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WRESTLER OF THE DAY: PRINCE IAUKEA


RIPPA

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Fuck... I am going to have to do like a month of guys not in March Madness to avoid the cross contamination. Son of a bitch.

 

Ummm.... Prince Iaukea! There... fuck it... Prince Iaukea it is.

 

 

I don't know what that this but it is from 2009 and it opens with some hoochie dancing so kill your kittens and then wonder if Prince Iaukea is still wrestling 5 years after this match.

EDIT - There is a potential "Dean New Favorite Wrestler" thing going with King Kong Fu

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Iaukea was one of those competent, but bland wrestlers that WCW seemed to have hundreds of. As a high-flying, good looking face, he was leagues ahead of an Evan Karagias or a Lash LeRoux, but he had no real outstanding qualities.

I quite like this match, though more for Barbarian than Iaukea. I like the idea of Barbie stomping on his leg until Iaukea can barely stand, then just booting him in the face for the win

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I thought the Regal angle was pretty striking at the time. I think I turned over when I Wasn't really watching wrestling and I bought it for that one night. And never again.

 

 

I still to this day remember watching this with Schneider and Phil going "Welp - I guess WCW wanted their own overpushed Polynesian"

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His Wikipedia has back to back amazing unsourced claims

 

 

On February 17, 1997, Iaukea captured the WCW World Television Championship by defeating Lord Steven Regal[1] and would hold it for 2 months before losing it to Ultimate Dragon. Iaukea then went off to tour New Japan working with established greats such as Shinjiro Otani and Koji Kanemoto. On the tour he was kicked severely by Koji Kanemoto and badly injured. Japanese booker Riki Chōshū was a huge supporter of Iaukea.

 

Back in WCW, Iaukea would then float around the lower mid-card for several years, mainly because of an alleged romantic link between Iaukea and the wife of an upper level WCW executive. Iaukea denied the allegations, but the rumor persisted.

so there's an alternate reality where Riki Choshu books Prince Iaukea to the top of New Japan

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I remember when Juvie did commentary on Thunder and when Iaukea came out as The Artist, Juvi goes, "well I guess they finally found something for the worst wrestler in the company to do."

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I remember a couple of fun Iaukea matches in NJPW. There was one where he teamed with Dr Wagner and got to heel it up against Kanemoto/Takaiwa, which I'll always remember for Wagner yelling something at Kanemoto in Japanese that popped the whole building.

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I remember a couple of fun Iaukea matches in NJPW. There was one where he teamed with Dr Wagner and got to heel it up against Kanemoto/Takaiwa, which I'll always remember for Wagner yelling something at Kanemoto in Japanese that popped the whole building.

 

Wait, what?  Heeling against Kanemoto?  That can't be right.

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Pete's also making things up

 

Iaukea never teamed with Wagner in New Japan.

The only time he faced Kanemoto in a tag match was Kanemoto/Negro Casas vs. Iaukea/El Samurai.

 

He also teamed with Casas a few times. I am now trying to decide if Prince Iaukea is the worst person Negro Casas ever teamed with

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Pete's also making things up

 

Iaukea never teamed with Wagner in New Japan.

The only time he faced Kanemoto in a tag match was Kanemoto/Negro Casas vs. Iaukea/El Samurai.

 

He also teamed with Casas a few times. I am now trying to decide if Prince Iaukea is the worst person Negro Casas ever teamed with

 

Ah, getting my matches confused. But he was deffo heeling it up against Kanemoto... or trying to anyway.

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When Iaukea first showed up, I just remember being super amused at his existance. At the time there was Prince Iaukea, Rocky Iaukea and Mossman all working relative of King Curtis Iaukea gimmicks. I didn't know then that Rocky Iaukea was a legit relative, but the idea that internationally there were three diffrerent guys working the gimmick of being a relative of King Curtis amused me to no end.

I kept on waiting for New Japan, WWF, EMLL, AAA and FMW to introduce their fake Iaukea relatives so I could fantasy book the fake Iaukea tourney. It never happened.

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Over at TSM, we had ourselves a We Watch Shitty WCW Club wherein we did guess what.  These late night chat sessions with verbally-synced streaming videos were actually pretty great at reevaluating some guys.  Iaukea did NOT go up the list.  He was often way too botchtastic for my tastes; I saw one match where he just kept dropping poor Candido on his head repeatedly via clumsy offense and amateur-hour miscommunications.  His finisher was great on paper, top rope leap into a DDT is something that sounds cool; you could see mid-90s Rey Jr doing that move tremendously well.  Prince Iaukea is NOT Rey Mysterio, mid-90s or any other era, and the spot half the time went like "opponent cringes because they think they're gonna get their neck broken Buff/R.Steiner stylez, so they go down awkwardly and half a beat too late and Prince ain't enough of a ring general to salvage things in mid-air".  His gimmicks and personas all grated on my nerves and he couldn't talk too well and there were only a beggar's handful of opponents who could get anything really good out of him.  Sure, he could have the occasional lost classic on Thunder with Malenko, but whom can't you say that about?  

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i remember, in 1997, being shocked that he beat Regal for the tv title and thinking that he was actually pretty good. within 3 months i had stopped caring about him. upon my recent rewatch, he's very bland and not so good.

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