On April 21, 2024, at their Dynasty pay-per-view in St. Louis, All Elite Wrestling finally crowned their first Black AEW World Champion when Swerve Strickland defeated Samoa Joe.
Identifying the first Black world champion in the history of World Wrestling Entertainment is more complex. Depending on who you ask, that distinction could be attributed to the Rock in 1998, Booker T in 2006, or Kofi Kingston in 2019. This distinction can be subject to whether you require your first Black WWE champion to be unmistakably Black, i.e. have two Black parents (disqualifying the Rock), or to have won the original WWE Heavyweight Championship (disqualifying Booker T).
There are also Black world title reigns that WWE often acknowledges as firsts, such as Bearcat Wright’s reign with the world title of the Los Angeles-based World Wrestling Associates in 1963, and Ron Simmons’s world title reign in World Championship Wrestling in 1992—the first by a Black pro wrestler in a major national promotion.
All of this highlights the challenges of examining professional wrestling history through Black firsts. The modern world, nuanced understandings of race and ethnicity, and the incomplete documentation of Black pro wrestling history all contribute to the complexity of this endeavor.
Even before the world title reigns of Tiger Flowers and Seelie Samara in Charles Gordon’s small Massachusetts-based wrestling promotion in the 1930s, there was a prominent world wrestling champion of Black ancestry just after the turn of the 20th century. By virtue of this achievement, Clarence Eugene Bouldin may very well be the first legitimate Black world wrestling champion to be recognized as such on North American soil. Bouldin, however, lived in an era that contrasts with our own. He made every effort to conceal his Black identity due to the codified prejudices of the time, both inside and outside of the ring. As such, he was a Black world champion who had been impossible to detect without performing a mountain of investigative work.
When world light heavyweight champion Clarence “The Cuban Wonder” Bouldin made his debut at Perkins Park Rink in Akron, Ohio, in October of 1907, the Akron Beacon Journal credited the Cleveland resident as the attraction whose appearance explained why a surprising number of female fans were inside the venue. “Sprinkled through the audience were no less than a half hundred ladies, it being one of the largest turnouts of the fair sex ever seen here at a wrestling match,” noted the Beacon Journal. “The beautiful symmetry of the Cuban’s body—his wonderfully developed neck, shoulders, and back—caught their eye, and Bouldin had a host of feminine rooters.” It’s unlikely that a sportswriter at that time would have noted the female admiration directed towards a Black man’s physique in public, even if he was the world’s greatest pound-for-pound wrestler. In fact, a similar display in a Southern state could have resulted in Bouldin being lynched.
Of all the cases of retroactively evaluating the significance of a professional wrestler’s career accomplishments, the case of Clarence Bouldin is perhaps the most complex. The complication comes from the concealment—whether intentional or forced—of his racial identity, and what the revelation of his Black ancestry means within the broader context of wrestling history.
The seeds of confusion were first sown on October 7, 1873, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That’s when Clarence was born to Charles Bouldin and Maria Boutlier. Based on the birth location of Bouldin’s confirmed brother, Harvey, it is believed that Bouldin’s family relocated to Missouri early in his childhood.
It’s unknown whether Clarence and Harvey were already in trouble with the law by the end of their teens, but they certainly attracted negative attention in their 20s. The fact that both brothers had at least partial Black ancestry, but were evidently pale enough to pass as white at first glance, puzzled the local authorities, and led to at least one case of mistaken identity.
On April 12, 1898, The Kansas City Journal reported that Harvey Bouldin, described as “a negro of very light complexion,” had been arrested “on suspicion of being the ‘white’ man who assisted Robert Butler, a negro, in holding up W.G. Ennis, a clerk at the Armour Packing Company.” That’s when Clarence attempted to spring Harvey from jail. The Kansas City Times focused its reporting on the older brother, who was subsequently locked up, and disclosed that “Clarence E. Bouldin, a negro,” had been arrested and was in jail as the presumed accomplice of Butler in the holdup.
Bouldin’s racial identity not only appeared in reports of illicit activity, but was also recorded in government documents. In 1900, a U.S. Federal census taker visited Clarence Bouldin’s home in Kansas City, Missouri. Recorded as living there at the time were Bouldin and his wife, Mamie Vaughn, along with Mamie’s mother, Mary, her brother Harry, and two additional boarders.
