Wrestler Rock "Sputnik" Monroe was at the pinnacle of Memphis wrestling 40 years ago when his swagger and larger-than-life personality sold out local arenas. He's remembered more today as a social ...

Sputnik Monroe, a wrestler in Tennessee during the Jim Crow era, advanced civil rights Real heroes dominate history’s main pages. Most of us live our lives in the margins.

People of a certain age who grew up in Memphis know all too well about Sputnik Monroe, the professional wrestler who used the power of celebrity and popular culture to move the racial equality ...

Sputnik was fast becoming a draw card and the promoters and wrestling money people knew this. He was able to use his notoriety to exact changes in the wrestling establishment.

Sputnik Monroe was a tough-talking white grappler who toured the South. He was a wrestling villain for his outlandish antics such as an in-ring strut and boastful interviews. But his push to have ...

According to Sputnik's Memphis-born son, chip-off-the-old turnbuckle Quentin Brumbaugh, better known as professional wrestler "Bubba Monroe, the Cajun Brawler," the "mixed race" team of Monroe-and ...

Sputnik Monroe, who died on Nov. 3, 2006, at the age of 78 following a long battle with respiratory illness, was a character the likes of which professional wrestling will ...

NPR's Tom Goldman profiles retired wrestler Rock "Sputnik" Monroe. Monroe was at the pinnacle of Memphis wrestling 40 years ago when his swagger and larger-than-life personality sold out local arenas.

Let's ring that bell and see how much you know about Memphis wrestling from Sputnik Monroe to Jerry Lawler to The Rock.

Memphis. 1959. A city in flux. A city at the nexus of a cultural revolution. Racial segregation has a stranglehold on the deep South and tensions run high. Yet, change permeates the air in the ...

4. After many years at the Auditorium in Downtown Memphis, professional wrestling made its debut at the Mid-South Coliseum on June 7, 1971, where it would be a regular event for the next 20 years.

But Sputnik didn’t care,” said Lawler, who has a framed newspaper article about Monroe’s case hanging on the wall of his wrestling-themed bar and grill in Memphis. “He bucked the system.” ...