YMMV / Yokozuna

• Hype Backlash: Modern wrestling fans often have a hard time understanding why a superheavyweight with a sumo gimmick and a moveset limited even for his own weight class can be so well regarded as a worker. To be fair, most of them hadn't born by the time Yoko was in his popularity peak. When Bret Hart says you're a good worker, you're a good worker.
• Narm:
  • Shouting "banzai!" before performing a finishing move can sound impressive and exciting, but only if said move is a high-risk aerial attack or some technique whose inherent danger is so high it evokes a kamikaze attack. When the technique consists in dropping down into a squat from the second rope, even if it looks scarily believable as a finishing move given his size, the metaphor gets a bit lost.
  • A groggy Yokozuna repeatedly falling down on his rear end during his casket match with The Undertaker.
  • The "Chokesline". (Ironically, there is a virtually identical move named nodowa in actual Sumo Wrestling.)
• Too Cool to Live: He, unfortunately, had the actual desire to become the heaviest wrestler of all time and took steps to make that happen. It cost him his life.
• Tear Jerker: The Usos, current WWE wrestlers and relatives to Yokozuna talk extensively about how fun loving and friendly "Uncle Yoko" was on the WWE "True Giants" DVD, showing pictures of him playing with them as kids... then the discussion turns to Uncle Yoko's weight, and how the family was genuinely frightened over it.
• Villain Decay: After dominating much of 1993, 1994 was when Yoko's gravy train slowly derailed, in a string of high-profile losses (including a humiliating loss at WrestleMania X to Bret Hart) he never recovered from. He actually lost a sumo wrestling match, his own gimmick, to Earthquake on an episode of Raw (although to be fair, Earthquake/Tenta was a real life sumotori before becoming a professional wrestler, while Yoko was not).