Post by rnrk supports BLM on May 10, 2019 15:41:44 GMT -5
The thread about little-known Undertaker matches on the WWE board made me remember a Taker vs Kwang match taped for one of those Coliseum Videos back in the day that I rather liked, and searching for it on YouTube lead me to a Kwang vs Hakushi match from Superstars in '95 (not going to post it here since it isn't from the official WWE channel, but shouldn't be hard to find). Never knew these two ever wrestled before (and from the preamble, it sounds like they were briefly tagging together before this), or even that their runs overlapped; I remembered Kwang already being Savio Vega by the time Hakushi started in WWF. I wouldn't be surprised if this was his last match under the gimmick; it feels like a writing off of the character, having him definitively get taken out by the new Japanese heel sliding into his role, though that also means Kwang's weirdly working face in this match.
It's hardly a memorable match, but there's something to watching a pudgy weaboo doing a shitty Great Muta impression wrestling against an actual Japanese wrestler with a similar style. Kwang is... rough. He's a lot worse than I remembered, but then again he was the first guy I ever saw spit Asian mist, which raised him a lot more in my estimation than he probably deserves. Wouldn't be surprised if Savio was also toning it down here because he knew he was getting repackaged, and didn't want to pull out his best offense on the losing end of what's basically a one-sided squash plus a few hope spots. Couldn't have been more than couple months between this and his reappearance as Razor's buddy, but I guess he also used that time to burn some pounds, 'cause he's looking a lot... heavier than usual during this one too.
And can we take a moment to appreciate that it's 1995, the year Mortal Kombat 3 came out, at that series' peak in popularity among the kid demographic that New Generation WWF was targeting, and they've got a charismatic, exotic-looking badass on the roster who looks like he might've stepped straight out of Mortal Kombat, and the best they can do with him is have Vince "in twenty-five years I'll be pushing Lars Sullivan" McMahon call him a "kamikaze" on commentary and play up that the really heelish thing he's up to is accusing Bret Hart of being a racist? Some things never change.
It's hardly a memorable match, but there's something to watching a pudgy weaboo doing a shitty Great Muta impression wrestling against an actual Japanese wrestler with a similar style. Kwang is... rough. He's a lot worse than I remembered, but then again he was the first guy I ever saw spit Asian mist, which raised him a lot more in my estimation than he probably deserves. Wouldn't be surprised if Savio was also toning it down here because he knew he was getting repackaged, and didn't want to pull out his best offense on the losing end of what's basically a one-sided squash plus a few hope spots. Couldn't have been more than couple months between this and his reappearance as Razor's buddy, but I guess he also used that time to burn some pounds, 'cause he's looking a lot... heavier than usual during this one too.
And can we take a moment to appreciate that it's 1995, the year Mortal Kombat 3 came out, at that series' peak in popularity among the kid demographic that New Generation WWF was targeting, and they've got a charismatic, exotic-looking badass on the roster who looks like he might've stepped straight out of Mortal Kombat, and the best they can do with him is have Vince "in twenty-five years I'll be pushing Lars Sullivan" McMahon call him a "kamikaze" on commentary and play up that the really heelish thing he's up to is accusing Bret Hart of being a racist? Some things never change.
