Raven vs the New Church: TNA's most violent storyline

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the full video Here.

Ah go on then, they're topical again. Over the years TNA wrestling had it's share of truly horrific moments. If I were joking around I'd rattle off a mile long list of crazy ideas they had, my personal favourite being the barbed wire Christmas tree, but today I'm talking about a genuinely difficult to watch moment from the early days on TNA, made even more scary when you know what went wrong.

The moment I'm referring to took place on the September 17th 2003 weekly TNA pay per view, and was part of a long and violent feud between Raven and his group known as the Gathering, which included Julio Dinero, CM Punk and Alexis Laree now known as Mickie James, and the Disciples of the New Church led by Father James Mitchell. The New Church at this time included Shane Douglas, Brian Lee, Slash, Sinn who was briefly on Smackdown as Kizarny, and later another member who'll become relevant later. Behind the scenes Mitchell and Raven had known each other since their ECW days, where Mitchell worked in the latter years of the company as the Sinister Minister

For some context on their feud, the two factions would battle in all kinds of matches, notably Ravens signature Clockwork Orange House of fun match, where weapons would hang around the sides of the ring from a chain. At the same time Raven was still vying to achieve his dream, the reason for him even coming to TNA, the NWA World championship. In late August he would defeat New Church member Shane Douglas to earn a shot against then champion AJ Styles, which would take place on August 27th 2003. Multiple times in the match it looked like Raven was going to win, but after thwarting run ins from Slash and Sinn, a low blow from Shane Douglas followed by a Styles Clash was enough to screw Raven out of his opportunity. A wild brawl erupts with various more run ins while James Mitchell cackles on the stage, having achieved his goal.

The brawl would lead to TNA's first version of War Games by another name held on the following weeks event, called Wednesday Bloody Wednesday, in which Raven would team with America's Most Wanted, D'Lo Brown and Jeff Jarrett to defeat his rival Shane Douglas, AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Simon Diamond and Johnny Swinger. While Jarrett would pin Styles for the win, absolutely nothing would be resolved as many more wrestlers would run down and create more chaos post match.

This brings us to September 17th, and the hair versus hair match with Shane Douglas. This was actually the third singles match in TNA between the two, with Raven winning the first match on August 13th, and again the following week to earn the World title match with AJ Styles. The match itself for the most part, is a slow paced, dare I say unremarkable brawl between the two ECW veterans, or it was, until mid match Shane begins puking in the ring, yet somehow continues wrestling. I'll be honest, I totally forgot about this until rewatching the match for this video. Another weird point in the match comes a little earlier when Shane offers his hand with Raven's blood on it to a woman on the front row. Thats not the weird part, well it is, but what I mean is the woman turned out to be the future TNA star Angelina Love, who had already started her wrestling career by that point, but wouldn't join the TNA roster full time until 2007 when the Knockouts division would be formed. When it looked like Raven might pin Douglas, Slash would pull the referee out, then Sinn would interfere too, but both would be chased away by CM Punk and Dinero. Just as it looked like the sides were even and Raven was about to win again, the lights would go out in the TNA Asylum, and when they came back on the mystery man I mentioned earlier was in the ring, and revealed himself to be Vampiro. Making his first appearance in TNA, Vampiro would hit Raven with a DDT, allowing Shane to get the win.

Now we get to the really gruesome part, as Raven per the stipulation would willingly sit in a chair, and allow Jim Mitchell to shave his head. Herein would lie the problem, as Jim would proceed to use the wrong end of the clippers, cutting into Ravens head, and effectively scalping him. Initially, while Raven is wincing in pain you might have thought he was selling pain, or maybe trying to convey his humiliation, but when blood starts to pour down his head it then becomes clear that something has gone very wrong. The drama of the situation is elevated by Mike Tenay and Don West on commentary showing their disgust. Don eventually throws his headset down and walks away, while Mike Tenay continues with one of his most famous lines: "This is BS, This sucks, I've lost my objectivity, and I don't give a damn!" Incidentally, how he maintained that same objectivity through some things in the Russo years is beyond me...

