Chris Champion, who wrestled for Jim Crockett Promotions as one half of the New Breed tag team and later re-created himself as Yoshi Kwan in World Championship Wrestling passed away today at the age of 57. His passing was initially announced by former WWF and Memphis star Wolfie D on his Facebook page.
Champion, real name Christopher Ashford-Smith was trained by the Malenko family and began working in Florida during the tail end of the Florida territory's existence.
The New Breed tag team with Sean Royal had a pretty unique back story, as they were billed as time travelers from the future who had to 1986 from 2002, where Dusty Rhodes was President of the United States. The team held the Florida Tag titles while Champion had a run with the Bahamas title.
They moved to Jim Crockett Promotions, where they were an underneath team. They were to be programmed against the Rock N' Roll Express but Champion was injured in a car accident. When he returned to television wearing a cast, it was decorated with microchips and other computer paraphernalia. They went into a program with the Midnight Express, but that too was done before it had a chance to go anywhere as Sean Royal opted to retire to focus on his family.
After that team ended, Champion teamed with his brother, who was billed as Mark Starr and also had a short run billed as "Karate Kid", playing off of the Ralph Macchio film of the same name. After leaving Crockett, Champion and Starr worked as a team in Continental and Champion worked under a mask as Cowabunga, playing off of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon characters. He worked for the USWA as one of the rotating heels who feuded with Jerry Lawler, before rebooting himself as Yoshi Kwan.
The Yoshi Kan character, allegedly a mercenary from the Orient playing up all the caricature stereotypes one might image, was brought into WCW. Managed by Harley Race, he worked the mid-card of WCW, putting over babyfaces on their way to facing Big Van Vader and was a regular on WCW programming. His most notable storyline was against Mick Foley. Foley had been injured and taken out by Vader and when he was, Vader and Race had taken a pouch containing something important to Foley. In Foley's quest to get to Vader, he had to get past Kwan, defeating him at Fall Brawl '93, regaining the pouch in the process.
After the WCW run ended, he continued working as Kwan on the independents in the Southern part of the United States. He suffered a massive stroke in 2002 and it took some time, but he eventually recovered and returned to the ring, where he worked as Sinn, wrestling on and even booking smaller promotions.
There is no word yet on the cause of Champion's death. One story that has been passed around is that he suffered another stroke, but we have not 100% confirmed that to be correct
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