Brown was noticed by Ernest Brown, a former manager of amateur and professional wrestlers, in the late 1920s, who was convinced that he might have a future as a wrestler and agreed to work with Brown at the local high school in Kiowa, Kansas. After training, Brown was undefeated for 71 matches. He gained enough notoriety in western Kansas that the promoter in
Wichita put him on the preliminary of the weekly matches there. A well-known wrestler named
Abe Coleman saw Brown wrestle and recommended him to the promoter in
St. Louis, Tom Packs. Brown impressed many people with his wrestling skills in matches against former
world heavyweight champions Jim Londos and
Ed "Strangler" Lewis. He quickly won the Kansas Heavyweight Championship. Brown went on to become the Kansas-based
Midwest Wrestling Association (MWA) World Heavyweight Champion for a record of 11 times from 1940 to 1948. Brown won the title by beating wrestlers such as
Bobby Bruns, Lee Wyckoff, Tom Zaharias, Swedish Angel, Roy Graham and Tug Carlson. In 1948, promoter Pinkie George, along with other promoters, recognized Brown as the
World Heavyweight Champion in the newly formed
National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). Brown began the NWA's project of unifying the various world heavyweight championships contested at that time with the NWA version. A significant unification match took place against
Frank Sexton on March 15, 1949. Sexton held the American Wrestling Alliance Heavyweight Championship, the second most important championship in the country at that time, which he had previously unified with the Maryland version of the World Heavyweight Championship. Brown held the World Heavyweight Championship until he was forced to retire in November 1949 due to injuries he suffered on November 1, 1949 in a car accident. He was scheduled to participate in a unification match against
Lou Thesz on November 25, 1949. Thesz was awarded the title as Brown was unable to compete. After retiring, Brown became a promoter in
Kansas City, Missouri. He promoted the
Midwest Wrestling Association (MWA) from the founding of the NWA in 1948 until 1958, when the promotion was taken over by
Bob Geigel. == Personal life ==