Jimmy Wang Yang: Becoming A Cowboy, DDP, Vince McMahon, Eric Bischoff, Final WCW Nitro

A Yung Dragon, a henchman and a redneck, Jimmy Yang has had multiple memorable runs in pro wrestling, even if Vince McMahon wasn’t aware that he had previously fired him.

After experiencing a rough childhood, Yang set out to follow his dreams of becoming a pro wrestler after seeing Sting on TV and becoming instantly hooked. Following an infamous experience at the Power Plant, Yang teamed up with Kaz Hayashi and Jamie-San [the future Jamie Noble] to form the faction Jung Dragons, who also had Leia Meow as their valet.

Staying with WCW right until the end, Yang was in the building for the final episode of Nitro and the events that followed. Following a first run with WWE that did not play out as he had hoped, Yang was re-hired as one of Tajiri’s henchmen, and was renamed Akio.

After being let go a second time, Yang hoped that the third time would be the charm. However, what Yang didn’t expect was that he would be repackaged once again as the Asian redneck Jimmy Wang Yang.

On Wrestling Life, Jimmy Wang Yang joins Ben Veal to discuss his autobiography, his WCW fandom, meeting Vince McMahon, and how the Asian redneck was pitched to him:

• His rough childhood

• Early memories of WCW and Sting

• Meeting DDP on Halloween

• The WCW Power Plant

• The final Nitro

• Meeting Vince McMahon

• Vince McMahon not realising he had fired Yang

• How Jimmy Wang Yang was pitched to him

Jimmy Yang on writing his life story:

Jimmy Yang, real name James Yun, recently published his life story titled Yun’s Time, which documents his life and career in the professional wrestling world:

"So writing this book, I thought it'd be a good project to do. I started putting pen to paper probably about 15 years ago, and then I finished it, and I realised I had a lot of trauma. Oh, my God, I still have a lot of anger about my childhood. So it was kind of like therapy for me, but realising I don't look in the past, I just kind of move forward. But revisiting the past, I was like yeah, I had a pretty rough journey, and I think I still have some issues I have to work out."

On having a rough upbringing:

Unaware of it at the time, Yang had a tougher childhood than other kids. Along with his father leaving his family while Yang was nine, Yang also missed out on some key life events:

"When you're a kid, you don't realise, you just think it's normal as a kid, this is life, you know. But then when I become an adult, then I look back on my situations, my dad left when I was nine. I have three sisters and one brother. He left all of us for his new wife, and I don't remember the last time I talked to him. I was like, you know, whatever. Then my mom is a die-hard Jehovah's Witness. She's hardcore, every Saturday knocking on people's doors and telling them that they're living their life wrong, and growing up with that religion. We didn't have birthdays, or they didn't celebrate holidays. So it's like, I didn't understand it, but being a kid, and when your birthday comes around, everybody's wishing you happy birthday, and then when they ask you, ‘What are your parents going to get you for your birthday?’ Then it's like, the awkwardness and ‘Yeah, my parents don't celebrate birthdays.’ Then the question is, why? I don't know? They don't appreciate the day that you was brought into this world? It just didn't make sense to me. But getting you know that was childhood, and you thought that was normal, because you kind of believe everything your parents tell you when you're a kid, but then getting older, I'm like, wow, they're really horrible people. So it's kind of crazy."

On WCW icon Sting:

Hooked on wrestling from an early age, it was Sting who ignited Yang’s passion for the sport, with Yang being lucky enough to interact with The Icon at a live event:

"Growing up in Atlanta, and then I grew up in poverty, so we only had one TV in the household, and we didn't have cable, but we had public broadcasting, and my TV could only pick up two channels. We had the antennas with the aluminium foil on there. So the best two channels were PBS and TBS. I do like Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers, but I love Atlanta Braves baseball and WCW wrestling. So the first time I saw Sting, he hooked me. I was like that's my Superman and really my role model, because my dad left, like I wanted to be just like Sting.

