Back in 2000, like many wrestling fans, I had nothing but contempt for WCW. My brothers and I would watch Nitro only around 8:55, in those last few minutes before Raw came on.
But that was still enough time to catch one fan’s sign, reading, “WWF is a joke”.
“WCW however, which features a wrestler named Kwee-Wee, is not a joke”, I remarked sarcastically.
And yet a search of WrestleCrap.com yields no dedicated Kwee-Wee induction. Was he really not as bad as I remembered? The memory can play tricks, you know.
After all, at first I thought his name was “Kiwi”.
Well, it turns out I was right about that; in his first appearances, Kwee-Wee introduced himself as Kiwi. Actually, not just Kiwi, but The Kiwi.
See, there was an SNL character named The Mango, an effeminate model whose charisma bewitched everyone he met — male, female, gay, straight, you name it.
The Kiwi was based on that character, except instead of modeling clothes, he made them…
…and instead of referring to himself in the third person as “The Mango”, The Kiwi referred to himself in the third person as “The Kiwi”.
Also like The Mango, The Kiwi had a phony foreign accent, albeit too inconsistent to be funny. Was he French? Latino?
But having learned its lesson from Lenny & Lodi [note to self: induct Lenny and Lodi], WCW never had its announcers even suggest The Kiwi was gay.
Yes, he wore pink.
Yes, he worked in Wardrobe.
Yes, he was impossibly swishy.
Yes, European dance music started playing whenever he appeared on camera.
But from his first words, Paisley was smitten.
That said, his rizz was so powerful, even the male announcers fell under his spell.
After a few weeks and an altercation with The Artist (Paisley’s man), Kiwi stormed the commissioner’s office and demanded a match. Actually, Kwee-Wee demanded a match, and everyone pretended that had been his name all along.
And no, the name change wasn’t meant to imply Kwee-Wee was kweer.
Instead, it seems Saturday Night Live’s Mango had a rival named—you guessed it—Kiwi….
…meaning WCW’s Mango knock-off shared a name with SNL’s own Mango knock-off. That’s like showing up to a party in the same outfit as a girl whose intellectual property you’d infringed on.
Regardless, Kwee-Wee was a much more suitable name for the character, in that it was dumb as shit.
Speaking of switch-eroos, Kiwi had a wife named Papaya for exactly two days…
…before Hardcore Holly (allegedly) made her quit. It seems Holly didn’t appreciate his girlfriend working for the competition after all he’d done for her (like getting her fired from the WWF).
Shortly thereafter, Papaya returned to TV a changed woman. In just his first month, Kwee-Wee had changed names and wives, and nobody said word one about it.
Papaya #2 lasted a little longer than Papaya #1 (eight days) before being replaced with Paisley.
Though Kwee-Wee looked like a sissy, he was all business in the ring. You could chalk this up to Allan Funk’s experience at the grueling Power Plant school…
…or to the fact that, by his own admission, he didn’t know how he was supposed to play the character. WCW told him to act effeminate…
…but not so effeminate that fans yelled slurs at him or held homophobic signs…
…and also he had to wrestle in a skirt and bathed in body glitter.
Fans never really knew what to make of Kwee-Wee, in more ways than one. When he first stood up for himself against The Artist, he came off as a babyface.
But when he’d lose to a babyface, he’d beat him up after the bell.
And when he’d lose to a heel, he’d beat up the ref. And when he’d win… well, I’m not really sure, because that rarely happened.
One slightly clever thing about the Kwee-Wee character was that explosive temper, wherein he dropped his effete affectations and just yelled.
Less clever was the way Paisley and the commentators had to spoon-feed his “Angry Allan” alter ego to the fans. Paisley dropped the term “alter ego” so casually into conversation that you’d think it meant “middle name”.
After failing to win the Cruiserweight title, Kwee-Wee paired up with Hardcore champion Meng.
This partnership lasted until Meng abruptly jumped ship to the WWF. Not that those two events were connected in any way…
Kwee Wee disappeared, like so many other WCW characters, when the WWF bought it out. Allan Funk would reappear a year later in TNA, where he’d feud with the first Papaya over the Miss TNA crown.
So, in comparison, maybe Kwee-Wee wasn’t such a dumb character after all.
On the other hand, his name was Kwee-Wee.