“Yokozuna Was Very Jealous Of Me” Says Former WWE Intercontinental Champion

A former superstar said that he ended up on Yokozuna’s bad side due to what he thinks amounted to jealousy.

Ahmed Johnson was given a major push in WWE during his first run. He was pushed strongly starting in 1995 and all through 1996, and was even awarded a WWE Slammy in 1996 for “New Sensation of the Squared Circle”.

It was clear that the company had high hopes for him, which is why he was booked to have an interesting confrontation with one of the company’s biggest stars.

In an interview with WrestlingNews.co, Ahmed Johnson discussed having to work with Yokozuna during his early days. According to Johnson, Vince McMahon gave him direct orders to bodyslam Yokozuna, never asking him if he actually could. And when Ahmed went to Yokozuna to explain the situation, the 500-plus-pound Samoan bristled at what Johnson told him and said that he couldn’t cooperate that much.

“When I got to the big show, Vince called me and said, ‘I want you to go down, do a run-in, and bodyslam Yoko.’ He didn’t ask me, could I? He just said, ‘I want you to.’

So I went to Yoko and told Yoko that Vince wants me to slam you and Yoko was very jealous of me at that time because he said, ‘I came from nowhere and ended up on the top of the card.’

Yoko said, ‘Well I hope you can get me up because I’m not going to jump for you.’ I was like, ‘Damn. It’s like that, huh?’

So when I got to the ring, I was so fired up, man. It took everything I had to get him up and over, but I did it.”

Ahmed Johnson’s WWE run ended in 1998 for a number of reasons, among them, according to Johnson himself, allegations of racism and proposals for racially-insensitive angles.