In a 2003 shoot interview with Wrestling Epicenter, Mitchell explained what had actually gone wrong, noting that the clippers he was using were actually meant for sheering sheep, and in James' own words, "they looked like shark teeth." The reason for this as explained by Raven in an interview is that due to the sweat in wrestlers hair by the end of a match, a normal razor wouldn't have been enough, so the sheep clippers were used. This claim can maybe be backed up by another hair vs hair match that took place at Summerslam 1998. On that night Jeff Jarrett faced the dubious honour, having lost to X-Pac. Post match X-Pac can be seen struggling to actually cut Jarrett's hair with the razor, so he instead cut lumps off his head with scissors until the segment ran long enough. Upon noticing the blood pouring from Raven's head, James chose to stay in character and keep going, stating afterwards "I'm peeling his scalp off, but what are you going to do? Are you going to go oop's I'm sorry? Or are you going to act like a sadistic motherfucker and start digging in?" Watching the footage back however, he realised how bad a mistake he had made, and even expected Raven's full wrath backstage. While this had to be an excruciating experience for Raven, Mitchell noted that Raven seemed to at least realise that "it made for great TV", and it became the catalyst for Raven in future weeks to get his full revenge, even on Mitchell.

From here the feud would only get even more vicious. Two weeks later The Gathering would defeat Douglas, Slash and Sinn in a Dog Collar match. Post match though, the New Church would use the collars to attempt to hang Raven, Punk and Dinero.

On October 1st the following week, Raven would vow to eliminate the New Church members one by one until only Mitchell remained. This is where Shane Douglas would quietly disappear from the storyline, as he would begin his own mission to find a new Franchise, who would turn out to be Michael Shane, cousin of Shawn Michaels as TNA liked to remind us. In following weeks he would honour his word, as he would defeat and take out Sinn on October 8th. Vampiro would try to hang Raven again but would Punk and Dinero would save him. The next week in a rather bizarre move given that the Gathering saved him from being hung, Raven tells Punk and Dinero that he needs complete the rest of his quest on his own. This would eventually come back to bite Raven, as the Gathering would turn on Raven in December 2003, siding with James Mitchell upon his return.

On October 22nd Raven would continue his quest by defeating Slash in a dog collar match, and then hanging him, thus taking him out too. Vampiro and Mitchell attack Raven after but are chased away by Punk DInero, which Raven is clearly not happy about.

On October 29th Raven would get his final revenge on Vampiro in a the match all this hanging was building up to, the Gallows of retribution match, where the only way to win was to hang your opponent using a noose and the top rope, which to my knowlege hasn't been done ever again.

Finally on November 5th 2003, Raven would finally get his hands on Father James Mitchell in a last man standing match. If you're familiar with the term to give someone a 'reciept' in wrestling, whats very much what this feels like, as Mitchell takes an absolute beating from Raven, possibly to make up for the scalping incident. The match would last just five minutes, but in it Mitchell would bleed buckets. Mercifully, the story would end here, as by this point the violence had escalated about as much as it could go.

TNA has had it's share of violent moments and feuds, especially in the following years when Abyss would ramp things up even further, but the Raven vs New Church story in a way set the tone for how violent things could get, both planned and in real life. These days working for MLW as a manager of his latest faction, the Calling, Raven was back then one of NWA TNA's biggest stars. One of TNA's early big pay per views was headlined by his first shot at NWA World champion Jeff Jarrett, but it would take until 2005 for Raven to eventually capture that gold. I wonder how many still appreciate the impact Raven had back in those years, and even before then in ECW. The grunge aesthetic, the riddle like promos, and the young careers he had an influence on? Will we see another feud quite like his with the New Church, Nevermore.

James Mitchell interview 50 mins http://www.wrestlingepicenter.com/shows/FatherJames/father.mp3

The Cyber Sunday vote that didn't go as planned for Rowdy Roddy Piper

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find that video Here.

Earlier this week I uploaded to this channel a video about the first Taboo Tuesday, and while I was researching for that video I came upon a story that I previously didn't know. It's the true story of a fan vote for a WWE match actually leading to a surprising discovery for a wrestling legend, and that legend is Rowdy Roddy Piper.

