Long before women’s wrestling was selling out arenas or headlining WrestleMania, it was carried on the shoulders—and through the black eyes and broken noses—of a Texas tomboy named June Byers.
Born DeAlva Eyvonnie Sibley in Houston in 1922, Byers didn’t set out to be a pioneer. She wasn’t chasing fame, wasn’t gunning for superstardom. She was chasing something far simpler: survival. Already divorced and scraping the bottom of the Depression-era barrel, she had the grit and the gall to say yes when a wrestling promoter spotted her playing around in a ring and offered her a shot at something better.
That promoter was Billy Wolfe, one of wrestling’s most powerful and polarizing figures, and what followed was a career that would both define and complicate women’s wrestling for the next two decades.
Born in the Smoke-Filled Arenas
Byers wasn’t a sensation out of the gate. She took her lumps on the road, learning the trade in Wolfe’s barnstorming all-female troupe. In those early years, she lost more often than she won—especially against legends like Mae Young and Mildred Burke—but she was absorbing something more valuable than victories: timing, toughness, and the bruised poetry of the mat.
In 1952, things changed. She won her first gold—a tag title with Millie Stafford—and then caught a break when Burke, the reigning queen of the sport and Wolfe’s estranged wife, exited his empire after a spectacularly public falling out.
With the top of the mountain suddenly vacant, Wolfe needed a new face. Enter June Byers.
The Crown, The Controversy, and the Woman Who Wouldn’t Back Down
On June 14, 1953, Byers outlasted 12 other women in a Baltimore tournament to win the vacant Women’s World Championship. It was a hard-fought, workhorse win. But for the public—and for Burke—there was no closure until the two women met in the ring.
That happened on August 20, 1954, in Atlanta. The long-anticipated “shoot” match—a real, unscripted contest—ended not with triumph, but with fog. Byers took the first fall. The second was ruled a no-contest after an hour of inconclusive grappling. Burke stormed off, later claiming she’d been set up. Byers insisted she won fair and square: “Mildred claims she wasn’t defeated, but I pinned her in the first fall… it was a shoot.”
Wrestling historians are still divided. Was it a real victory or a power play orchestrated by Wolfe to bury his ex-wife and elevate his new star—and daughter-in-law?
Whatever the truth, the headlines read the same: June Byers was the new champion.
Stiff as a Shot of Texas Bourbon
As champion, Byers wasn’t flashy. She didn’t wear feather boas or cut promos dripping with melodrama. She was a wrestler, plain and simple. She moved with the kind of crisp, punishing precision that made even the “worked” matches feel like survival tests. She once broke a newcomer’s nose and blackened both eyes just to teach her a lesson.
She was respected, feared, and—for a decade—undeniable.
“She was the best,” said Penny Banner, herself a legend and frequent opponent. “The greatest of all time.”
The Endgame and a New Era
By 1956, the Baltimore Athletic Commission stripped Byers of the NWA title after she announced her retirement intentions. A battle royal was held to crown a new champion. The winner: a hungry upstart named The Fabulous Moolah.
Byers briefly un-retired to challenge Moolah, but the sport was already shifting toward flashier personas and flashbulb gimmicks. The hard-nosed, hammer-locked style that Byers had perfected was giving way to something louder and looser.
And then, a car crash ended it all.
In 1963, after being struck in the head with a Coke bottle, Byers crashed her car into a tree. The resulting leg injuries and lingering vision problems ended her in-ring career for good in 1964.
She didn’t chase the spotlight after that. She went back to Texas, worked in real estate, raised two children, and lived quietly. When her son died in a tragic accident, friends say she was never quite the same.
The Legacy That Won’t Stay Down
June Byers died in 1998 from pneumonia, just a few miles from where she was born. But her name kept popping up—quietly, insistently—in the footnotes of greatness.
In 2006, she was inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame. In 2017, WWE honored her posthumously in its Hall of Fame Legacy wing. And in 2023, she joined the International Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.
No viral highlight reels. No catchphrases. Just a body of work that carried women’s wrestling through the most uncertain years—and into legitimacy.
June Byers didn’t play the diva. She didn’t dance. She didn’t smile for the camera.
She wrestled.
And in doing so, she held a mirror up to the sport and dared it to take her seriously. For ten years, it did. And in the pages of history, it still does.