So he hooked me, and then even my mom took me to my first WCW live event at the Cobb County Civic Center in Georgia, and I was just 11 years old. When we walked into the arena, I saw the ring and the lights. I'm like, wow, this is awesome, wrestling live! Then the wrestlers are coming down, and they're like real-life superheroes. I'm running to the barricade. I'm like, Oh my God, these guys are awesome. I’m sticking out my hand, like, ‘Please touch me!’ And then Sting’s music hit. ‘Please slap my hand!’ He gave me that high five. I was like, I'm never washing his hand again. But he's the one that hooked me on professional wrestling."

On the start of his pro wrestling journey:

While Yang had an extensive background in other sports, including an offer to pursue baseball, wrestling was at the top of the list, and Yang was determined to make it happen:

"It was my sophomore year in high school, everybody started to think about what they're going to do after high school, people going to college or army or anything like that, stuff like that. I wasn't the best student. I really only graduated because I was really good at sports. But then that year is like, okay, what are you going to do after high school? I played baseball, football, basketball and wrestling, but I was really good at baseball, so I got an offer for college baseball, and then I was obsessed with wrestling. At the time, I was like, man, what would be the coolest job to have for a grown-up? Baseball player would be really cool, but being a professional wrestler, that would be the ultimate job. That's the coolest job in the world. So I started doing my research about how to get into professional wrestling. Actually, I went to the grocery store. I didn't buy the magazines, but I'd go there and sit at the magazine counter and read all the wrestling magazines, and then one magazine that in the back had, how do you get into professional wrestling by Percy Pringle, aka Paul Bearer.

So I ripped that out and stole, or borrowed it, you know. But how I got into professional wrestling is my best friend in high school, his name's Ryan Forrester. He was on the same basketball team with me, and he got kicked off because of grades. So he started spending more time at church, and then he met a local wrestling promoter, and then he was talking to him and said, Oh yeah, me and my friend. We love wrestling. We do it in the backyard every day. We dress up anytime we can as wrestlers, and all this kind of stuff. He said, Oh, okay, well why don't you come down and come train with us. And then he came back and told me he went to wrestling practice. I gotta go too. So the next week, I followed him, and then we started wrestling at a bar in Atlanta, wrestling at 17."

On living close to DDP in Atlanta growing up:

After finding out that WCW star DDP lived close by, Yang and his friends made plans to turn up at Page’s house on Halloween, which led to a wrestling memory he would cherish forever:

"So that's the thing, I was crazy about wrestling, but the next town over is where DDP lived, and Eric Bischoff, and those kids in that town went to my high school. And in school, everybody knew I was the crazy wrestling fan. And then some of the kids said, ‘Hey, we got a wrestler that lives in our neighbourhood.’ I'm like, what? Who? But they didn't know wrestling. They said, ‘Oh, you know, he's tall and he has blonde hair, he has a curly mullet, and he goes bang!’ I was like Diamond Dallas Page lives in your neighbourhood?! Then Halloween was coming up, so me and my friends, we know which neighbourhood he lives in, so we're gonna make the ultimate plan. We're gonna all dress up as wrestlers and go to every single house till we find his house. That's what we did.

I remember finding his house, we knock on the door, and then Kimberly Page opens the door. I'm like, Oh my God, the prettiest thing I've ever seen in my life. She's like, ‘Oh, you guys are so cute! I gotta go get Page for this.’ I'm like, he's here? No way! He comes down, he comes to the door, and he goes ‘Bang!’ We just all pop and like, oh my God, this is great! And he was so cool, said, ‘Come inside, let's take pictures.’ We went inside, took pictures, and it was so awesome. And then we're leaving his house, and then Eric Bischoff drives by, yells out, ‘DDP sucks, NWO rules!’ And was like, Oh my God, there's Eric Bischoff! But I forgot my book bag at Page's house. So I said, Oh, I'll be right there. I gotta go get my book bag, you know. So I opened the door and said Hey Page, I forgot my book bag. So okay, go get it. Grabbed a book bag, and then I was leaving. I turned to him, I say, ‘Hey, DDP, I know how to wrestle. I wrestle in the backyard and for the high schools.’ He said, ‘When you get old enough, come back, I'll take you to the Power Plant.’ I was like, that sentence changed my life, because I thought it was going to be possible to get a try-out with WCW wrestling because DDP said, when I get old enough, I can come back and he's gonna take me down there. And that's when I really got into professional wrestling. I read every book, researched every wrestler, worked out like crazy and did everything I could to get that opportunity with DDP."

