” for black wrestlers to compete for: Reginald Siki, Jack Claybourne, Tiger Conway and others—some of them worked in the South in what was called “the chitterling circuit.”
Some black wrestlers during this time did get to wrestle in unsegregated matches. Luther Lindsay, for example wrestled champion Lou Thesz a lot. Lindsay ended up dying of a heart attack in the ring just as he pinned his opponent to end the match.
Woody Strode was Native American and black, He was one of the 1st black men to play in the NFL and later a successful movie actor. He wrestled in the 50s & 60s. Killer Kowalski used to sneak him into white-only hotels and bring him food from white-only restaurants.
Jacqueline Moore was the first USWA Women’s Champion in 1992 and became the first African American woman to hold the WWF Women’s Championship in 1998. She became the first woman to be included in the PWI top 500 wrestlers in 1993.
Cynthia Perretti worked as Princess Jasmine in the 70s and 80s and also was a trainer for the women on the original Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling TV show in the mid-80s.
Charles Wright has played a lot of roles in wrestling: Papa Shango, Kama Mustafa, Soultaker—but he’s probably best known for being the Godfather, a pimp character who was escorted to the ring by a line of young women he called his “ho train.”
When Cryme Time appeared in WWE, Shad Gaspard and JTG played street hoodlums, another example of the way pro wrestling often defaults to stereotypes when it comes to people of color.
Jay Lethal was probably best known for his Black Machismo character in TNA Impact Wrestling. Then he jumped ship to Ring of Honor where he’s gone from being a mid-card wrestler to a main eventer who has held the world title twice and the longest reigning TV champion in ROH.
Shelton Benjamin is a 2x All American and a NCAA champion in wrestling. He debuted in WWE in 2002 with Charlie Haas as part of the World’s Greatest Tag Team. He is an 8 time tag team champion and a former United States and Intercontinental Champion.
You don’t have to be champ to be important. Special Delivery Jones was best known for making other wrestlers look good. He was beaten by King Kong Bundy in 9 seconds at WrestleMania 1. Think of guys like Jones less as losers and more like vital supporting cast.
Maven joined WWF as the 1st co-winner of the reality competition Tough Enough. He was a 3x Hardcore Champion but WWF failed to push him beyond that, which kind of doomed almost every Tough Enough winner after that.
WrestleMania 1 featured all-time greats like Piper, Orndorff, and Hogan, but let’s be real: it was the involvement of Mr. T that brought mainstream attention to the event.
Some might be quick to dismiss Brandi Rhodes as just Cody’s wife, but in addition to being an onscreen performer, she works as Chief Brand Officer for All Elite Wrestling, one of the biggest and fastest growing wrestling companies in the country.
D’Lo Brown mostly worked the midcard in WWF and elsewhere. He is one of only four WWF Eurocontinental champions ever—that is, he held the Intercontinental and European titles at the same time.
As a heel manager, Teddy Long introduced Rodney Mack and the White Boy Challenge, daring white wrestlers to face Mack in the ring, until Goldberg finally squashed him. Long is best known for his role as onscreen general manager of Smackdown between 2004 and 2012, playa.
A decorated amateur wrestler and champion in both TNA and WWE, Bobby Lashley might be best known for representing Donald Trump against Umaga, who represented Vince McMahon at WrestleMania 23. At stake: McMahon’s hair.
Pistol Pez Whatley wrestled in the 80s and 90s for the NWA and WCW. He changed his name to Shaska Whatley and feuded with Jimmy Valiant over an unintentional racial insult. Whatley wanted to be called Shaka Whatley but thought it was too similar to Chaka Khan.
The Boogeyman terrorized WWE in the mid to late 2000s with his worm eating gimmick. He was known for smashing a clock on his head and stuffing his defeated opponents’ mouths with handfuls of worms.
Men on a Mission debuted in 1993, a babyface group who wanted to bring positive changes to inner city neighborhoods. They were Mabel and Mo, and their rapping manager Oscar.
Mabel was the breakout star of MOM. He won King of the Ring in 1995, and later served in the Undertaker’s Ministry of Darkness under the name Viscera. Much later, he became Viscera, the World’s Largest Love Machine, and then was again renamed Big Daddy V.
Norvell Austin worked mostly in the south as a tag team wrestler, famously with Sputnik Monroe as heels, but also teamed with Koko B. Ware as the Pretty Young Things, and was a member of the Midnight Express.
Ray Candy wrestled in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Japan, and was also known as Blackstud Williams, Super Mario Man, Commando Ray, Masked Superfly, and Kareem Muhammad. He trained wrestlers like Kane and New Jack.
New Jack was a hardcore wrestler notorious for taking reckless bumps and for legit assaulting wrestlers (including a stabbing) in the ring. New Jack was also known for bringing a staple gun to the ring.
