Why wasn't Hakushi pushed?

[George_South 0]

Remember that dude with all the faux-tattoos---Hakushi?

 

Upon entering the WWF he was thrown into a feud with Bret Hart and he did pretty well.

 

But he left like less than a year after entering, if I recall.

 

Anyone know what ever happened to him? Or why he left?

[Beto Chavez 0]

The problem was that nobody would put the guy over except Bret Hart. Even Hart said that none of the other guys wanted to even let him get a move in on them because of his size.

[zhangmeijie 0]

Well he was a pretty big star in his native Japan. In WWE he never stood a chance.

[cabbageboy 0]

The WWF has never really been a good place for Japanese wrestlers who can't speak English on the mic. It was the case of wrong place, wrong time. If he had ventured into WCW a year later he would have gotten over.

[ajstyles83 0]

If he worked with the cruiserweights he would have. Otherwise Hogan would have to get in his word on the matter. He'd have had the same problem as with the WWE.

[Jingus 0]

The WWE has, historically, rarely been a good place for anyone who wasn't white. Their first minority champion was a gimmicked Hawaiian pretending to be a stereotyped Japanese grappler, and we had to wait until freaking 1993 for them to be that progressive. Being a smaller guy who worked an unorthodox style and couldn't speak English well, Hakushi was fucked from the start, they were never gonna do jack shit with that guy.

[billdynamite 0]

I liked this guy too. But I was disappointed one night in London when he didn't have any tattoos.

[zhangmeijie 0]

The WWE has, historically, rarely been a good place for anyone who wasn't white. Their first minority champion was a gimmicked Hawaiian pretending to be a stereotyped Japanese grappler, and we had to wait until freaking 1993 for them to be that progressive. Being a smaller guy who worked an unorthodox style and couldn't speak English well, Hakushi was fucked from the start, they were never gonna do jack shit with that guy.

 

Sorry but I call bullshit there. Bruno Sammartino was booked as a minority champion (Italian) followed by Ivan Koloff (Canadian but booked as a russian). They were followed by Puerto Rican Pedro Morales and Japanese Antonio Inoki. Than Iranian Iron Sheik came a little bit later. To say Yokozuna was the first minority champion is just plain misguided.

 

I agree with you about how they booked him though, and how they booked Hakushi.

[Jingus 0]

I was talking more about the modern "Hulkamania and later" era, but you're right about Morales and Sheiky. Still, Morales was an unusual situation where his championship was pandering to New York's large Puerto Rican population at the time. And Sheik was nothing more than a way to get the belt from Backlund to Hogan, I don't think he even had it for a month.

 

Sammartino and Koloff, despite being (or pretending) to be from non-Anglo parts of the world, still count as white guys. Don't ask me why, racism is a weird thing; someone might hate Italians for being Italian, but they wouldn't identify them as being something other than caucasian. (Aside from Dennis Hopper's monologue in True Romance, of course.)