It sounds weird to say this since hes a prime offender of racist behavior, but thank God for Rowdy Roddy Piper. When WWE debuted a new superstar decked out in tribal gear including a headdress and a shield it took Piper all of three seconds to correct Vince McMahons introduction of Saba Simba by blurting out, Hold on, thats Tony Atlas. What made the segment so surreal was listening to McMahon claiming that Atlas, a former WWE Tag Team Champion and Mr. USA, was proud of his heritage (with no mention of where he was descended from), and Piper scoffing that that was a ridiculous claim and he looked foolish. Piper immediately burying the gimmick probably saved the day. Otherwise, Vince might have tried to have Kamala and Saba Simba form a tag team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG5LI168rBo We see it all the time with superstars being repackaged and reinvented, but taking a guy who had been around in professional wrestling for 15 years as just a strongman and turning him into a dancing tribal performer is just ludicrous.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