Unsurprisingly, all six residents of the house were listed on the census as Black. Due to the passage of a strict 1835 Missouri anti-miscegenation law, it would have been illegal for Bouldin and Vaughn to be married if they were not both Black. The reality was that Bouldin may have already left Missouri by the time the census taker reached his legal residence in 1900. Approximately 800 miles away in Cleveland, a waiter named “Clarence Boldin,” who claimed to have been born in Kansas in 1875, was found boarding with nine other residents. He also identified himself as “white.”
If this “Clarence Boldin” in Cleveland was the same Clarence Bouldin of Kansas City, it would be the first in a series of instances in which Clarence Eugene Bouldin reinvented himself after fleeing a state where it was easier to live as a white man, with his light skin and newfound anonymity affording him that option.
Before formally affirming his new white identity, Bouldin underwent a remarkable career change that was covered by the Cleveland Plain Dealer in June of 1901. Wrestling trainer Mark Lamb announced that he had discovered a pupil named Clarence Bouldin. Two months later, Walter C. Kelly of the Buffalo Courier introduced Bouldin to the public as “the Terrible Cuban.” “Having known Mark Lamb for years, and being familiar with his judgement related to wrestlers, the writer is inclined to the belief that this Cuban must be a great timber, and a wrestler of more than ordinary ability,” noted Kelly. Now fully embracing a Cuban identity, Bouldin made a huge splash on the local wrestling scene when he battled former world middleweight champion Ed Atherton. “It was a fierce contest, both trying desperately for the mastery,” reported the Buffalo Courier. “The Cuban was very aggressive, and several times had Atherton in danger.”
After changing his nickname to the more respectable “Cuban Wonder,” Bouldin improved dramatically. After three years in the wrestling business, Bouldin made history of an undetectable sort when he traveled to Minnesota in March of 1904, and The St. Paul Globe identified Bouldin as the “world’s middleweight champion.”
While this label could probably be sufficient to make Bouldin the first Black pro wrestling world champion in the Western world on the technicality that he was certainly of significant Black ancestry, this achievement was hidden beneath the spurious Cuban identity that had been imposed upon him.
Even if Bouldin’s claim to world title status may have been tenuous at the time, he at least looked the part. While papers like The Minneapolis Journal focused on Bouldin’s physique—describing his legs as “ridiculously small as compared with his upper works”—The Globe commented on his unique skin tone, calling him “the boy with the yellow skin.” Shortly thereafter, The Globe published a detailed drawing depicting Bouldin sparring with a partner, differentiating between the two by sketching Bouldin with dramatically darker skin than his opponent.
The Buffalo Enquirer said the Police Gazette called Bouldin “the best man at that weight who has been seen in America in many years,” and Bouldin would prove this point during two noteworthy duels with the most popular American wrestler of the era: Frank Gotch. After successfully capturing the American heavyweight championship earlier in the year, Gotch was focused on securing an authoritative world title match.
Right before facing Bouldin in June of 1904 in a match where Gotch would need to record two falls against Bouldin in one hour, Gotch told The Plain Dealer, “I have never seen Bouldin but once, and have never seen him wrestle, but I think he will have to be an unusually good man for his weight to keep me from throwing him twice in an hour.” Right after facing Bouldin, Gotch didn’t mince words, calling Bouldin “the best man of his weight in the United States.” In their bout, Bouldin was reported to be of equal strength as Gotch, with superior speed, and surrendered only an advantage in size. Gotch was only able to secure a single fall on Bouldin very late in the match, making Bouldin the technical winner of a match with the American heavyweight champion.
Gotch returned to Cleveland to face Bouldin the following December for what was advertised as a world heavyweight title defense, even though Gotch outweighed his opponent by approximately 30 pounds. The attention Bouldin received in the build-up elevated his level of celebrity. One week before the match, The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle tracked down Bouldin while he was at Bible study at a Cleveland YMCA to speak with him. The article mentioned that Bouldin “was born in St. Louis and has never seen Cuba, in spite of his nickname, ‘The Cuban Wonder.’” Bouldin was clearly not born in St. Louis, but the article provided the first public acknowledgment of his prior life in Missouri, and the fact that he was not of true Cuban heritage.
