Kassius Ohno is back in WWE after being released from the company in 2013. He’s an amazing talent with so much potential to mesh with any style put in front of him. Hopefully, there’s a future on WWE’s main roster for Kassius Ohno but there seems to be a stigma to his overall presentation. Although he’s fantastic in every way he doesn’t match the traditional look of a pro wrestler. But the guy still gets over like crazy when given the chance.
Bruce Prichard and Conrad Thomspon were having a discussion about CM Punk on their podcast Something To Wrestle With and took a sidebar to talk about Kassius Ohio. But Ohno was better known to Prichard as the name he used in the indies: Chris Hero.
“Toward the end of my run he was kind of one of those hot indie wrestlers people were looking at and I remember seeing, I wanna say it was ROH — seeing some stuff with Chris Hero that I liked. Becuase I liked his size and there was an awkwardness to him that I liked” Bruce Prichard recalls. Prichard left WWE in 2008 if you’re keeping track which means there were people in WWE who thought he could do something for almost ten years but he still hasn’t appeared on the main roster.
Prichard later spoke about his memories of Chris Hero, the man WWE would make Kassius Ohno and gave his unfiltered opinion on how valuable of an asset Ohno could be to WWE if they’d use him properly.
“I like guys that move and do different stuff in the ring […] He looked real and he had a different and a unique look. It didn’t have the perfect chiseled bodybuilder body. But the son-of-a-b-tch could move. And he could do some damn good stuff so yeah — Chris Hero was another one that was [looked at by WWE]. But that was later I wanna say ’05, ’06 around then.”
Conrad Thompson brought up the story where Kassius Ohno was supposed to be in the OG Shield when first pitched by CM Punk. The story goes Vince put Roman Reigns in Ohno’s spot and did his own thing with them from there. Bruce said if they hadn’t called an audible and put Reigns in Ohno’s spot he would have done great.
“Let me say this about Chris Hero here man,” Prichard said. I know that he was released from WWE because they said he was out of shape and all this other stuff. And I really can’t speak to that, but I can speak to the fact that the guy had a different look and I think that they need guys with different looks and different body types. As long as they can go and they’re in shape and their heart’s good and everything else, they can still go there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“You look at Kevin Owens, you look at Bray Wyatt — those guys don’t have a body builder physique but I would rather watch them than some of the ripped up guys.”
If you use any of the quotes in this article please credit Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard with a H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
