Jack Claybourne Wrestles Billy Wolfe

On Friday, January 22, 1932, Jack Claybourne, one of the first nationally known African American professional wrestlers, wrestled Billy Wolfe at the Athletic Hall in Moberly, Missouri. 36-year-old Billy Wolfe started wrestling professionally in 1922.

Claybourne and Wolfe main evented the card. In the opening match, Wolfe’s second wife, Barbara Ware, wrestled Ruth Case of Kirksville, Missouri. Ware won the match in three minutes.

In the second match on the card, Jackie Ross defeated Andy Dills in seven minutes. Both Ross and Dills lived in Moberly. Dills replaced Petey Hatfield, a Kansas City wrestler, who sent a telegram saying Hatfield was too ill to travel.

In the main event, Claybourne wrestled Wolfe. Claybourne, a wrestler just starting out in the business, put Wolfe over in this match. Promoters billed Wolfe, who was born in Daviess County, Missouri on July 4, 1896, from Kansas City, Missouri. Wolfe wrestled out of Kansas City in 1932.

Promoters billed Jack Claybourne, born Elmer Clayborn in Mexico, Missouri on March 8, 1910, by his real name of Elmer Clayborn but billed Clayborne from Kansas City, Kansas. 21-year-old Clayborne still lived in Mexico, Missouri. Within a couple of months, Elmer Clayborn started wrestling as Jack Clayborne, the name he used for most of his professional career.

Reporters covering the match concluded Clayborne was the stronger wrestler, but Wolfe’s skill and experience were too much for Clayborne. Wolfe won the first fall after a tremendous struggle in twenty-nine minutes.

The second fall went even longer as it took thirty-nine minutes for Wolfe to apply an armlock and body split to force Clayborne to give up for the second fall. Wolfe won the best two-out-of-three-falls match in two straight falls.

Barbara Ware wrestling on the card shows that Billy Wolfe was already training and managing the lady wrestlers. It was in this role that Billy Wolfe became one of the all-time villains of professional wrestling. Wolfe sexually harassed his women wrestlers, encouraged sexual harassment of his students by promoters and wrestlers, and mistreated his third wife and women’s champion Mildred Burke.

Billy Wolfe shocked his wrestling colleagues when he had a fatal heart attack in Virginia on March 7, 1963. For years, people in the wrestling business questioned if Wolfe had a heart. Wolfe lived for many years in Columbus, Ohio and was buried there after his sudden death.

Jack Claybourne died three years earlier, when he took his life in Los Angeles, California. Despondent that he was having difficulty finding wrestling bookings at 49-years-old, Claybourne fell into a deep depression.

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Sources: Moberly Monitor-Index and Moberly Evening Democrat (Moberly, MO) January 23, 1932, p. 5