Curt Hennig was as smooth as anyone when it came to "pulling a rib."
Rikishi appeared on a recent episode of Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw and talked about some of the most memorable pranks from back in the day. The first story he shared was from a match he had against Mr. Perfect (Curt Hennig) at a big stadium show in Australia.
"You don't even see that coming. Kurt is that smooth. It couldn't have been a better place for him to do it than in front of 70,000 people. I believe we were in Australia," Rikishi said. "We were in Brisbane or Sydney and it was a big, huge coliseum we were at. I worked against Kurt, and Kurt comes with his towel. I'm thinking that he threw his freaking towel out of the ring, but by the time I come to give the Stink Face, he turns around and sticks that damn towel right up the crack of my ass."
According to Rikishi, though, he didn't get upset. The mentality was that you got one-upped, but knew that a receipt was coming your way.
"He would just sit there and just laugh and laugh about it and have a good time. That's how the old school cats were back in the day. Normally somebody would get hot, like, 'Hey, you fucked my shit up in front of people. This shit ain't funny.' For us, it was like, 'Alright, you're one up. I'll catch you the next time.' ... You know what they say; "You give a rib, you better learn how to take a rib because you don't know what type of rib you're going to get," he said.
Perhaps the greatest ribber of them all was Rikishi's uncle, Mr. Fuji. Rikishi recalled Fuji taking the tires off of The Smoking Gunns' car, which almost cost them their newly secured jobs with the WWE. Here is what happened:
"I remember when Smoking Gunns, you remember Bart and Billy when they first came in with the cowboy gimmick. So we had an old Texas run. Of course, they're green and 'we're cowboys, we're superstars.' So they tried to rib Uncle Fuji. They go in and we check into the hotel and we told them, 'Listen, you guys are gonna follow us to the arena, make sure you guys are not late.' So these cats go up -- and they must have done something to Uncle Fuji a week ago. Uncle Fuji didn't forget. So these guys come here -- remember they used to rent those Cadillac Deville's back in the day? It was a lot more roomy for the guys. So these guys just started but they rented that Cadillac Deville. So I was like, 'These guys are already getting big-headed.' We know they should be in a Ford Taurus, but they're in a Cadillac. So Uncle Fuji, as soon as they go upstairs they park their car in the lobby, John, when these guys came back down, all of the tires were off of the damn Cadillac. It was just sitting in the lobby. Guess who hit them? Uncle Fuji. They were late to the show and almost got fired."
The Smoking Gunns made their WWE debut in April 1993. They won the Tag Team Titles three times.
Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2007, Mr. Fuji's sickest prank of them all involved a BBQ, a room full of wrestlers, and his recently deceased dog.
"You know what's probably the most gross rib I've ever heard in my life was Uncle Fuji," Rikishi began by saying. "So the wrestlers came to Uncle Fuji's house and Uncle Fuji, he barbecued. So what happened was one of his German Shepherds a week before the boys were coming through. When the boys came through, he was marinating all this meat. He barbecued this meat and all the boys were like, 'Oh my god, this is good meat. What is it?' Uncle pulled out the head of the animal that passed away and put it up in front of them. Every single person that was there threw up. Till this day, when Uncle Fuji was alive, I have never ever thought about ribbing that man. Even when we were on the road, I would never even cross my mind to rib Fuji."
Rikishi was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2015. He is the father of Jimmy and Jey Uso, the current SmackDown Tag Team Champions.
To read about more pranks by the likes of Owen Hart and Vince McMahon, click here.
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