Thunderbolt Patterson
| Birth name | Claude Patterson |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 8, 1941 Waterloo, Iowa |
| Residence | Atlanta, Georgia |
| Professional wrestling career | |
| Ring name(s) | K.O. Patterson Sweet Daddy Brown Thunderbolt Patterson T-Bolt |
| Billed from | Atlanta, Georgia |
| Trained by | Pat O'Connor Steve Kovacs |
| Debut | 1964 |
| Retired | 1994 |
Claude Patterson (born July 8, 1941) is an American retired professional wrestler, better known by his ring name, Thunderbolt Patterson. Patterson is best known for his efforts at starting a labor union for professional wrestlers. He began his career in 1964 and wrestled primarily in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.
Patterson had grown up in Iowa and worked for John Deere in Waterloo, Iowa when he broke into professional wrestling in the Kansas City area. Promoter Gus Karras put Patterson in matches against Don Soto in 1964. In 1965, Patterson moved to Texas and worked with promoter Dory Funk Sr.. The following year, he traveled to California, where he held the WWA Tag Team Championship with Alberto Torres. He also continued to work in Texas, where he worked as a villainous character in Dallas until he was turned on by his partner Boris Malenko, Fritz Von Erich had a Russian chain match with Malenko for Patterson's contract which Malenko owned..
In 1969, he worked for Big Time Wrestling in Michigan and Ohio.
In 1970, he feuded with Jose Lothario and held the Florida version of the NWA Brass Knuckles Championship.
Patterson agreed to work for an outlaw promotion (that is, one outside of the NWA) run by Ann Gunkel, the widow of his old friend and Georgia promoter Ray Gunkel, in the 1970s. He also spoke out against poor working conditions for wrestlers and sued for racial discrimination, and as a result, he was blacklisted from wrestling. He had been complaining about racism from promoters for many years (he would later recall that only Dory Funk Sr. had backed him) and wanted to start a wrestlers' union, a dream he shared with Jim Wilson a former NFL player and wrestler, himself blacklisted. It would be years, with Patterson working at the Los Angeles Times in the interim, before he would get another shot, when Dusty Rhodes took ill in Florida.
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