This wrestling business is all about luck.
Seriously, think about it. There are guys who get one great gimmick, and it makes their career. When Mark Calloway was a third-string Skyscraper (replacing an injured Sid Vicious), do you think his career was going anywhere? No. But one drastic makeover later, and Calloway had a ticket to fame and wrestling immortality as the Undertaker.
Other guys, they don’t get so lucky. Take, for instance, the plight of Chris Champion.
The poor guy started out as a member of the time traveller as one half of the NWA’s New Breed.
You know, those guys that got energy by plugging in a cable to their heads and came from 2002 where Dusty Rhodes was President?
Now there’s a candidate – Dusty Rhodes in ’08. Anyone think he could NOT take down Obama and Hillary?
Back to Chris Champion, who would see his luck get even worse following his stint as Doc Brown’s favorite wrestler. He would soon head down to the cartoonish world of Memphis wrestling, and became Kowabunga, a wrestling ninja turtle.
Scoff if you will, but apparently this black belt training gave him the knowledge and insight he needed to become his next reincarnation, that being Hong Kong’s number one export, Yoshi Kwan.
With his wacky robes, he looked for all the world like WCW’s version of Raiden.
Not only was he the first to attempt to cash in on the Mortal Kombat craze, he was also the first wrestler to have a giant Hershey kiss hat.
In your face, Sultan!
So he got into the ring, he disrobed and showed off his tattoos and well, looked Japanese.
It’s always amazing what some make-up and a facial hair trimmer can do to a man who looked like an All-American a few years back. Heck, if I didn’t know better, I’d have guessed that Hakushi was a dock worker from Jersey.
Yoshi Kwan showed off some impressive Martial Arts moves and then showed off his finisher…
THE DEADLY VULCAN DEATH GRIP!!!
You know, Spock should really file a lawsuit against all these guys ripping him off.
Anyways, needless to say, this went nowhere until he managed to team up with Harley Race and grabbed a bag with Cactus Jack’s belongings.
Now you may think a sentence containing the line “this went nowhere until he managed to team up with Harley Race and grabbed a bag with Cactus Jack’s belongings” was a rib, but it’s not. No no – it was a continuation of the infamous (and previously inducted) “Lost In Cleveland” storyline. Remember that one? Where Cactus got amnesia and repaired bikes and thought he lived on a boat?
Sadly, Yoshi’s martial arts and evil sideburns and tattoos were no match for Cactus who won the feud quite handidly, got his bag back and went on to continue his feud with Vader.
The contents of the bag will be one of the many unsolved mysteries in WCW history. So if you run into Mick Foley sometime, please do us all a favor and ask what was inside.
The world really needs to know.
Yoshi Kwan didn’t last too long after that and quietly left. Currently, Chris Champion is still wrestling in the middle Tennessee area for some independent wrestling organisations as “Wildside” Chris Champion.
He still uses the Yoshi Kwan gear, but now he breathes fire.
FIRE!
I bet if he breathed fire back in WCW, he’d be a 16-time world champion.
And that’s about it for Yoshi Kwan.
But let me ask you guys this. When you first heard the name “Yoshi Kwan”, I can’t have been the only guy that thought the following.
YOSHI.
KWAN.
YOSHI KWAN.
And before you email us and tell us how lame it was to mate Mario’s dinosaur pal with an Olympic skater, just remember our time travelling, fire breathing MK clone was once this:
Maybe if Michelle did Donatello instead…