PWP Nation’s Bruce Hart talks about WWE’s lack of African-American World Heavyweight Champions and wonders why that is…
Greetings.
As you may know, this month is Black (or African-American) History month. You may have noticed that the WWE has taken the opportunity to pay homage on RAW and SmackDown to iconic black wrestlers including the likes of Sweet Daddy Siki, Luther Lindsay, Sonny King, Abdullah the Butcher and Bearcat Wright, among others, who were the groundbreaking Jackie Robinsons’ of their day.
Many of those superlative performers, I’m proud to relate, were champions and mainstays up here in Calgary for my father’s Stampede Wrestling promotion, but, somewhat ironically, never set foot in the WWE, the WWF or the WWWF, as it used to be called.
I commend the powers that be in the WWE for choosing to honor those legendary pioneers and to acknowledge the contribution that they made, but at the same time I find myself questioning the sincerity of such an initiative when one considers that in its long and supposedly glorious history, the WWE (or WWF), with the exception of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (who’s only half black), has never had a black world champions ever. Correct me if I’m wrong, current WWE personality Booker T, as you likely know, touts himself as “five times” world champion, it should be noted that he was a multiple world champion in the WCW, not the WWE, which I’ll leave you to form your own conclusions from.
Aside from the conspicuous dearth of black world champions in the WWE, if you also look back on the history of the WWE/WWF since its inception in the 1960’s, there have been a number of what you might call “iconic” superstars over that stretch, including the likes of Bruno Sammartino, Bob Backlund, Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Ultimate Warrior, my brother Bret, Shawn Michaels, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, the Undertaker, the Rock, John Cena and Daniel Bryan, all of whom were the “face of the franchise” types during their heyday. I honestly can’t recall any blacks whom you might put in that category though, can you?
As most of you are well aware, racial discrimination, exclusion and whatnot has been a blight on America for centuries and it’s been a long, painful uphill struggle to overcome the inequality and injustice. It wasn’t until well into the 20th century that, through the courage, sacrifice and unwavering vigilance of crusaders like Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Berry Gordy, Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Thurgood Marshall and, more recently, trailblazers like Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey that significant reform in everyday life, not to mention the arts and sports have evolved.
It was nearly seventy years ago (1947) that Jackie Robinson broke the so called color barrier in major league baseball and since that time there have been numerous superlative black stars, such as Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Bob Gibson, Reggie Jackson, Derek Jeter and David Ortiz, among others that have raised the bar.
Other major sports, such as boxing, football and basketball have not only come to be integrated by black athletes, but those superlative athletes have come to revolutionize and dominate those sports. Even the NHL has seen the emergence of black superstars such as Jarome Iginla, P. K. Subban and Grant Fuhr – all of which is commendable and reinforces the positive influence sport can have upon our society.
Having said that, it pains me to point out that our sport – professional wrestling, continues to drag its feet in this important regard. Not only, as I already noted, have there been exceedingly few black world’s champions in the WWE, but before that, other major wrestling organizations such as the National Wrestling Alliance and the old AWA, also had no black champions either, which certainly doesn’t reflect well on any of them.
I might note that my father – who launched his legendary Stampede Wrestling promotion back in the late 1940’s and would run it for nearly fifty years, was one of the first major promotions to have black champions, including a myriad of awesome performers such as Luther Lindsay, Woody Strode, Bearcat Wright, Sweet Daddy Siki, Abdullah the Butcher, Sylvester Ritter, Jimmy Banks, Bad News Allen and Larry Cameron, all of whom were champions and mainstays up here, but most of whom couldn’t even find work in the States, even though they were Americans.
Aside from the aforementioned dearth of black world champions, even more egregious, as far as I’m concerned has been the demeaning stereotyping of blacks in the WWE over the years, including the distinctly unflattering manifestations of types like: the Godfather, Slick, Virgil, the Boogeyman and Sapphire.
Even today, I’m appalled at the implications of the New Day – which smacks of some seedy caricature from back in the Amos and Andy era. I’d venture to say that if anything alone those lines was being perpetrated in other mainstream genres today, it would be met with with public outcry and condemnation.
While Hollywood and tother mainstream media and entertainment entities, to their credit or perhaps because of public outcry, have done away with archaic and offensive characters such as Stepin Fetchit, Butterfly McQueen and so-called Uncle Tom typecasts, our sport continues to lag behind in this regard, which is nothing to be proud of.
Since February is Black history month, I’d like to throw down the gauntlet to the powers that be in the WWE to not merely pay sanctimonious lip service to the cause, but to deliver on some long overdue reform. Actions, as they say, tend to speak a hell of a lot louder than words.
On that note, I’ll call it a wrap. Look forward to catching up with you next time.
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