WWE Hall Of Famer Rikishi has divulged a touching story involving former WWE Champion Yokozuna and the giant star’s even bigger heart.
Yokozuna was at the heart of the World Wrestling Federation as the company’s dived into the New Generation of the mid-nineties. The supposed Japanese star was the man who put Hulkamania to bed when he defeated Hogan at the King Of The Ring in 1993, to reclaim the WWF Championship he lost to the Immortal One at WrestleMania 9. Around this time Rikishi was yet to don the yellow shades and dance his troubles away and was teamed with Samu as The Headshrinkers.
The mighty Yokozuna was in fact a member of the fabled Anoa’i wrestling dynasty and his cousin Rikishi discussed the behemoth while speaking to fellow WWE Hall Of Famers Gerald Brisco and JBL on Stories With Bradshaw and Brisco.
“Yoko won the [WWF Championship] back in the day so Yoko was the guy. Me and Sammy [Samu] were mid-carders back in the day and we won the [WWF Tag Team Title] and I’m thinking ‘okay we got the belts, we’re gonna make some real good money now.'”
“What happened was, I dipped most of my savings. I had just signed a contract with WWE so I dipped most of my savings and said ‘dammit I’m gonna buy me a house for my kids.’ Make sure we’re gonna start off with that so when I bought this freakin’ house, a couple of weeks later we’re on the road and I got a call from my family. Sefa and my twins were young back in the day and this house had no heat and it was freakin’ freezing back in Pensacola, Florida.”
“Me and Yoko were on the road and Yoko loved my kids. Like it was Uncle Rodney when Uncle Rodney came home, he’d shower these kids with hundred dollar bills and I’d get hot at him for giving my kids a hundred f*cking dollars because I can’t give them that. So when [Yoko] comes home, they’re all happy to see him but when I come home it’s like they’re waiting but I’m not gonna give them a hundred dollars.”
Rikishi continued by discussing how generous Yokozuna was to him and his family after finding about the situation with their freezing house:
“We were riding on the road and he was like ‘what’s wrong?’ I said ‘man my freaking heating went out in the house, I got to figure it out.’ He could feel that I was stressing – where can I make a loan? How am I gonna fix it? He popped open his checkbook man, he signed it, didn’t even put a number on there and he just gave it to me. [Yokozuna said] ‘Go home and fix the heat for your family.'”