Pro wrestling has long welcomed athletes from all walks of life and HBCUs are no different. With the biggest weekend of the year, WrestleMania, on the horizon, here are some former HBCU athletes who have made their mark on the wrestling world.
Michin
Michin (real name Stephanie Hym Lee) is the hardcore queen of the WWE women’s division, using a kendo stick along with her wrestling skills to achieve victory.
Michin started her athletic journey as a volleyball player at Virginia Union. During WWE’s Saturday Night’s Main Event in December, she walked down the ring for her women’s United States championship match. On her way to the ring, she represented the Panthers with a custom-made letterman’s jacket.
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Kayden Carter
Kayden Carter is one-half of the former NXT and WWE women’s tag team champions with Katana Chance, but she was a champion long before she stepped inside the ring.
Born Alyssa Lane, she was a key contributor to Shaw University’s 2012 NCAA Division II women’s basketball national championship team.
“What people don’t understand is the mentality in basketball is the same as in wrestling,” Carter said in an interview with Shaw’s athletics website. “Being able to handle the kind of schedule we played at Shaw prepared me. I’ve never been in a conference (CIAA) that was so aggressive. It was a bad-ass conference. It was tough, you had to be gritty, you had to take hits. That is the kind of stuff you need in wrestling.”
Trick Williams
One of the most popular superstars in WWE’s NXT division, Trick Williams played football at Hampton University during the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
Williams (real name Matrick Belton) caught four passes for 33 yards during the 2012 season and was injured early in 2013. He then transferred to South Carolina and attended Philadelphia Eagles training camp before making the switch to pro wrestling.
Ernest “The Cat” Miller
Somebody call his mama! Before that phrase became his calling card in the ring as a Karate expert with James Brown moves, The Cat was a starting linebacker on the Savannah State football team in the mid-1980s.
Miller became a wrestler after teaching World Championship Wrestling leader Eric Bischoff’s son karate. In its final years, Miller was one of the promotion’s most popular performers.
“The Big Cat,” Ernie Ladd
Eddie Robinson coached some future legends for sure, but possibly none bigger outside of football than the 6’9, 320-pound Ladd, who starred for the San Diego Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs in the American Football League.
Along with Chiefs teammate and fellow Grambling alum Buck Buchanan (6’7, 285 pounds), Ladd was one of the most dominant defensive tackles in pro football before retiring in 1969 to wrestle full-time.
The Big Cat was arguably wrestling’s first Black superstar and one of its greatest heels, riling up audiences in the Mid-South and National Wrestling Alliance territories. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame shortly before his passing in 2007.
The Junkyard Dog
If The Big Cat Ernie Ladd was one of wrestling’s most hated Black wrestlers, then The Junkyard Dog was one of the most beloved.
Before JYD charmed southern wrestling audiences in the early 1980s, he was Sylvester Ritter, an all-CIAA offensive lineman at Fayetteville State, and attended Green Bay Packers training camp before a knee injury ended his NFL dreams.
By 1980, Ritter had been given the name of The Junkyard Dog and strutting the ring with a steel chain around his neck to Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust,” Ritter became one of the most popular wrestlers of his era, including time in the WWE and WCW. Ritter died in an auto accident on his way home from his daughter’s high school graduation in 1998.
He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2004.