In 2006 after previously being known as Taboo Tuesday, WWE changed the name and date, creating Cyber Sunday. The concept was still the same, fans would get to vote on match stipulations, and sometimes who would participate in certain matches. In this case, Ric Flair was set to challenge the Spirit Squad for the Raw tag team championships, and his partner would be a legend voted on by the WWE fans. Either Dusty Rhodes, Roddy Piper or Sargent Slaughter.

As I brought up in my Taboo Tuesday video, everyone involved to this day claims that the votes were legitimate, however it has also been claimed many times that WWE try influence who fans would vote for with how each choice was presented on television, but if a vote didn't go their way they would honour the result. On a few occasions the vote wouldn't go as expected, and this was one of those times. On the October 30th 2006 Raw days before Cyber Sunday, Dusty Rhodes was positioned to be the winner of the vote. For example on this night Ric Flair would come out for a promo. He would talk about the upcoming match, before introducing in order, Sarge, then Piper, and then Dusty. Each of the three men make a pitch for the fans to choose them like it's WCW Thunder on Playstation 1. Sarge talks mainly in military puns as he often did, however Piper blew him away with a single line. If I could play it for you I would, but sorry, you're getting my version. "Whats wrong with this picture? Nature Boy, world champion. Sargent Slaughter, world champion, Dusty Rhodes, world champion. Roddy Piper, nothing!" While raising his kilt by the way, for dramatic effect I assume. Piper did make a fair point here, I suppose having only reached the heights of Intercontinental champion in 1992, he was alluding to his comrades being more successful than him. Unfortunately for WWE, as great a promo Dusty was after him, Piper just by being Roddy Piper stole this segment, which was the last impression fans would get before Cyber Sunday. It also maybe doesn't help that to many fans Piper was a WWE legend for many more years than Dusty was, and so many will have voted based on that. I as a young fan at the time just wasn't as familiar with Dusty Rhodes as I was with Piper at the time, and I bet there were a lot of fans like me. Looking back though, how amazing would a team of long time rivals Flair and Dusty had been, but from where we go next, I'm glad things happened the way they did. It's not like Flair and Piper were strangers though. The two had a heated feud in WWE while Flair was in his first run there, and then in 99 they were co-WCW presidents in the truly dark days of Nitro that we don't talk about much.

Another factor to Piper winning is that he had a small bit of history with the Spirit Squad, as on an episode of Raw two months earlier (Sept 11th) he had teamed with the Highlanders to defeat three of the cheerleaders. On the night of Cyber Sunday, November 5th 2006 from Cincinnati Ohio, Rowdy Roddy Piper would win by earning 46% of the vote, with Dusty getting 35 and Sarge 19. When the vote was announced, a sly grin comes across the face of Piper as he heads to the ring. While he wasn't exactly in ring shape, Roddy and Ric don't just hold their own against the young cheerleaders, but they manage to win the Raw tag team championships. Flair and Piper would make one successful defence of the titles on the following night's Raw, where they would defeat Rated RKO despite the special referee being Raw GM Eric Bischoff. The legends would prevail thanks to the help of DX, who were feuding with Orton and Edge at the time. Piper would even participate in the UK tour that happened in the following week, competing in five non-televised house show matches, each being he Flair and the Highlanders defeating the Spirit Squad. Finally at the end of that tour on an episode of Raw taped in Manchester England (Nov 13th), Edge and Orton would get their revenge, beating Flair and Piper in a short match. In short, Piper would wrestle eight matches in nine days. While most were multi man tags where he could be in the ring for less time, this schedule not to mention all the travel involved can't have been easy for Piper. By my rough estimation thats over four thousand miles of travel in such a short time, not even including the at least three thousand more miles to fly back to the US.