On his WCW Power Plant experiences:

Finally signed to WCW, Yang and a group of aspiring Cruiserweights turned up at the Power Plant for training, and experienced first hand the infamous training techniques of Sarge:

"So even that first day, me and Ryan pulled up in the parking lot and were ready to go in, and at the door, it's Shane Helms and Shannon Moore. That's the first time I met those guys. They all hired us at the same time. And then, okay, let's go in, you know. We knock on the door and say, ‘Hey, we're here to meet Paul Orndorff. We're wrestlers.’ And they look at us like we're crazy, like, ‘You guys are wrestlers? You guys are 180 pounds! Wait right here, we have to get this cleared.’ We felt like we stood outside forever. What is going on? So then they finally let us in, and the first person we see is Sarge. And we say, Hey, Sarge, I'm Jimmy, Ryan Shannon, Shane. Sarge says, ‘I don't give a f*ck who you guys are! What are you doing here?’ We say, ‘We have a meeting with Paul Orndorff.’ Sarge says, ‘Oh no you don't! What are you doing? I gotta figure this out. You guys go stand in the corner.’ Okay, we gotta go stand in the corner. This is my first introduction to Shannon and Shane, and it was sort of like nervous and scared everything. So I started cracking jokes with Shannon and Shane, and we start laughing. [Sarge] turns around like, ‘What the f*ck are you guys laughing at? You guys want to try out. Let's have a f*cking tryout.’ They tried to kill us that day, they just beat our ass for eight hours. It was rough, it was really rough. And then that day is done. So then the next day we show up, and Paul shows up that day to work, and then we talk to him and he says, ‘Hey, so what'd you guys do yesterday?’ And we explained what happened, and he got in, came outside and said, ‘Hey, guys, these guys already had contracts yesterday. You guys didn't have to do that to them.’ But the first day was the hardest, but the second day was hard, but not as hard as the first day."

On WCW's buyout by Vince McMahon:

A part of WCW in 2001, Yang witnessed firsthand the day that World Championship Wrestling closed its doors, along with the shock angle that took place at the end of the show:

"I was definitely going with the flow. But as a WCW guy growing up, and even now, I would never have thought WCW would go out of business. Even with the bad business and the decisions and all that kind of stuff, WCW is a staple in the world. It's not going anywhere, all these rumours about who is buying it, Bischoff and all the talks about it getting bought by someone. But even that last Nitro, it was in Panama City. I'm from Georgia, so all my friends found out that we're doing Nitro in Panama City during spring break and they're like, ‘Man, this is awesome. Jimmy, please come down early, we're gonna do spring break. You're a WCW wrestler. We're gonna have a good time.’ So we get down there early, and that whole week I'm just having fun as a 19-year-old WCW wrestler on spring break. So I'm just having a lot of fun. I just remember going to Nitro, and I said, okay, now it's Nitro, time to go to work. I walk up, and we see all this WWE signage, like it's, ‘Talent relations that way, talents that way. Catering is that way.’ We didn't have that in regular WCW, this is different.

Then we have the talent meeting, and get everybody in the room. We're sitting there, and all of a sudden, Shane McMahon walks in. I'm like, Whoa! And then Briscoe and Pritchard walk in behind them, and then I was like, I can't believe what I'm seeing. Then they told us what happened. We bought WCW. Tonight we're gonna put the last Nitro on, but we're gonna try to rebrand it and do our own WCW. Then they say, The Jung Dragons, you guys have a match with Rey Mysterio and Juventud, and then with Shannon and Evan in a three-way tag team match. I'm like, Okay, now thinking about wrestling. And then we have a match, and we kill it. I come back. But I'm still such a fan at heart, I don't want to sit in the back and watch the monitors. I like to sneak out in the balcony and see it live, because I like the live energy. The angle, I'm like, is the greatest angle I've ever seen in my life. You got WWE versus WCW, got Vince versus Shane. And there today, they told me that they're going to pick my contract up. I'm like, oh my god, this is awesome. This angle is so cool, and I'm gonna be part of it. This is gonna be amazing. After I watched the angle, I watched the rest of the show, I went back in the back, and then reality hit me. I walk in the back, and everybody back there is crying and hugging each other. I didn't realise 95% of the people just lost their jobs. I was super excited about the angle and got my contract, and then I was really sad about what happened to 90% of the company."

