Plague of Strength

The following is just what I whipped up for Instagram and didn’t lose- I managed to uncover a bunch of interesting shit from a book about black firefighters but accidentally deleted it and a bunch of other work in trying to figure out how the fuck to spell Vasiley Alexeev’s name. It is a long a stupid story that basically is summed up with I need to copy rather than cut when writing going forward (I use the notepad extension in Chrome an insane amount in writing and it lacks an undo function). In any event, this is essentially a placeholder for a much lengthier and more badass full article at some point in the future. I’d transcribed three pages out of a book on black firefighters on Williams, but they were lost to my inability to spell Russian names, the entire blame for which falls on the Russians and the 10000 spellings they allow for each name.

Though he never held official titles, the first black officer in the NYFD (New York Fire Department) was also widely considered to have been the best built man in America and arguably the strongest man on Earth in the first quarter of the 20th century.  Known in that era as “Negro Hercules,” Wesley Williams (1897-1984) stood 5’9″ and 190 ultra-lean pounds that he used to press 200 overhead with one hand and to clean and jerk 350lbs regularly in the Harlem YMCA… at a time when the record was 250lbs. When he wasn’t banging weights at the Harlem YMCA, playing sports ranging from basketball to ice skating, learning catch wrestling, or boxing with any one of the four Hall of Fame boxers with whom he regularly sparred, Wesley Williams was reading voraciously, so as to make himself so unassailably superior to everyone around him that whites couldn’t even begin to deny him equality.

Though no onw would argue that Wesley Williams was not a man who busted his ass, it wasn’t as though he started out at an absolute zero from an education or a physical training standpoint.

• Wesley’s dad was a major historical figure himself- James Wesley, head of the Red Caps of Grand Central Station. The Red Caps were the porters for the largest railroad terminus in the United States, and James Wesley ran the entire thing, when meant he was friends with everyone from minor mob bosses to members of the White House (Teddy Roosevelt actually wrote Wesley’s letter of recommendation for the FDNY). There’s book on the elder Williams’ life if you’re inclined to read it, entitled Boss of the Grips.
• Wesley was trained by a man named Charles Ramsay, who was a physician from the Caribbean who’d moved to the US and become a catch wrestler before settling down in NYC. Ramsay was a pupil of the father of physical culture, hypervert vegetarian weirdo extraordinaire Bernarr Macfadden, and he began training Wesley when Wesley was 12. A neighbor of Williams’ aunt, he gave the tween some tips for training for a roller skating race and became his trainer after Williams won that race.
• His first job out of trade school was as a “sand hog”, a horrendously dangerous and physically strenuous job in which men would go into the barely-lit tunnels being dug underneath New York City to build their subway system and clean earth moved by the drills being used to clear the shafts. It was here that Williams built the basis for his legendary physique, using a pickaxe and shovel instead of barbells and dumbbells.

So this brick shithouse of a man, rocking a literal magazine-cover body and a brain jammed full of books, became one of only two people to have ever scored a perfect on the physical exam for the FDNY and scored 37th out of 2700 candidates in the written test. And Preparation H must have been sold out in NYC in 1918, because when Wesley Williams showed up for work there were a gang of hurt butts in the firehouse. Dudes acted like shitheads to him, refused to speak to him unless he’d sleep in the basement with the dogs, and once abandoned him in a backdraft to fight a fire single handed (and with zero help controlling the hose) and ultimately diet. Not only did he live, however- he put that motherfucker out.

The four HOF fighters with whom Wesley lifted and boxed at the “Colored Men’s” YMCA on 53rd St in Harlem were:

• “the greatest fighter nobody knows” Sam Langford (1886-1956), a bulldog of a fighter standing 5′ 6″ and weighing 185 lbs. He’s considered the greatest fighter never to win a title, and is described as having the power of Tyson with the evasiveness of Toney… plus he’s credited with an INSANE 126 KOs in 211 victories;

• Kid Norfolk (1893-1968), the toughest man the first black heavyweight champ Jack Johnson ever fought. Kid Norfolk fought at between 165 and 185 but stood 5’8″, making him a man who probably would have been the greatest deathmatch opponent you could think of for Jake LaMotta if they’d lived in the same era.

• Joe Jeanette was a taller version of Langford (5’10” 190lbs) and credited his style to his lifting and sparring partner, though his 119 wins and 69 KOs were his own.

