J.R.'s Family Bar-B-Q

Greetings friends and neighbors from under the black, 200X Resistol hat from Norman, Okla., the home of J.R.'s Family Bar-B-Q Restaurant while we count down the days until the huge, three-hour Monday Night Raw, which starts in Milwaukee one hour earlier on USA Network and will be a loaded and live WrestleMania-themed telecast.

This week’s Raw Superstar of the Week wasn’t even in Indianapolis in person Monday night, but I could never forgive myself if I did not name 2008 WWE Hall of Fame inductee Mae Young as this week’s honoree. Johnnie Mae is a native Oklahoman, born in the Tulsa suburb of Sand Springs on March 12, 1923. Wednesday will be Mae’s 85th birthday and would have been my late father’s 77th birthday. This former Okie, who also starred on the softball field and stood toe-to-toe in fist fights with many young men in her day, debuted in wrestling in 1939, two years before the start of World War II.

It is a true story that I have told that Mae was wrestling in Memphis on Dec. 7, 1941 when she heard Pearl Harbor had been bombed.As WWE Hall of Famer Freddie Blassie once said, “Mae Young could whip 60 percent of the men in the wrestling business in her prime” and the incomparable Classy Freddie wasn’t exaggerating.My hat is off to the native of my home state, who traveled thousands of miles by car during her career to earn a living beating the hell out of her peers.

Read the rest of J.R.'s column at WWE.com »