Meet Wayne Wells, Nike's First Signature Athlete

Today, dozens of athletes across all sports have their own signature performance sneakers, cleats, and lifestyle models. But that wasn’t always the case. Yeah, we all know of the pioneer Chuck Taylor for Converse, even if his endorsement came 15 years after the All-Star was originally released, and subsequent athletes like Jack Purcell for B.F. Goodrich (later bought by Converse), Bob Cousy (PF Flyers), Walt “Clyde” Frazier (Puma), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (adidas), but when did Nike first get involved in the signature athlete game?

The Swoosh had dabbled with signature athletes over a decade before Michael Jordan cemented his place in sneaker history and helped spawn the endorsement structure we know today. No, it’s not Steve Prefontaine. That’s a great guess, especially considering the Nike Pre Montreal sneaker is so closely associated with Steve. However, that was released to the public in 1974 and had no official tie to Steve outside of his choice to wear it in the Olympics. We have to go back two years, to 1972 and the Nike Greco.

Wayne Wells, born in 1946 in Texas, moved to Oklahoma City as a child and wrestled in middle school, high school, and eventually in college for the University of Oklahoma. He was a two-time NCAA All-American, placed second in nationals in 1967, and won the NCAA championship as a senior in 1968, boasting a collegiate record of 69-4-2. After finishing fourth in the 1968 Olympics for Team USA’s wrestling squad, he would win gold at the 1972 Olympics. Oh yeah, and he passed the bar the same year, becoming a lawyer. Shortly after his gold medal victory, a Nike sales rep approached the star wrestler to consult on a wrestling sneaker. He would quickly meet co-founder Phil Knight and strike a deal that netted him some cash in return for his input on the shoe.

Wells worked closely with Nike designers on his signature high-top wrestling boot, the Nike Greco, and developed another model for roadwork. The high-top model features a simple leather and nylon construction, with a toe overlay somewhat similar to traditional cowboy boots. A Swoosh cuts across the midfoot, while the classic Nike logo with an orange Swoosh graces the tongue tag. Finishing the design is a gum outsole.

"I knew about the signature shoe program when I signed a contract with Nike in 1972," Wells told InterMat in an interview in 2020. "Back then, there were few athletic shoes available. Nike wanted to get into all sports, including wrestling shoes. Nike designed the Wells wrestling shoe, as well as the Wells training shoe, which was designed for doing roadwork. I had told Nike they needed to come up with the training shoe."

Today, Wayne’s sneaker and the original advertisement poster for the Greco stand in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. It would take over a decade before the next signature sneaker from Nike hit shelves, that being John McEnroe’s Nike Mac Attack in 1984. The following year, Michael Jordan’s Air Jordan 1 hit shelves, and the rest is history.

The Nike Greco line continued in the ‘80s with the Greco Supreme, a model that made its way into the 2000s, but has since been discontinued in favor of models like the Tawa, Fury, Freek, SpeedSweep, and Inflict. If/when fashion circles begin to flock to wrestling boots as statement pieces, as they have done with ballet and martial arts sneakers in recent years, maybe Nike will retro Wayne’s sneaker. They did just give us the first-ever retro run of John McEnroe’s Mac Attack in 2023, so it would only make sense to go back to the very beginning of Nike’s signature athlete roster.

Nicholas Vlahos

Sneakerhead from South Florida who turned his passion into a career. When not writing for Sole Retriever, I enjoy attending concerts and catching the latest movies. Email: nick@soleretriever.com