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The Pioneers: Minerva – The First Women’s World Champion

The Pioneers is a new on-going series looking at some of the earliest pioneers of professional wrestling as we know it, from the wrestlers to promoters to trainers who helped shape professional wrestling around the world.

The early creation of a proper World Heavyweight Championship for men is the stuff of legend. European Heavyweight Champion “The Russian Lion” George Hackenschmidt defeated American Heavyweight Champion Tom Jenkins to unite them under the first World Heavyweight Champion in pro wrestling in 1905 and would go on to take part in wrestling’s first major rivalry, against American Frank Gotch. But very little is ever mentioned of the women’s side of the World Championship. Many people know of early champions, like Mildred Burke and Fabulous Moolah, through the eras that followed, but the woman who started the lineage as the very first Women’s World Champion is a mystery to most people. But that distinction falls on Josephine Blatt, an athlete who, much like her male counterpart Hackenschmit, was also a world-class bodybuilder. She competed in carnivals, sideshows, and halls under the name of Minerva (which was the Roman goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare – the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Athena).

Born in New York City in 1869, Josephine “Josie” Wahlford was soon seduced by the carnival shows that were commonplace across the United States. Her love of bodybuilding led to her joining these circus sideshows as their resident strongwoman. She stood only 5’8″ but weighed around 175 lbs., with a heavily muscled frame that would put her closer to Chyna in stature than her contemporaries. She soon married a circus strongman named “The Professor” Charlie Blatt, who would soon start training his new bride in the art of catch wrestling.

By the 1890s, women’s wrestling had become an attraction nearly as popular as men’s, and an early men’s lifestyle magazine called the National Police Gazette looked to capitalize on this rising trend in pro wrestling. Thus was created the first-ever Women’s World Championship in pro wrestling, and after deliberation, it was Minerva who would be crowned the first-ever champion to wear the belt. She would go on to lose the title to Alice Williams by the end of the year, but it launched a lineage that has ties to both the WWE Women’s Championships, National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) Women’s World Championship and Stardom World of Stardom titles, still being defended today. The Women’s World Championship also holds the distinction of being created prior to the men’s title – it would take the men nearly 15 years to crown their own World Champion in Hackenschmit in 1905. Minerva would continue to wrestle for a few more years, even heading to Mexico to become of the first women to wrestle south of the border.

The title that Minerva first held would find its way around many historical legends, such as Cora Livingstone (who held it an astonishing 15 years from 1910 to 1925), Clara Mortensen, Mildred Burke, and others, until it was won by June Byers in 1953. During Byers’ reign, she would fight Burke to a no-contest and out of the fallout, Byers would be crowned the first NWA Women’s World Champion, while Burke would create her own Women’s World Wrestling Association (WWWA) Championship. Burke’s WWWA title would become the top title for All Japan Women’s Wrestling (AJW) and, following the demise of AJW, would transfer over to Stardom for their World of Stardome title. In 1956, Fabulous Moolah would win the NWA Women’s World Championship, but in 1983 it would become the WWF Women’s Championship following Moolah’s jump to WWF. Debbie Combs would fill the vacancy as the NWA Women’s World Champion in 1986, a title that is still defended today and currently held by Thunder Rosa.

Check out more of our articles on The Pioneers of pro wrestling.

Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.

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