On the WWE Cruiserweights:

Although WWE was known as the land of the giants and still favoured the larger athletes when WCW was bought out, Rey Mysterio’s high-flying style and the competition opened the door for the smaller stars to get their shot in the company:

"Rey kind of opened the door for all of us to go there. But even with TNA, the X Division, all that stuff started to catch fire, and they just saw the demand for the Cruiserweights and the kind of style matches that we had, it was awesome. All those cruiserweights were amazing wrestlers, but SmackDown definitely felt like the wrestling show and featured more to cruiserweights."

On his time as Akio:

Making his return to WWE, Yang was a part of the SmackDown brand as one of Tajiri’s henchmen. Alongside Sakoda, the former Yung Dragon was repacked as Akio:

"Vince controlled everything. I know they say all these other creative people and all this kind of stuff, but Vince gives the final say. I don't really know how that character came about. I know they had to Tajiri, and then they signed Ryan Sakoda, and then I was wanting to come back at that time. Then it kind of happened because it was so fast with me, because I was still wrestling in Japan, and it was, yeah we're going to sign you, and then you're going to debut next week at the pay per view. I'm like, well, that's kind of quick. So, okay, let's do it. But Tajiri was scared to do the gimmick because we were portraying the Japanese mafia, and Yakuza used to have a lot of ties in professional wrestling in Japan, so, like, he was worried about that. And then Ryan Sakoda had an injury, so that faction kind of fell apart really quick."

On becoming Jimmy Wang Yang:

After former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon had a surprise meeting with Yang backstage, and discovered that he did not know that he had fired the former Akio, Yang was rehired and given an entirely new persona:

"So I wasn't expecting to go back at all, but I started talking to this really hot blonde. She was super hot, she's on the Diva Search. But WWE was coming to Lexington, Kentucky, so that was an hour and a half from Cincinnati, and I wanted to impress this girl. ‘Hey, you want to go to the pay-per-view? WWE pay-per-view. Get some good seats and all this kind of stuff, wine and dine.’ She's like, ‘Yeah, that sounds fun.’ Okay, let me hook this up. So we go down there, and I go in the back to go get the tickets, and me and Vince cross paths. We see each other, and Vince looks at me like, ‘Jimmy, where the hell have you been?’ I was like, ‘You fired me.’ Vince says, ‘I did? Are you serious?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘We got to talk about this. Just stay here. I got to go do this rehearsal. I'll be back. I want to talk to you.’ So, okay. Now I was like, did he not know he fired me? That's crazy.

