Black Wrestlers
With February being Black History Month, much is being made of sports' contribution to race relations and civil rights.
There's Jesse Owens winning four gold medals at Hitler's
1936 Olympics, Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier
in Major League Baseball, and the silent protest of the 1968 Olympics by U.S.
sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos.
There's Joe Louis, American hero of the 1940s, and Muhammad Ali, American anti-hero of the 1960s.
There's Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Curt Flood, Arthur Ashe,
Wilma Rudolph, Jack Johnson and many others whose causes
and achievements led to today's desegregated society.
Yet professional wrestling's contributions will go largely unnoticed this month.
It's too bad. Black athletes like Bobo Brazil, Seaman Art Thomas and The Calypso Kid Dory Dixon should not be forgotten.
A year before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and not long
before the race riots that plagued many of the nation's inner cities,
this threesome did something that should have been impossible. They won over
a predominately white crowd that filled the old
Chicago Coliseum.
In a best two-out-of-three falls, six-man tag team match
in the Windy City, the trio of Brazil, Thomas and Dixon fought
Handsome Johnny, Magnificent Maurice and world champion Playboy
Buddy Rogers, three white men.
The fans loved it when Thomas (who had a body similar to today's Goldberg or Lex Luger) flexed his muscles while posing down his three competitors. The audience went wild when Dixon unleashed a series of dropkicks on his foes. They left their seats and cheered wildly when Brazil dropped his famous coco butts on the noggins of the three heels.
Brazil, Thomas and Dixon were so over with the crowd
that the audience nearly stormed the ring and had to be held back
by Chicago's finest when the three dastardly white villains dared cheat their
rivals.
Here were three black men who lived in a
Jim Crow America, guys who surely suffered many indignities in their everyday
lives. But somehow over the course of a 30-minute match, they were heroes to
thousands of white folks.
For three black men to win over a 1963 Chicago crowd took talent, personality and a lot of guts.
While the fans were ahead of the curve, the industry
was slow to recognize and really push its black stars. Men like Ernie Ladd,
Junkyard
Dog, Abdullah the Butcher,
Rocky Johnson, Tony Atlas,
S.D. Jones, Iceman King Parsons and Butch Reed
rarely achieved main-event status and got few title chances.
Ron Simmons (now Faarooq in the WWF) became the first
African-American wrestler to win a major world championship
when he beat Big Van Vader
in Baltimore for the WCW title. That wasn't until Aug. 2, 1992.
Allen J. Coage (formerly Bad News Brown in the WWF) claims
in an Internet interview at www.ChairShots.com
that the "N"
word was thrown around the locker room during his career. He said front-office
politics and backstage bigotry still exist, which holds back black talent.
It's probably true, but it's still better today than ever before.
The Rock
is the biggest star in sports entertainment. Booker
T has held the 10 pounds of gold. D-Von
Dudley is one-half
of this era's best tag team. Faarooq is more popular now than he was when he
was a babyface champion.
These men owe much to the courage of Brazil, Thomas and
Dixon, who proved black wrestlers can thrive in even the
harshest of environments. We're all the better for it.