Johnnie Mae Young was born in
Sand Springs, Oklahoma in 1923.
[3] She was an amateur wrestler on her high school's boys' wrestling team at the age of fifteen.
[3][1][2] Her brothers Fred, Eugen, Lawarence, and Everett taught her to wrestle and helped her join the team. She was the youngest of eight children (one died at birth). Her mother Lilly Mae Young was a single mother
(her partner left to find work and never returned) living during the
Great Depression.
Young's oldest sister Inie was severely disabled by whooping cough at a very young age.
[3] Young also played softball with Tulsa's national championship team.
[1][2] While still in high school, Young went to a professional wrestling show and
challenged then-champion Mildred Burke when she visited Tulsa to wrestle Gladys Gillem.[3][1] Because the promoters told her she could not wrestle the champion, she wrestled Gillem in a shoot fight, beating her within seconds.
[3] After the fight, promoter
Billy Wolfe wanted Young to become a professional wrestler.
[3] She left home two years later to wrestle professionally.
[1]