You start thinking about this. Guy runs a billion-dollar company every day. He has so many decisions to make. Of course, some things are gonna slip through the table. So I go to catering, I get a steak and potato. Start eating my steak, and also all these people run into me, say, ‘Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. Hey, what are you doing?’ I’m eating a steak? ‘Can you come to ringside?’ Yeah, okay, I'll come to ringside. So I'll go to ringside. And I don't know what PPV it was, but it was Vince versus God, right? And then something was with the Spirit Squad and Shawn Michaels, and so they wanted the Spirit Squad to throw Shawn Michaels up in their finishing move and go through tables. Me and Shawn are about the same size. So they say, ‘Jimmy, you mind doing this bump to make Shawn feel comfortable taking the bump?’ I say, yeah okay, whatever. So I get in the ring, and Michael PS Hayes looks at Vince, like, ‘Hey, Vince, you think Jimmy should do this? He's not under contract.’ Vince says, ‘He should be under contract. Let him do it!’ They toss my ass up and 20 feet in the air, go through the tables. ‘Hey, Jimmy, what do you think? How did that feel?’ I say, ‘Yeah, I didn't die, so it's okay.’ I told Shawn. I was like, ‘Yeah, it's not too bad, you'll be fine.’ Then I get out of the ring, and then he was like, ‘Stay here. I want to talk to you after we're done.’ Okay. So I go back to catering. I finished my steak, I get the tickets, and I’m talking to girls, yeah, I got the fifth row, right behind the right under the cameras. We have a good time. And then they come to me and say, ‘Hey, Jimmy, what are you doing tomorrow?’ This is what I have planned for tonight, so I'm gonna have a long night tonight. And they say, ‘Hey, can you come to the Raw tomorrow?’ It's in Columbus, Ohio. So I said, ‘Okay, okay, I'll come to Raw tomorrow. I'll put my plans on hold a little bit.’ So I go to Raw, walk in, and it's like, ‘Hey, we got you in a match on Sunday Night Heat versus Charlie Haas.’ I'm like, cool. Then the girl is with me as I go put her in the stands, and me and Charlie go out there. We have an awesome match. So I was like, Man, this is awesome.

So the first night I got the girl tickets, the second night she got to see me perform. I'm like, Oh yeah, I'm in. Then I get done, and they say, ‘Hey, Jimmy, what are you doing tomorrow? Can you come to Cincinnati for SmackDown?’ That's my hometown. So yes, I'll come to Cincinnati. Then when I walk in the building, they grab me and say, ‘Hey, we're gonna hire you back.’ This is my third time with WWE. I'm like, man, it's kind of unheard of, but I wanted to go thank Vince, because he's hired me three times. So I'll go to his office, knock on the door. ‘Hey Vince.’ ‘Oh, Jimmy, come in. I didn’t know you were fired. Last time, I didn't let you talk, because you're this Korean dude that grew up in Georgia. But this time, we're gonna make a negative out of positive. I'm gonna make you the Asian redneck! Ha ha ha! That's funny! And your name's gonna be Wang Yang. Jimmy Wang Yang, because it rhymes. You stand there like this is really weird. ‘Yeah, Vince, I'll do whatever you want. As long as that paycheck comes every Monday. So, yeah, I'll be there, but thanks for having me again.’ He says, ‘No problem, get out of my office.’ So I get out of the office, that was really, really odd. Then I realized that me trying to get laid turned me into an Asian redneck."

On his WWE entrance music:

Although fans enjoyed the country-inspired Jimmy Wang Yang theme, Yang did not share the same view as he wanted something more energetic before making his entrance:

"That's the thing. I know people love that music, but I actually hated it for wrestling music, because it was so slow. I couldn't get fired up to do what I'm about to do. I'm like, Man, I need something faster. I do like country music. I like folk music, but it's a time and place like when you're relaxing on the porch sipping some whiskey or something. That's the time to listen to that music. It's not the time right before you're about to fight somebody."

On his daughter Jazmine:

Looking to train the next generation as part of his wrestling school, Yang’s daughter Jazmine has already wrestled all over the United States and in Japan, and her father predicts that Jazmine will have a bright future:

"Yeah, she's doing really well. She's killing it. She's 22 now, and I tell everybody that she's so much better than me at that age. She's smarter than me, she's prettier, thinks better, she's doing really well. She's been to Japan twice, she's wrestled all over the states, New York, Texas, California, Puerto Rico, but she really wants to go to Spain and Europe. That's her next goal. So I gotta bring her over there."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alex Hunt is and has been a professional wrestling fan for over 20 years after getting hooked on WWE SmackDown every Saturday morning during the Ruthless Aggression Era.

Along with being the owner and writer for news and analysis website Features of Wrestling, Alex is also the transcriber and researcher for Chris Van Vliet. He previously worked for Inside The Ropes as the head writer and transcriber with more than 5,000 articles published, and was also on AEW media calls with Tony Khan.

When Alex isn’t writing about wrestling professionally, he spends the majority of his spare time running, playing guitar or watching F1 with his cat Ron.