As the story goes, because WWE expected Dusty to win the vote, they didn't have Piper complete a medical check before he got in the ring, which would end up being a blessing and a curse. In a 2021 episode of Something to Wrestle, Bruce Prichard told a story of an encounter with Piper while on the UK Tour, where something was clearly wrong with him. Roddy was said to be in intense pain throughout the tour, and would reveal in private to Bruce purple skin around his kidneys, which nobody saw as he wrestled with a t-shirt on. Bruce say's "He pulls me into a bathroom and says I've got to show you something, and he pulls up his shirt and down by his kidneys was all just purple." Piper would go out on his sword, dropping the tag titles with Flair to Rated RKO in Manchester, before rushing back to America to get checked out by his own doctors. Bruce notes that he wanted to get back to the US to see a doctor, presumably in fear that he would be admitted and therefore couldn't leave England. Here Piper would by diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, which is a potentially fast spreading cancer. To be clear I'm no expert on this, but according to sites I've read for this video the disease is treatable even in late stages. Following surgery, Piper would undergo radiation treatment for a month which was scheduled to be completed in early 2007. He would eventually announce that he was cancer free.

In article published to WWE.com on December 4th 2006 WWE and Piper confirm these events, going into further detail about his treatment. Roddy Piper also specifically thanked the WWE fans for voting for him at Cyber Sunday, as that was the beginning of this chain of events. It's strange to think that all of this came about because he was voted into a wrestling match he wasn't supposed to be in. Life works in very strange ways sometimes.

Sources:

Something to Wrestle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKHivC3ijww&t

Something to Wrestle 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_uU41W0KK8

Raw before PPV segment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ARPMBHmzeU

WWE.com health update: https://web.archive.org/web/20070501021742/http://www.wwe.com/inside/news/pipertreatmentupdate

Taboo Tuesday

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the video Here.

Ah the 2000's, back when we watched television on television and nobody knew or cared what wrestling personalities thought about anything behind the scenes. Knowing what WWE's social media presence is like these days it feels strange to think about a time where the same company was fairly apprehensive about entering the world of tomorrow. In '97 they launched Byte This, an online only show that was so under the radar with WWE management that it would usually go unnoticed unless a wrestler went too far when shooting, assuming nobody was watching. Then in 2005 their B-shows Heat and Velocity were moved to WWE.com after failing to renew their tv deals, becoming the first weekly in ring shows that WWE would host on their site. They even got in social media wrong by trying to get fans to use the platform they had put money into, but Tout wasn't a match for Twitter. Before that though, they also tested out a new online hit, their take on the classic internet poll, sort of.

On October 19th 2004 WWE Presented Taboo Tuesday from Milwaukee Wisconsin. Nowadays you can find some kind of wrestling on most nights of the week but back then it felt strange for a pay per view to take place on a Tuesday. Every match on the card had some sort of variable which could be voted on by fans at wwe.com. In some cases this would change the stipulations of a match, and in others the challenger for a title. To a fan, that concept might sound pretty cool, but to the wrestlers planning their matches it in some cases it was chaos.

In the opening match of the night, Chris Jericho was set to defend his Intercontinental title against any one of fifth-teen potential challengers. On screen is a list of all of the wrestlers fans could vote for. Looking at this list would you be shocked if I told you that Shelton Benjamin won the vote? It's also worth noting that at the time Batista was still a bad guy under Triple H in Evolution, and just a few months later he would win the Royal Rumble heading towards Wrestlemania main event success. Normally, a Chris Jericho versus Shelton Benjamin match would have high expectations attached to it, and maybe thats why it won the vote, but while the match delivered many at the time suggested it might have been better if the two could have had the time to plan more.

When asked about the match recently by Chris Van Vleit, Shelton Benjamin actually said "I had every belief that Batista would be facing Chris Jericho." When Van Vleit challenges this Shelton elaborates "Me and Chris have spoken of this, Our match was the only match where it was one hundred percent we don't know what we're gonna do. Every other match has some sort of gimmick involved... they had some idea of what they were going to do, and who with." The end part of that statement is sort of true, but we'll get back to that later.

Shelton also claimed that WWE officials wouldn't give Chris any inside info leading on to the match, such as who the votes were leaning towards. He also noted that Jericho seemed to be very perturbed by the situation, going as far as to quiz his prospective opponents on his trademark spots, to see who he could rely on if they were chosen. Here's my issue with this though, remember that list I showed you of all the 15 wrestlers, here are the voting results as published by WWE at the time. While yes if the votes were legit, and we'll get to that too, Jericho could have potentially faced one of 15 guys, Shelton clearly won by a landslide. He got almost forty percent of the vote, double the votes as the runner up Batista. Also besides Shelton and Batista, nobody else got more than seven percent. I'm not sure Jericho should have been planning all that much in case Val Venis won. Whats really surprising though, is that Shelton actually won the title from Jericho that night, so WWE must have had some idea of what they wanted going forward as again, a lot of those guys weren't beating Jericho should they have gotten the chance.

