Black Bart, a long-time veteran of the wrestling business has died at the age of 76. Bart was battling stage four colon cancer that spread into his liver, and he recently returned home rather than face further treatment.
His wife, Linda, shared the news late in the evening on January 9, 2025:
You might know him as Black Bart but to me he was my husband Ricky. He left us this morning . He was pronounced at 5:26 this morning. He is Resting In Peace
Bart announced his illness on March 23, 2023, on his Facebook account. He wrote, “Well I’m not quite sure where to start except to just spit it out the way I usually do. I don’t want rumors so here’s the truth. I was diagnosed today with stage 4 colon cancer that has also spread to my liver. I am not the kind to just roll over and play dead so you all should know that I will fight it with all I have in me. Since I am a child of God and He is in my heart always I believe I have a head start. I will see the oncologist next week and start chemotherapy ASAP. The main thing I ask from my Facebook people is for prayer because I believe we can all use extra prayers. I will post updates when I have them.”
The wrestling world rallied around him, and there was a tribute show presented by the East Texas Wrestling Alliance on August 12, 2023, which reunited many of Bart’s old colleagues, including Sam Houston, Alex “Pug” Pourteau, Rod Price, Iceman Parsons, Slick, and Debbie Combs.
At the 2024 Cauliflower Alley Club reunion, Bart was announced as the surprise recipient of the Courage Award, accepted and later delivered to Bart by JBL.
Bart started in the wrestling business in 1975 at the age of 27, and he competed for 31 years retiring in 2006 at 58 years old. He competed in a number of promotions, some of the most notable being All Japan Pro Wrestling, WCW and WWE. Other aliases included Black Bart Johnson, Big Train Bart, Hangman Harris, Man Mountain Mike Harris and El Lobo.
Black Bart backstage at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens. Photo by Elio Zarlenga
A good description comes from Gene Able in the Columbia Record in July 1985, looking at the legitimacy of pro wrestling: “Black Bart, an ugly slob of a man, 280 pounds, with long, lank hair.”
In her On the Mat column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Betty Ann Stout described Bart in September 1986:
Well get this, Black Bart rides into Will Rogers and circles the ring on a horse — an old grayer-than-Joan-Collins-without-Miss Clairol horse!
Everybody hoots and hollers at Bart and while shakin’ this branding iron at everybody, he says, “Shut up, or I’ll stick this where the sun don’t shine,” and I don’t think he meant Carlsbad Caverns.
Now this Black Bart character is a Cowboy type, but he looks a lot like Bruiser Brody would if you stuck him in a hydraulic press.
Sam Houston praised Bart’s toughness in a 2009 interview with Wrestling Epicenter. “Our matches were so brutal, so involved, and so real, but I had nothing but the highest respect for Black Bart.”
In an interview with Wrestling Epicenter, Manny Fernandez talked about working with Black Hart in Global Wrestling Federation. “We had an amazing crew. Black Bart! I used to love to listen to Black Bart, ‘I’m not gonna wrestle these stiff young guys anymore!’ (laughs) And, he’d go out there and bust his butt. And, I’d say, ‘I thought you weren’t going to wrestle those stiff young guys anymore.’ ‘Ah, shut up!'”
Bart himself talked about his WWE run not being as successful as it could have been with Wrestling Epicenter in July 2024. “I was supposed to go there for a three-day trial years before. I had a job working Crockett and I didn’t want to lose that if they found out they would have fired me! If they wanted me for a tryout because they didn’t know if they wanted to hire Black Bart after I had put 25 years of my life, at that point, in this, then don’t hire Black Bart! They didn’t tell me that they were going to put me and [Ron] Bass together again as the Long Riders, have Sarah Jo [his wife at the time, Bonnie] and JJ Dillon as our manager. They didn’t tell me none of that!” said Bart. “When I finally did go there, I was making top money. Brother, [Vince McMahon] was giving me top money! But, then I started getting over and [Vince] was like, ‘No, no, no, no!’ Then some of the agents started wanting me on the house shows to go on in the 7th or 8th match on the card because that was the lull. They knew I could jack the crowd up. I always could. But, Vince said no. Then, four days before Desert Storm started, he gave me and 16 other guys our notice. He told me I should have come when he wanted me before.”
Most people would know Black Bart from the WWF, World Class and the short-lived but well-publicized Global Wrestling Federation. “I don’t think we realized how many people were watching [GWF] while we were doing it,” Bart told Wrestling Epicenter. “Between ESPN and the channel 11 Superstation, we were being seen all over the United States. It amazed me over the years to have people from all over the country say they saw us doing our thing from that time.”
Black Bart retired from competition in 2002. However, he returned to activity in 2006, and worked the independent circuit for a few years.
Born January 30, 1948, in Texarkana, Arkansas, Bart, real name Richard Harris, was quite the specimen. Bart had long black hair and stood 6-foot-4 while weighing in at 350 pounds, he was trained by Charlie Fulton, Gene Lewis and Genichiro Tenryu.
Scott Norton, JBL and Black Bart at The Big Event fan fest on Saturday, November 13, 2021, at New York LaGuardia Airport Marriott, in East Elmhurst, NY. Photo by George Tahinos, https://georgetahinos.smugmug.com
Following his wrestling career, Bart started a wrestling school at the Dallas Sportatorium. His most notable pupil was John Bradshaw Layfield, who went on to be a WWE champion.
JBL posted that Bart was “one of my first tag partners/teachers and man I love” and often told stories about Bart backstage.
It was similar for long-time Texas referee James Beard who told some Black Bart stories at the 2023 Cauliflower Alley Club reunion, including how “Dick [Murdoch] just loved to badger Bart.”
In January 2024, Bart teamed with Vincent Berry on his autobiography, Wrestle Black Bart.
Friends and fans followed along with Bart’s declining health on Facebook, where he had kept an active presence.
His wife, Linda, noted on October 25, that Bart’s eyesight had begun to fail and she was unable to read every note sent in to him.
On December 17, she posted that her husband had returned home, accepting his fate. “Bart was brought home today, he still isn’t able to walk but he isn’t making progress in the rehab so the insurance will not continue to pay for him,” she wrote. “He has told me that he doesn’t want any more chemo, he feels that it’s doing more damage than good and I have to back him up on that. He doesn’t feel that he has given up he’s just not putting any more poison in his body. He is completely in Gods hands now. God’s will be done.”
Further details on his passing are not known at this time.
— with files from Greg Oliver
