2. WCW Never Had Any Asian Employees. At All.
One of Onoo's claims in his lawsuit was not strictly about discrimination. He claimed discrimination as a cause, but one of the issues was that he believed he should have been treated as an employee with benefits when he was an independent contractor. Not in the sense that he felt all wrestlers should be as much as he felt that it was warranted in his specific case. Much of that argument had to do with how Jimmy Hart was treated: Hart was, like Onoo, on-screen talent as a manager who had a number of backstage duties. Eventually, since Hart is so well-liked and he was doing so much, he was made an employee. Onoo, who had a TBS Inc. corporate credit card, a WCW business card, an office, a key card to WCW's headquarters, and so on, was never made an employee.
At one point, Onoo alleged that he couldn't think of WCW ever hiring any Asians in a position of power, much less as employeeees in any roles. There were numerous Asian independent contractors, mainly as wrestlers on the active roster, with Onoo being the only one in the office, even if he wasn't an actual employee. WCW did not answer this allegation in any of the documents we procured. Think about this for a second: It's one thing that there were never any Asians in power. Barring employees in the office who had nothing to do with the wrestling product, I can't think of anyone aside from Onoo who would have had a shot at the booking committee or anything like that. Most of the Asian performers in WCW were Japanese nationals with limited knowledge of English who were in for short stints since it wasn't their primary job. The only Japanese star with the requisite English language skills that comes to mind is The Great Muta, who was working full-time at home. Having said that, he said they had no Asian employees at all. Period. Ever. He was there for almost five years, worked at both the office and live events, and never saw a single Asian employee. Even the number of the black employees was very low, and this is an Atlanta-based company we're talking about. Think about that for a second. They didn't have the type of gigantic office staff WWE has had for years, but in 2000, the year the suit was filed, Asians made up 4.2% of the U.S. population and 3.3% of Atlanta's population, so there should have been someone, somewhere.