Fans got a three-for-one debut in 1998, when a trio attacked WWF Light Heavyweight Champion Taka Michinoku the night after WrestleMania XIV. The men would soon be revealed as Kaientai, a Japanese faction Taka formerly was a member of. The group included Dick Togo, Mens Teioh and Sho Funaki. Although it was on the undercard, three men assaulting a champion still was a pretty big surprise. Kaientais run as a stable would only last through 1998, when everyone left except Funaki and Taka (who had rejoined the group a short time after they debuted). The two remained as a tag team, notably serving as comic relief by delivering badly dubbed promos about how they were evil. Kaientai also gave fans the Val Venis Choppy choppy your pee-pee! moment when the porn star slept with Kaientais managers wife. The less said about that, the better.
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.
