20 Pro Wrestling Firsts You Need To Know

15. First African-American World Champion

Wrestling Bladejob
WWE.com

In 1992, Ron Simmons won a raffle and went on to defeat Big Van Vader to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. In doing so, Simmons became the first recognised African-American World Champion, some 87 years after the first World Champion of the sport was crowned.

The key word there is 'recognised' however, as 30 years before Simmons won the strap Bobo Brazil defeated 'Nature Boy' Buddy Rogers to become the NWA World Heavyweight Champion. Bobo refused the title however, on account of Rogers claiming to have been suffering from a groin injury.

Doctors found that there was nothing wrong with Rogers however, but Brazil's title reign wasn't ratified by the NWA. Rogers' reign continued, until he was defeated by Lou Thesz in 1963. A number of promotions didn't recognise this, and as such broke away from the NWA. Thus, the WWWF was born.

It would be another 29 years before there was an African-American World Heavyweight Champion.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.