As Shelton noted in that interview, many of the other matches were more reliant on voting for what the gimmick of a match would be. The second match would be a fulfil your fantasy women's battle royal, where the vote would be for what costumes the wrestlers would wear, either school girl, french maid or nurse. Whatever won the vote, and if you care it was school girl, the match itself would be the same, rubbish. There would be a similar vote later in the night to decide if Christy Hemme and Carmella (not that one), would compete in an evening gown match, an aerobics challenge whatever that means, or a lingerie pillow fight. Other matches were along a similar vein to this only a bit more serious. Would Kane and Gene Snitsky fight with a lead pipe, a chain or a chair? Would the loser of Eric Bischoff versus Eugene wear a dress, have their head shaved or be the winners servant? In the main event, would Ric Flair battle Randy Orton in a steel cage, falls count anywhere or submission match. In that last one the cage won by a whopping sixty eight percent. This was barely surprising as WWE did all they could to tell you to vote for the cage without actually telling you to vote for the cage.

Remember how I said Jericho wasn't the only person entirely clear on who he would be facing? Well later in the night Triple H would defend the World title against one of three opponents, either Chris Benoit, the man who dethroned him at that years Wrestlemania. Edge, who was still a while away from being the main eventer he would become, or Shawn Michaels, a man with years of friendship and bitter rivalry with the Game. I wonder who won that one? Well Shawn did with in a close vote, narrowly beating Edge. To me, an admittedly biased Shawn Michaels fan at the time it felt obvious that HBK should win and battle his at the time heated rival Triple H, but Edge was also clear a contender. Earlier that year he had returned from extensive neck surgery that took him away from the ring for over a year, and so he felt like a new and fresh face in the main event scene. Speaking to Inside the Ropes in 2018, Edge claimed that had he won the vote he was told that he would have beaten Triple H for the World title, but he doesn't explain this much further. It's also worth noting according to Edge, Shawn won with 51% and he was 2% behind, leaving 0% of votes for Benoit. Thats some pure Steiner math right there and not even close to the real numbers. He does however, as does every other wrestler I've seen comment on the concept, claim that the votes were legitimate. One such example being Mick Foley, who wrestled at the second Taboo Tuesday in 2005 against Carlito. The fan vote in that one would be which of Mick's famous characters would Carlito face, Mankind, Cactus Jack or Dude Love. All this meant depending on the result was essentially a costume change for Foley, as I'd imagine the match he and Carlito planned would likely be very similar whichever won. Much like how Jericho was concerned earlier, Mick has in the past admitted that he dreaded Dude Love winning, as he had no outfit prepared for that. Nowadays Mick will play the character in cameos, but have you ever noticed he doesn't dress like he used to? Thats because he for many years he hated what WWE did to the character in 1998 by turning him into a sleazy heel, and he hadn't yet decided to revive the gimmick. Luckily for him three time WWE champion Mankind won the vote, lucky for all of us really, as had the match played to each character's style, Cactus Jack would likely have gotten DQ'ed in minutes when he pulled his barbed wire bat out or set something on fire.

So all of this begs the question, how real were the votes? The wrestlers have claimed it was real, and for what it's worth Dave Meltzer and Bruce Prichard have also claimed they were real too. Speaking last year, Freddy Prinze Jr, who was at the time working behind the scenes for WWE, also claimed that the votes were real. He said "They literally worked out three different matches with whoever the main guy in the ring was going to be. Granted, you know that these were all super pros so they didn’t have to choreograph the entire match. They can feel it while they’re out there. But they would have to be prepared, regardless of who they thought would win just in case someone didn’t win the vote and they would have to go with the person who did. So they were always very careful with the three options they gave you." That last part is very important, as while it's generally accepted that the votes are real, it's also clear that WWE would often guide fans towards the result they wanted, but if the result didn't go their way they would make it work regardless. That begs the question, if I gave you a couple of options to choose from, but one is clearly better than the other, is that really a fair vote? It's one of those grey areas where it's wrestling, so it's kind of hard to believe in it completely.

