Over the years, Nike has boasted an impressive roster of signature athletes. There are the wildly famous basketballers, of course: Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, Anfernee Hardaway, Gary Payton, Sheryl Swoopes and so on.
There are the late-80s/early-90s folks, like Bo Jackson and John McEnroe, nike roshes for sale nz who helped launch Nike Training.
And there’s the modern crop of superstars — Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, cheap roshe run for womens LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Mike Trout, et al — who continue innovating year in, year out. But who was there first? Why, Wayne Wells, of course.
A welterweight wrestler, the 5’8″ Wells won a gold medal in the Munich Olympics in 1972, an accomplishment that would help get him inducted into the Wrestling Hall of Fame later in life, but that wasn’t the only historical precedent he set.
At the same time, Wells worked with Nike footwear designers on a signature wrestling boot, a distinct design engineered the exact specifications of the Texas native’s style and requirements. Somewhat simplistic by modern-day standards, Wells’s signature shoe paired leather overlays with a nylon base on the upper, reminiscent of so many Nike running shoes of the time, with a minimal midsole set beneath, presumably delivering superlative flexibility.
Wells himself has retired from wrestling, and from his second career as a lawyer, but the legend of the first Nike signature shoe ever will live on forever. A true pioneer, it was Nike’s only signature shoe through 1982. Three years later, in 1985, the Air Jordan 1 would debut, and athletic shoes would never be the same.
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