• Panama Al Brown, who is widely considered one of the greatest bantamweight boxers of all time.  When you’re done laughing at the thought of being punched by a man who was 5’11” and weighed between 108 and 120 pounds, you might consider the fact that no matter what your weight you wouldn’t expect him to hit you from the distance he would, because this dude was like a real life Dhalsim with a 76″ reach (Mike Tyson’s is 71″).  As such, he pulled off one of the KOs in history by smashing his opponent’s jaw into fractured rubble in 15 seconds on his way to a 131-20-12 with 55KOs (Marvin Hagler only has 52). He was especially notable in this bunch because:
  • he was an openly gay black man in 20th Century America, which would be like being an openly sexually active child NAMBLA member who had a particular taste for kids with Down’s syndrome in modern society. Not only that, but in Paris he was the open lover of a rich white man, the extravagantly gay French poet Jean Cocteau
  • Being 5’11” allowed Williams to train to fight opponents with much longer reach, which was essential in the fire department. The fire department at that time settled all disputes with a fistfight in the basement, and those were obligatory events that happened nearly daily to Williams at first. After he trashed the first couple men, the firefighters began sending in outsized ringers from Central Europe (their department was all Italians and Irish) who were expected to mangle the much smaller Williams. It was almost certainly Brown who Williams had to thank for that, because that man could hit with his fists what most people could only hit by throwing something at it, was often really outsized by his opponents, so sparring with Panama Al probably prepared him to face some of his bigger opponents in Czech and other Central European firemen who thought they could beat interest in the New York Fire Department out of Williams.
  • As you can imagine, Brown ran into a few issues in the US, being black, gay, and foreign in the United States, so he moved to Paris. His initial draws were huge as he punched like Deonte Wilder and moved like Ali, but things soon turned to shit as fans from the fight game encountered his fans from the cabaret game, who knew him as a sax-playing crooner who dressed like the love child of James Brown and Lady Gaga.  Where Al Brown had boasted of Hemmingway and Picasso in his early audiences, the cheers soon turned to jeers as people seem to always default to shittiness.  Before he left Paris, however, he gave away aBugatti…just because. In the end, the man died badly of TB as the French were raising funds to return the former champ to France after hearing he was essentially homeless and working as a punching bag/sparring partner for a dollar a day.

The Harlem Y was essentially the boxing predecessor to The Gym in Plymouth Minnesota, which in one fell swoop produced the following wrestlers, most of whom worked, lifted, and trained for wrestling together.

• Curt “Mr. Perfect” Hennig, who tipped the scales at about 260 at a height of 6’3″;
• “Ravishing” Rick Rude at 6’3″ and a shredded 230-250lbs, benched 405×3
• 6’2″ and 230lb Tom Zenk, who’s best known as Rick Martel’s bodybuilder tag team partner;
• little-known 5’10” and 200lb Dean “Battle Kat/Brady Boon” Peters;
• the monstrous “The Berzerker” John Nord, who stood 6’8″ 323lbs in his prime, making him roughly the same size as Hafthor;
• a man who learned Russian and changed his name IRL to Nikita Koloff, who at 6’2″ and 275lbs was more muscular than Hogan at his biggest and was an avowed bodybuilder.  He still benched 405 and squatted 550, however.
• a sloppy but vaguely muscular, 6’2″ 292 pound “Demolition Smash” Barry Darsow, who’s name is on the plaque for a 500lb bench alongside Animal’s in 
• 6’3″ 360lb Scott Norton, who had a 650 bench in his prime, in addition to being a champion arm wrestler and bodygard to Prince
• and of course the Road Warriors, Hawk and Animal, who stood 6’3″ 275 and 6’1″ 285lbs and had benches of 515 and 550, respectively. Animal’s bench was done with a skull fracture, a fractured cheek bone, a broken nose, and a broken orbital rim, by the way.  His best in the gym was 600 on gear and 500 off, if anyone cares about that sort of thing.

Instead of getting out of the game, Wesley Williams climbed up and by 1927 Wesley Williams was a lieutenant, and in 1954 he retired as a battalion chief (the lowest ring of the highest command in firefighting). And as a final fuck you, Wesley Williams stayed jacked even into his 80s, promoting strength training and fitness among all of the firefighters of New York City as he lived to the frankly impossible age of 86 (black men born in 1900 had a life expectancy of 33).

Lift more. Bitch less. Be better at everything every day of your life- it’s what Wesley Williams did.

Sources:

Goldberg, David.  Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity.  Chapel Hill:  UNC Press, 2017.

Williams, Wesley.  Oxford African American Studies Center. 31 May 2013.  Web.  16 Aug 2021. https://oxfordaasc.com/browse;jsessionid=6C6CDB02DC084199261CDFC97B3C6445?isQuickSearch=true&pageSize=20&sort=titlesort&t=AASC_Occupations%3A1120&t_1=AASC_Subjects%3A23

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