One thing in my research for this video that I saw is a lot of fans asking why this isn't done today? Honestly, I wouldn't revive it at all. Taboo Tuesday slash Cyber Sunday existed in a time largely before fans revolting in the arenas. The most rebellion you got was adult male fans booing John Cena while women and children cheered for him. Nowadays if you put out a poll for a match, if the fans aren't into your product they will vote actively against what a company might want. We kind of saw that in TNA years ago when the implemented a fan voting system to determine who the World title challenger would be, and fans would overwhelmingly pick Nigel McGuinness regardless of who TNA wanted.

I've seen many comments claiming that the fan voting idea was ahead of it's time, but actually it might have actually been the exact right time. It existed in a time before fans who had grown unhappy wanted to throw a spanner in the works. Could it work if done again today, yeah maybe? But I feel like it could only be done with a company that has the good will of the fans behind it, and maybe that is now? We won't know for sure unless they someday revive the idea. I mean they once ran a PPV called Fatal Four Way, so I wouldn't put any idea past them...

Sources:

Shelton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INEXpuzgtKI

Edge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EleUkYL4hPI

Freddy Prinze Jr. https://wrestlingheadlines.com/freddie-prinze-jr-details-wwe-using-real-fan-voting-for-cyber-sunday-events/

What happened to NWA TNA's Flying Elvis'?

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can view the video Here.

You've seen the gimmick, maybe even two decades ago, but how much do you know about the winners of NWA TNA's first official match. Introducing the Flying Elvis'.

On June 19th 2002, NWA TNA's first ever event on pay per view, the show opened with a card reshuffle, as a parade of NWA Legends were highlighted. This is because in what would become a trend for TNA a crisis had to be averted. In a pre show match, a wrestler known as Cheex actually broke the ring. As the event opened, you can actually see the Harris twins among others just about completing the repairs. Had this not occurred, it's likely that the first segment of NWA total Non-stop action would have been the match featuring three wrestlers I'm about to tell you about, as former ECW world champion Jerry Lynn teamed with Low Ki, and a rookie AJ Styles, would face the Flying Elvis'.

In the early days of TNA, there were many characters what were clearly written to cater to the most stereotypical of 'Southern' audiences. It's almost like a New Yorker had his pen to the paper, and much of it would not be okay today, bro... You had the heel portrayal of the Rainbow Express, a clearly gay tag team drawing the cheapest of cheap heat, and on the other side of the coin you had Cowboy James Storm firing off cap guns, and even an appearance by Toby Keith who was plugging his song "Courtesy of the red white and blue", which admittedly I kind of liked back then, but the older I get just sounds silly enough to be in Team America: World Police. Getting back to the Flying Elvis gimmick, Jeff Jarrett on My World openly admitted that it was created to resonate with the Alabama crowd. Despite the silliness of the gimmick, lets look at the three men in the role, who they were, and what happend to them. This video isn't going to be about their Elvis runs, more their entire in ring careers.

Jimmy Yang

Let's start with maybe the most successful of the three, Jimmy Yang. Real name James Carlson Jun, Jimmy was born in California to a German Mother and a Korean Father, but was raised in Georgia. In a 2006 interview with Gerweck.net Jimmy confirmed this, and I defy you to find a more mixed heritage wrestler than that. Yang trained to wrestle at the WCW Power Plant, the most famous graduates of which include the Natural Born Thrillers, and a while before that Bill Goldberg. In an interview when asked to comment on his time in the WCW Powerplant Yang described it as Hell, and the hardest thing he has ever been through.

