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Why did Eric Bischoff feel the need to copy Rocky Maivia with Prince Iaukea

5K views 24 replies 14 participants last post by  Stephen90 
#1 ·
On a Thursday night Raw polynesian Rocky Maivia upsets rich snob HHH to win the Intercontinental Championship. The following Monday night on WCW a polynesian jobber Prince Iaukea upsets WCW english snob Steven Regal to the television title. Both title reigns are total failures. Rock gets Pac heat while Iaukea gets crickets. Rock goes down with injury comes back turns heel and becomes the Rock when he returns and the rest is history. Iaukea however goes right back to being a jobber.
However he somehow gets another mini push in 98 where he wrestles Jericho for the cruiserweight title in which he loses. He is send back to jobber detail. Until Vince Russo arrives Iaukea is then repackaged as The Artist formerly known as Prince Iaukea. Which he enjoys two cruiserweight title reigns. However the gimmick is still unsuccessful and Iaukea is finally given the boot.
 
#3 ·
WCW ran a 3 hour program on Monday nights, then also had to fill time for WCW Saturday Night and were also launching Thunder. They needed talent, and then you have to give that talent a gimmick.

Prince Iaukea never came off as a Rock rip off at that time. I remember it quite well. He wasn't packaged to look like him or anything. They were trying to get him over as a home grown WCW talent by putting a belt on him. He was never really "over", but he wasn't hated either. He was a decent worker and a baby face. Nothing more nothing less. But I don't think WCW was trying to copy WWF.
 
#6 ·
I think the Iaukea title win was. I'm not saying Iaukea was a total Rocky Maivia rip off. But this push seemed to be trying to counter the Rocky Maivia push at the time.

Because Bischoff was too concerned with what Vince was doing.

WCW's product reeked of that. From copying gimmicks/title change scenarios to announcing RAW's taped spoilers on live TV.
Agreed it's like Bischoff was hey we have our own lame polynesian babyface as well.
 
#8 ·
Iaukea had the honor of having all English vowels in his name. He has the dishonor of being boring as shit. I consider his "lucky" win streak a low point of Nitro in 1997. The guy was beating Regal, Jericho, Ultimo, among others by reversing cross body block and roll ups. The guy was champ and didn't have a fucking finishing move. A large part of his reign was to advance the Mysterio-Regal feud.
 
#19 ·
This actually makes a lot of sense to me now. I only started watch nitro in the past year and a half and have watched all the way up to mid 1997 and I still can't get my head around them putting the strap on him.

He was nothing at all of note before this and a lot of better talents wrestled for that belt in recent months and came up short.

If you are saying it was in response to Rocky then I fully believe it because to me there was no justification other than that
 
#21 ·
This actually makes a lot of sense to me now. I only started watch nitro in the past year and a half and have watched all the way up to mid 1997 and I still can't get my head around them putting the strap on him.

He was nothing at all of note before this and a lot of better talents wrestled for that belt in recent months and came up short.

If you are saying it was in response to Rocky then I fully believe it because to me there was no justification other than that
I felt the same way. I felt they should have put the belt on Mysterio. He way more over.
First guy I was thinking of
 
#5 ·
Not to defend Bischoff in anyway, because I could either take him or leave him, but Prince Iaukea didn't have 1/1000th of the charisma that Rock had. I'm not sure if you were actually expecting Iaukea to become a major player, but he had zero chance of achieving that. Not Bischoff's fault.
 
#18 ·
Maybe by a little but by March nobody really gave a shit about Iaukea. His TV title win was a shocker. But once you realize that he only knows basic wrestling moves and has no Mic skills whatsoever. You tend to get bored.

Prince Iaukea sucked ass IMHO.

When he beat Regal for the belt, I was like :what
It was cool at the moment but once you saw more and more of Iaukea you realized that it was a horrible decision. Prime Mysterio couldn't even get a good match out of the guy.
 
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