Had the nation known Bouldin’s true identity as a wrestler who was legally Black in most states, it would have made the ending to the meeting between Bouldin and Gotch all the more noteworthy. In the early moments of the bout, the 165-pound Bouldin stunned his esteemed opponent, the referee, and everyone in attendance at Grays Armory by winning the first fall, pinning a champion who had not been pinned once since attaining that prestigious title. Gotch rallied over the following 67 minutes to win two more falls and retain his heavyweight title, but Bouldin’s early-match demolition of his larger opponent had been the true story of the evening.
“This match proved that Bouldin, with a little more weight, say about fifteen pounds, would be in a class by himself,” added The Leader. For what it’s worth, Gotch agreed, and unequivocally stated, “Clarence Bouldin is the greatest wrestler in the world at his weight, and I stand ready to back him against any man in the country at 165 pounds… if he weighed 30 pounds more he would be holding the world’s championship today.”
In June of 1905, just days before a world light heavyweight championship bout between Bouldin and Jim Parr of England, The Sun of New York City published an article about the scarcity of Black wrestlers in the United States. Things took a bizarre turn when Bouldin’s name was mentioned.
“In this country there are very few clever negro wrestlers,” added The Sun. “In fact, there have not been any colored grapplers in America during the past 20 years who have amounted to anything except Claren[ce] Bouldin, who is known as the ‘Cuban Wonder,’ although he is a pure-blooded negro. Bouldin is a pupil of Tom Jenkins and an exceptionally clever man. He knows a lot about wrestling, but finds it difficult to secure matches on account of his color and skill.”
Bouldin’s significant Sub-Saharan African descent hadn’t been hinted at by the press since the beginning of his wrestling career. And given how many offers Bouldin received to wrestle during the prior two years, it hardly seemed like willing challengers were in short supply to any measurable degree, let alone because he was rumored to be Black.
Finally, the notion that Bouldin—a man who had become infamous in Kansas City because of his ability to pass as white—was a “pure-blooded negro” would have been laughable, and was likely responsible for the report gaining no subsequent traction.
Regardless of his Black heritage, Bouldin would very soon have an unquestioned claim to world title status. On June 13, 1905, Bouldin lost two teeth when he was kicked in the face by Parr, but still left the Grays Armory ring as the light heavyweight champion.
Over the next four years, a combination of illness, injury, and inactivity caused Bouldin to fade from the upper echelon of wrestlers of his era, to the point where he was seldom mentioned to any degree after 1910.
With his wrestling career behind him, Clarence Eugene Bouldin returned to a normal life. His 1917 World War I draft registration card revealed that he had taken a job as a shipbuilder with the Ohio Shipbuilding Company. It also confirmed that Bouldin was not Cuban, as he indicated that he was a native-born, non-alien citizen of the United States.
Additionally, the registration card showed that Bouldin had fully embraced his identity as a white man, selecting that box instead of the box marked “Negro.” Staying true to form, at 52, Clarence Bouldin lied on yet another marriage record, pretending to be five years younger than his true age, possibly to minimize the three-decade age gap between himself and his new 22-year-old white wife, Lucy Lamotke. Despite this, he accurately stated that he was born in New Mexico, and noted his previous marriage on the Ohio marriage certificate.
Decades removed from his wrestling career, The Minneapolis Star Tribune very casually reported in February of 1932 that Clarence Bouldin, “a Cleveland Negro who wrestled under the monicker ‘The Cuban Wonder,’” had joined the Cleveland police department. The paper credited Bouldin with being “exceedingly fast and clever, assets, which with his great strength, made him a match for most of the heavyweights of his time.”
This remarkably true revelation remained isolated to the Minneapolis region, and it’s quite unlikely that the Cleveland police department had any idea that it had delegated a “Cleveland Negro” with police powers.
Bouldin lived to the ripe old age of 93 years and 11 months, with the physician certifying him as white on his death certificate in September of 1967. The Plain Dealer generously declared that Bouldin had been the “middleweight wrestling champion of the world from 1900 to 1912.”
Not included in the reports of Bouldin’s death were two of his greatest accomplishments. First, that he had lived the first 27 years of his life as Black, only to live the remaining 66 as white. Second, that according to the race laws of his era, Bouldin had probably been pro wrestling’s first Black world champion.
This article is taken from an excerpt from Ian Douglass’s forthcoming book, to be released in summer of 2025.
