Sputnik Monroe

This week’s column is dedicated to my good friend, Sputnik Monroe, a REAL LIVING LEGEND who is clinging to life in a hospital in Florida as this column is written.

Sputnik made more than an impact in the wrestling business with his first of a kind style that attracted more people to the matches than top entertainers in the music business. He packed cities like Memphis, Little Rock, Nashville and Louisville, and that list could go on and on.

If Rock (his first name) liked you … and he did most people, you were his friend for as long as you wanted. His friendship is as unique as having a trailer hitch on a Rolls-Royce. In plain words, there are no more like Rock in this world, and he would let you know it every time you spoke to him.

When Sputnik Monroe arrived in Memphis in 1957, he immediately ran into trouble with the police. His favorite hang-out was the black neighborhood around Beale Street, and that made him the target for the local cops. In those days, there was a vagrancy law entitled "Mopery and Attempted Gawk." Sputnik could mope and gawk with the best of them.

There were many aspects of Sputnik's persona and character that set him apart from his wrestling peers. Early in his career, he had been hit on the head by a wooden chair. When the wood splinters were removed from his scalp, a patch of white hair grew around the wound.

Sputnik was a mean brawler, and he explained why once. "Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat, and if they take you out, leave tearing down the ring."

Sputnik Monroe's most important contribution to society was the fact that he single-handedly desegregated the wrestling spectator community. Like all wrestlers, Sputnik would seek the approval of the audience once he had destroyed his opponent. Sputnik would perform his victory romp, exhorting praise from the crowd. But, unlike any other white wrestler, Sputnik would not focus his attention on the front rows, nor the women, nor the box seats, nor the predominantly white onlookers. Instead, he would turn to the small black audience, segregated away in the upper rafters of Ellis Auditorium, and it was from them that he received kudos.

Sputnik was a drawing card, and the promoters and wrestling money people knew this. He was able to use his notoriety to exact changes in the wrestling establishment. He recalls, "There used to be a couple of thousand blacks outside wanting in. So I would tell management I'd be leaving the building if they don't let my black friends in. I had the power because I was selling out the place and they wanted the revenue."

The way the business people would limit the black audience was by counting the number of black people allowed entrance into the auditorium, knowing exactly the seating capacity of the "blacks only" section. Sputnik would bribe the employee, who counted black people, to lie to his boss, giving the boss a much lower number of attendees than there actually were. So, when the overseer would demand numbers, the door guy would say something like "thirty" the audience got so big and heavily black that they had to integrate the seating. There's no other single event that integrated the audience other than the wrasslin’ matches and Sputnik paying the guy to lie.

Johnny Dark, a Memphis sportscaster, was then president of the Sputnik Monroe Fan Club. He recounts, "I remember one time Sputnik was wrasslin’ in Louisville. In the dressing room, this little black lady came up to Sputnik, she had tears in her eyes, she said 'You don't remember me, you never met me, but I used to live in Memphis, when they made us sit upstairs in those buzzard seats. You're the one who got them to change that.' That was the first time I saw Sputnik with tears in his eyes."

Sputnik's one-man campaign had ripple effects all across the country, playing with young kids’ minds and messing with the gas that fueled how things ran. "There was a group of wealthy white kids that dug me," Sputnik said, “because I was a rebel. I'm saying what they wanted to say, only they were just too young or inexperienced or afraid to say it.

“You have a black maid raising your kids and she's talking about me all of the time, so I may not be in the front living room, but I'm going in the back door of your house, feeding your kids on weekday mornings and sending them to school, and meeting the bus when they come home. Pretty powerful thing."

Sputnik's influence went way beyond the wrestling ring. He interfered righteously with the city fathers' plans for business-as-usual. In one instance, the black leadership in Memphis was involved in a protest against the segregation of an automobile exhibition. Sputnik called up the sponsors and told them that he was planning to open his own car lot in the black community. That night, the change of admission policy was broadcast on the evening news.

He even went as far as announcing himself as a candidate for sheriff. "People thought prostitution and incest would flourish,” he said. "I could have run for mayor, and made it. I could have blackmailed the city. I could have done anything I wanted. I was general of a little black army."

Sputnik teamed with a midget wrestler (the first such combination of its kind), and it merely added to his quirky reputation. He suffered ups and downs throughout the '60's, and, by 1972, he was back in Memphis, looking for a new image. Sputnik reemerged with his black partner, Norvell Austin, and Norvell had a blond streak in his hair. In one of their first fights together on television, they were wailing away against their battered foes, and, when the other side was finally down for the three-count, Sputnik poured a bucket of black paint over the head of one of the vanquished wrestlers and loudly announced, "Black is beautiful." Norvell then chimed up, "White is beautiful." Then they hugged each other and proclaimed together, "Black and white is beautiful."

Sputnik was so happy that he later told a friend, "They hate me again … I LOVE IT!!!"

I certainly hope that the big matchmaker in Heaven doesn't need another heavy hitter in a battle royal in the sky. I want to be able to enjoy this gallant friend for many more years to come.

If you want to send a card to him to cheer him up, and I am sure that he will appreciate it, his office address is:

Sputnik Monroe Enterprises
800 Mary Street
Edgewater, Fl. 32132

Please keep Rock in your thoughts and prayers.

Percival A. Friend, Retired
The Epitome of Wrestling Managers

2003 BWC Hall of Fame Inductee
2004 CAC Hall of Fame Inductee
2006 LWA Hall of Fame Inductee