Honestly, if you weren't hanging around the Greensboro Coliseum or the Kiel Auditorium in the 70s, you might only know Rufus R. Jones as a name on a WWE Hall of Fame legacy list. That's a shame. He wasn't just another guy on the card. He was the "Freight Train."
He was a man who could talk a hole in a radiator and then headbutt a brick wall until the wall gave up. But there’s a lot of noise out there about who he actually was. Some call him a footnote. Others, like the fans who literally bought him a crown in Greensboro, saw him as the undisputed king.
Born Carey Lloyd in Clio, South Carolina, back in 1933, he didn’t just wake up and decide to be a wrestler. He was a legit athlete. We're talking a Golden Gloves boxer with a 32-3 record and a former football player at South Carolina State. When he finally stepped into the ring in 1969, he was already 36 years old. Most guys are thinking about retirement at that age; Rufus R. Jones was just getting started.
The "R" Stands for Guts
You've probably heard his catchphrase if you've ever dug through old NWA tapes. "My name is Rufus R. Jones, and the 'R' stands for guts!" It doesn’t actually make sense, right? Guts doesn't start with R. But that was the point. Rufus had this disjointed, high-energy way of cutting promos that felt less like a scripted speech and more like a guy shouting at you on a street corner about how much he loved pork chops and beans.
It worked. People loved it.
He spent the bulk of his career tearing through the Central States territory and the Mid-Atlantic region. He wasn't a technical wizard like Jack Brisco or a high-flyer. He was a brawler. He’d hit those running shoulder blocks—the "Freight Train"—and then finish you off with a headbutt that looked like it hurt him as much as it hurt you.
Wrestling the Giants
A lot of people forget that Rufus R. Jones went toe-to-toe with the absolute best in the business.
- Terry Funk: In 1976, Rufus wrestled the NWA World Heavyweight Champion to a 60-minute draw. You don't get 60 minutes with Terry Funk unless you can go.
- Ric Flair: He feuded with a young Nature Boy and actually held the Mid-Atlantic Television Championship, trading it back and forth with guys like Greg Valentine.
- Harley Race: He was a staple in Sam Muchnick’s St. Louis promotion, which was basically the Harvard of professional wrestling at the time.
More Than Just a Character
There’s this weird thing that happens when we look back at wrestlers from that era. We tend to put them in boxes. Some modern critics look at the "headbutt" era of Black wrestlers and cringe, seeing it as a collection of tropes. But if you talk to the guys who were there, like Burrhead Jones (his kayfabe cousin) or his adopted son Kenneth Johnson—who most fans know as the WWF manager "The Doctor of Style" Slick—the story is different.
Rufus R. Jones was a businessman. He was a carpenter by trade before the ring called him. After he retired in 1988, he didn't just fade away into the "where are they now" files. He worked security at a dog track for a bit and then opened Rufus’ Ringside Restaurant and Bar in Kansas City. It was a hit. He was a pillar of the community, a Mason, and a guy who never thought he was better than the people paying to see him.
He died doing what a lot of South Carolina boys do: hunting. He suffered a heart attack while deer hunting in Brunswick, Missouri, in 1993. He was 60.
Why the Legacy Matters
When Rufus R. Jones was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2018, some younger fans scratched their heads. They didn't see the five NWA North American Tag Team titles or the two Central States Heavyweight championships. They didn't see the nights he sold out the Kiel Auditorium.
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But the history of wrestling isn't just about who won the most world titles. It's about who the people believed in. Rufus was "Freight Train" because he was unstoppable in the eyes of the working-class fans in the Carolinas and Missouri. He was a Black athlete who succeeded in territories that weren't always friendly, and he did it by being so charismatic that you couldn't help but cheer.
If you want to understand the roots of modern sports entertainment, stop looking at the highlight reels of the 90s for a second. Go find those grainy tapes of Rufus R. Jones screaming about guts. Look at the way he moved in the ring—the raw, unpolished power of a guy who actually knew how to box and hit.
To really appreciate his impact, track down his match against Dory Funk Jr. or his Mid-Atlantic battles with the Anderson brothers. Notice the crowd. They aren't just watching a match; they’re reacting to a man who represented something real. That’s the "R" in Rufus. It’s not just a letter; it’s the reason he still matters thirty years after he left us.