Savio Vega

Oh yeah almost forgot the ''Carribean Kid''

I was really into his run at King of the Ring and his run with Austin was a fun mid card storyline.

I was never a fan.

Though his BCA figure looked like a pug dog with how they made his eyes and face for it ha ha ha

Kwang had the most upside since combat fighting games were popular at the time. Problem is that his body made for bad optics to pull that off. He looked more like E Honda than the stereotype

Savio Vega was an anachronism similar to Tatanka of an Ethnic Rican for a New York audience for a modern audience that was neither Puerto Rican nor Northeastern. He had decent fire, but he was unrelatable. He would have been a possible mainstay in the midcard in the 70s

That he was placed in the Nation of Domination was WWE trying to retain the Nation of Islam character of the group without delving into Afrocentrism that made for heat with the audience. Same with steroid peddler Crush. Why is a Rican and an Aryan Nations biker guy in the Nation? Clarence Mason was legitimately funny - a blowhard NOI attorney with an obnoxious affect typical of the NOI in public: "Lemme educate you!" The gimmick didn't go over since it was transparently phony otherwise

The gang wars made for good TV and a thin budget between the Truth Commission, Disciplines of Apocalypse, Nation of Domination, and Los Boricaus

- Truth Commission: crafted by that hillbilly Jerry Jarrett since he thinks, being a Movement Conservative hack, Tennessee racists would be scared of pro-apartheid South Afrikaners (race traitors to them, basically). To whatever degree that got over in Tennessee, I don't know, but it only made for cool optics in the WWF. Why would a national audience care about pro-apartheid group when Boomers had a knack for name-dropping MLK (equality) and Hitler (evil) any time they had to chime in their political opinions? It was nothing more than filler. This gets dumber once it's known that two are French Canadians and one is American

- Nation of Domination finally started to make sense since everyone in that group was black. Again, this is a "ripped from the headlines" Nation of Islam interpretation. It makes no sense to add non-blacks to the group, especially when one knows Louis Farrakhan's politics?

- Disciples of Apocalypse was more convincing. Pretty much a babyface Aryan Nations biker gang. Group died when Crush left since Chainz was a connected indy wrestler at best. Crush, who did objectively suck, as one of the more plodding, uninspiring big wrestlers ever employed, yet seemingly present for a decade, was the most experienced

- Los Boricaus made sense in terms of being all plausibly of the same ethnicity. Problem is Perez was a jobber who might have won a match on Superstars; Estrada and Castillo were unknowns with no real introduction. Perez was the most amusing since his back hair was gross. Konnan played a better cholo than all of them. Boricaus had a funny theme song


I just think WWF had no idea what to do with him. His body was unimpressive, his peak was as a face, Kwang had the greatest upside except he couldn't play the character, and he kind of meandered for the rest as an ad hoc filler character or as a stock character. At least he was more culturally relevant under the Los Boricaus than as a Caribbean folk hero in an era whose audience no longer resonated with that. And Konnan played a better cholo in every sense

WWF 1996-1997 was weird like that: Scott Putski, Rocky Maivia, New Blackjacks, Savio Vega. Seemed like McMahon was experimenting with 70's style gimmicks, only for all of them to be roundly rejected.

Kwang will forever be one of my favorite New Gen gimmick jobbers. I would buy that Mattel figure immediately if they ever released one.

Savio was fine, but I think they made a major mistake by pushing him way too hard out of the gate. He was barely a month in by the time of King of the Ring 1995 when he had THREE matches in one night on PPV. Way too much exposure for a guy that the audience barely knew let alone actually cared about. He will unfortunately always have the stink of that event on his resume.