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.
All I remember about him is that he main evented an episode of Nitro against Randy Savage and had a terrible match with La Parka. No idea what they were trying to accomplish by pushing him.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Rocky Maivia was a pretty lame gimmick but it doesn't take much to see he had a bright future ahead of him. I believe Rock said he turned down an offer from WCW too so maybe that factors in where Bischoff pushes someone similar to get back at him.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
The idea that WCW copied from WWF is very true. They copied from ECW too. So did WWF.
In the business competing companies copy each other.
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