Jimmy would graduate to the WCW roster in early 2000, and would quickly be placed in the gimmick he would keep until the companies end. He would be part of a martial arts inspired trio known as the Jung Dragons, going by the name Yang. His team mates in the group would be Japanese born cruiserweight Kaz Hayashi, and strangely, West Virginia born masked wrestler Jamie-San. Jamie would later be known to some under his real name as former Ring of Honor World Champion James Gibson, but most like likely know him as former WWE Cruiserweight Champion Jamie Noble. It was a WCW gimmick in 2000, of course it had to turn weird somehow. The Jung Dragons were often a highlight of the opening matches of latter day WCW, especially when feuding with fellow cruiserweight trio 3 Count. Their most famous match was possible their trios ladder match against 3 Count, which some consider to be the lone highlight of Starrcade 2000. When WWE acquired WCW, Yang's was one of the many contracts the fed picked up, but Yang would be sent to train at Les Thatchers Heartland Wrestling Association, one of their developmental territories at the time. Unfortunately Jimmy would be released before actually wrestling for WWE.

According to Jimmy Yang himself in a 2022 shoot interview, the original idea for the Elvis gimmick came from Vince Russo, Triple H and Shawn Michaels. Which implies that this was first pitched in WWF, as Yang was in WCW while Shawn, Hunter and Russo were working in New York. Yang claims Vince McMahon shot the idea down, but when Russo went to TNA the idea was allowed to thrive. When Jimmy was first presented with the flying Elvis costume, in his own words he left the room refusing to wear it on national television. Eventually though he conceded, and grew to have fun with the gimmick.

Post WCW, Yang would be signed to WWE in 2003, and would appear as Akio, a yakuza style henchman for Tajiri on Smackdown, teaming with Ryan Sakoda. Yang claims that the name Akio was pitched by a WWE writer who looked in a Japanese phone book for a name and thought Akio was quote, 'the coolest one he found'. Yang would be released in July 2005, but less than a year later after a run in Ring of Honor he would be rehired by WWE, playing a vastly different character. After working a try out match as Akio and impressing WWE management, he would soon be repackaged as Jimmy Wang Yang. The character was based on Yang's Georgia upbringing despite his Asian heritage, and the conflicting perception people had of him. Yang was a popular, but fairly low card act until his second release in 2010. Despite Jimmy being a fixture in two major promotions, I couldn't find evidence of him winning any championships anywhere. He did however win two tournaments in All Japan Pro Wrestling

Nowadays Jimmy seems to has left the wrestling business full time, but still wrestles occasionally. At the time of me making this video for his last match he bizarrely popped up on a recent Pro Wrestling Noah event, losing a six man tag alongside fellow WWE Cruiserweight Super Crazy. Jimmy currently has a side job as well as wrestling where he owns and operates a camouflage clad 'redneck party bus', and a Pink 'Princess party bus' based in Ohio. Meanwhile, Jimmy's daughter has begun her wrestling career. Jazzy Yang has around 30 matches under her belt, the most high profile being at NWA Empowerrr, teaming Miranda Gordy, the daughter of another wrestling veteran, Terry Gordy. Maybe Jazzy will be able to avenge her Father by winning some championship Gold.

Sonni Siaki

Next we have the flying Elvis who was thought to have the most promise, Sonny Siaki. He was apparently a school friend of WCW wrestler Lodi, who advised him to try out for the WCW Power Plant, to which he was accepted. His training is credited to WWE Hall of Famer Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff. Sonny would wrestle on WCW Worldwide and Saturday night, even earning some wins, but would never wrestle on Nitro or Thunder. He would last wrestle for WCW in March of 2000, and would quit the company not liking how he was being treated.

From here Sonny would work independents, and would be booked by Dusty Rhodes' Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling, receiving further training from Dusty. When NWA TNA started Sonny was a day 1 hire, and following his time as a flying Elvis, would stick around as he was considered a future prospect. Back then fans used to compare him to the Rock based on his look and charisma, does that sound familiar? Sonny's career highlight may have been the December 11th 2002 TNA pay per view, where he would defeat Jerry Lynn for the X-Division championship. Sonny would hold the title for about 60 days before losing it to Kid Kash. One of Siaki's last notable matches came at the first TNA Lockdown event on April 24th 2005, when he and Apolo would face Lance Hoyt, now Lance Archer, and Chris Candido. This would be the match where Candido would suffer from a blood clot that would cost him his life.

