There are always valid reasons to be critical of WWE. We’ve seen how the legendary Mick Foley has distanced himself from them in the wake of President Donald Trump’s abhorrent commentary in the wake of the murder of director Rob Reiner. It just so happens that during the weekend preceding that horrendous news, I watched some of Saturday Night’s Main Event. It featured the final match in John Cena’s pro-wrestling career. His vision for the night was to highlight superstars from WWE’s farm system, NXT. So, in that spirit, NXT superstars earned the right to face WWE main roster superstars. This set up a match between NXT Champion Oba Femi and WWE Champion Cody Rhodes.
A bright future ahead
Femi, whose real name is Isaac Ogdubesan, is Nigerian and portrays himself as a Nigerian “Ruler” in the WWE universe. As he made his entrance during Saturday’s show, I realized two things. One, he looks like he absolutely belongs on WWE’s main shows. He’s a star from his stature to his presence. He commands our attention before he even says a word. Secondly, it’s refreshing to see a character on WWE TV portray an African ethnicity and be taken seriously. It led me to think about how far we’ve come through those portrayals we see in the present day.
Today, we have Femi, we have Kofi Kingston, who really got to highlight his Ghanaian heritage while he was WWE champion, and even Apollo Crews. Crews briefly portrayed a character as a homage to his Nigerian heritage. He took on the role of a Nigerian Prince who not only won the WWE Intercontinental Championship but also got a match at WrestleMania 37 against “Big E.” Saturday night, I thought to myself, “Damn, this really beats the examples of African characters that I saw growing up.”
You see, as a Black kid from Brooklyn, the Black wrestlers of my time were like Koko B. Ware. He was a high-flying, very charismatic and entertaining wrestler. But he wasn’t one who was put in more serious roles. There was Virgil, who was once a manager for and lackey for the “Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase. But Virgil didn’t have the skills for the company to invest in as a top-tier talent. During the early 1990s, there were two wrestlers who portrayed African characters, but they were exaggerated, cartoonish versions of what I suppose white America viewed Africans to be.
Tony Atlas’ cautionary tale
There’s Tony Atlas, who in the 1980s became one-half of the WWE Tag Team Champions with the father of The Rock, Rocky Johnson. By the early 1990s, in the more cartoonish landscape of pro-wrestling characters, Atlas was saddled with the character Saba Simba. He was a babyface (good guy) Ugandan Warrior who would enter the ring and perform this mockery of a tribal dance as part of his entrance. To a mostly white audience at the time, it was a pretty repulsive presentation.
Atlas, simply dubbed Mr. USA in the 1980s, was a character with some promise. Hell, he squared off with Hulk Hogan during that period. Personal issues with him derailed his trajectory. But that doesn’t absolve the creative team from having him assume the role of Saba Simba come the 1990s.
Not quite the second in command
On the other end of this spectrum, you have Kamala “The Ugandan Giant.” I know that you’re sensing a pattern here. Kamala, whose name isn’t pronounced as our former Vice President, was a heel (bad guy) during the time that I watched him. However, in the 1980s, he was portrayed as a much more vicious character. Regardless, in the early 1990s, he was a character who didn’t speak any language, made weird noises, and slapped his belly in some sort of ritualistic way. It was such a caricaturized view of what an African pro-wrestler could be.
When you look at this juxtaposition, there are certainly tons of contemporary reasons why the characters of yesteryear couldn’t fly in today’s landscape. One of the biggest reasons is that society just won’t allow it, and with good reason. I’ll always continue to champion nuanced optics of Black people in pro-wrestling. We can look around the whole industry and see reasons why we can’t turn back. Look no further than Queen Aminata or Bishop Kaun as examples. The era of portraying African talent as mere afterthoughts is over. And even in an imperfect company like the WWE, they’re getting it right.
