Sony Onoo was recently a guest on the Cut The Promo podcast with Jordan Garber, and in the interview he discussed his career in the wrestling ring, as well as what it was like to have Eric Bischoff bringing him into the WCW, the Cruiserweight division, and what he credits part of the WCW’s demise to.
On Eric Bischoff bringing him to WCW
Eric Bischoff and I were karate mates. We’d travel across the country on the weekends and that’s how we became friends.. Many years later Eric Bischoff started working with Turner and there was some issue with NJPW at the time and Eric asked me to help repair that relationship. Right after our time in Japan he said “hey you have to help me come on board and keep this thing going with New Japan” and I became the agent officer. Mainly for NJPW I done some on air work and prior to that I done movies. Including some martial art movies so I’ve been on a camera before. So I knew at least somewhat of how a production works.
On WCWs Cruiserweight Division
If you really follow the history you find that because of WCW. Quote on quote cruiserweight talent that made wrestling different. It’s not to bigger than life. The different style wrestling. Not too many big guys to be doing a hurricirana or moonsaults although Vader did it. You just don’t see that fast paced, holy cow kind of action. These different type of matches that you is must faster paced, and if you add Japanese strong style. Along with the acrobatic of cruiserweights and the stuff they were doing were a phenomenon and thus the cruiserweight matchup back than needed a lot of background stories.
On Vince Russo being a huge part of WCWs demise
I think one of the reasons why WCW got bought out was because of Time Warner Merger. I think that has more to do with it than anything else. The programming was suffering because Eric Bischoff was gone I believe in September of 99. They brought in Vince Russo who just made a mockery of wrestling. He just made a mockery of a lot of stuff that we hold dear in wrestling. The demise of popularity in Nitro is on his shoulders. But as far as demise of the company it’s self was the demise of Time Warner Merger.
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