In early 2006 Sonny would be signed to a WWE developmental contract. He would work for Deep South Wrestling, one of WWE's developmental territories before being moved to FCW when the Deep South relationship ended. in 2007 he would wrestle on two main roster house show tours, on for the Raw brand in February and a second in June for Smackdown, but would never wrestle a televised match for WWE. In September 2007 he would be released from WWE, and a few days later he would publicly comment that he had some personal family issued to deal with, and he was putting those first. In a 2013 interview with the Wrestling Epicenter podcast, Sonny elaborated that those issues pertained to an ill family member. It's not my place to go into details about that but I'll include the link of him talking about it in the description. Sonny would continue to wrestle on the independent scene, presumably having more control of his schedule than a WWE career would allow, but would have his last match in 2009 for Georgia based NWA Prime Time. Whats sad in a way about Sonny's career is that many had high hopes for him, but ultimately he stepped away from the ring for selfless reasons and that ought to be admired.

Jorge Estrada

Unfortunately, the third Elvis had the least of a wrestling career, Jorge Estrada. Born Jorge Moraza in Miami Florida, he would be trained in 99 by Dusty Rhodes, and like Sonny Siaki would wrestle for Dusty's Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling, which would have been his path to NWA TNA. In his time in TNA Jorge wrestled 26 matches, even challenging for the X-Division title once in a losing effort to Low-Ki. Jorge would leave TNA in march 2003 with his final match there being a victory over a villainous Elvis character called Disgraceland. Yep, TNA had a fourth Elvis, and technically three more in a weird period for Jeff Jarrett, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash later on.

Late into the making of this video I also discovered something I'd long forgotten, and thats that while still playing Elvis, Jorge briefly had a valet named Pricilla, clearly named after Elvis' ex-wife, but also as I know her better, star of the Naked Gun movies. According to her IMDB page Priscilla, real name Jodi Horn got into wrestling after meeting Jerry Lawler backstage at a show, and asking to be his Valet. She was part of TNA from their first event, where she was introduced as Miss Joni, one of many women who competed in a lingerie battle royal. After briefly managing Jorge and leaving him for Brian Christopher in November 2002, she seems to have left the wrestling business as best I can tell.

Around this time Jorge seemed to stop wrestling altogether, and there's not a lot of information out there as to what he is doing today. In the Jimmy Yang interview I mentioned earlier from 2006, Yang noted that he hadn't heard from Estrada, and also implied that Jorge was in trouble with the law, but didn't elaborate any further.

It seems though that Estrada achieved some high regard in his time in the ring, as in 2003 he achieved number 182 in the PWI 500. To put this in a modern context, had he placed there this year he would have been ranked between Dax Harwood and Tyler Bate, who are each fairly well respected. I know this isn't exactly a fair comparison given how much wrestling has changed over the past twenty years, but thats still an impressive number, and more when Jimmy Yang didn't even make the list that year.

So why after all these years are the Flying Elvis' still remembered. It feels like an act that should have fallen by the wayside years ago, and yet people still talk about the trio of Elvis impersonators in the early days of TNA. Part of it has to be the sheer gall of TNA to put them over two wrestlers who would become the first X-Division and tag team champions for the promotion, part of it has to be the sheer weirdness of an Asian from Georgia, a Samoan and a Floridian playing the King of Rock and Roll. That'll stick in the memory like a Japanese woman playing Freddy Mercury, or an American suddenly and for no real reason playing Elton John. Oh wait, those are real too. I guess my point is, given how I've been fairly critical of Vince Russo on this channel, fair play to him for creating a gimmick that is for once not remembered for reasons that would get him cancelled if he tried it today. Yes, I'm looking at you The Johnsons.

Sources:

Jimmy Yang Shoot Interview (2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpKLlY9Qo4s

Jimmy Yang 2006 Interview:  https://web.archive.org/web/20080623204251/http://www.gerweck.net/jimmyyanginterview.htm

Yang's bus and daughter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ1iyp8MITU

Sony Siaki 2013 interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHpml4InVbw

Estrada Indie footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTb69O5YeDo

Joni Horn IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1750442/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t14

Disgraceland: https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=1408