WWE Hall of Famer Mae Young isnt with us anymore, but she holds a place in history as a pioneering presence in the wrestling business. At the age of fifteen, Johnnie Mae Young broke down boundaries by competing on her high school boys wrestling team. Her older brother had also been on the team, and had coached her from a young age. She always claimed to have had her first professional match in August 1939 at the age of sixteen, but wrestling historians suspect that she may have bumped the date back by a couple of years. However, records being as sparse as they are, let's take her at her word. Young has said that when Mildred Burke, the Women's Champion, came to Tulsa to wrestle Gladys 'Kill 'em' Gillem, she challenged Burke to an impromptu match. Promoter Billy Wolfe told her flat out that a high school kid wasn't going to wrestle the champion, but brought Gillem and another female wrestler, Elvira Snodgrass, to Young's school the next day. Young shot on each woman in turn, beating them both in seconds, and that was that: Wolfe began training her to be a professional wrestler. Two years later she was with Burke when the two opened up the Canadian territories for female wrestling, working with Stu Hart and others. Shed go on to become the first ever NWA United States Womens Champion. That kind of moxie was the way Johnnie Mae Young lived her entire life, since she was a formidable teenager with something to prove, and thats why she's considered to be one of the foremost influences on women's wrestling.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
