By the time Christopher Dennis Ashford‑Smith, better known to the wrestling faithful as Chris Champion, shuffled off this mortal coil in 2018, his résumé read less like a Hall of Fame plaque and more like a stack of old territory posters found in a Waffle House dumpster. Yet, to dismiss him as another fallen mid‑carder is to miss the madness. Champion was a time traveler, a turtle, a karate kid, a faux Asian mystic, a booking committee’s fever dream that just happened to lace up boots.
He wasn’t Hulk Hogan. He wasn’t even Tugboat. But for a few brief, neon‑lit years, Chris Champion and his wild bag of gimmicks provided the wrestling world with exactly what it needed most: a reminder that this business is one long, smoke‑stained joke where the punchline usually hurts.
The Future Came Too Soon
In 1986, Florida fans got their first look at Champion when he teamed with Sean Royal to form The New Breed. They weren’t just another tag team. No, these guys claimed to have been sent back from the year 2002 — a future where Dusty Rhodes was the President of the United States and robots fetched you a cold beer. With haircuts that looked like rejected Flock of Seagulls auditions and gear so bright it could give a man seizures, they danced to the Beastie Boys’ “Fight For Your Right to Party” and meant it.
For about five minutes, they were hot. They captured the Florida Tag Titles, ran off at the mouth about hovercrafts and politics, and worked the Rock ’n’ Roll Express. Then real life intervened. Champion and Royal got into a legit car accident, and when Champion came back, he was wearing a cast covered in computer parts because apparently in the future RadioShack doubled as a hospital. The bit was so ridiculous that the fans actually bought in, and suddenly the time‑traveling heels were babyfaces. But then Royal hung up the boots, and Champion was left stranded in 1987 with a gimmick that only worked if Marty McFly was still hot at the box office.
From Rock ’n’ Roll to Cowabunga
With the New Breed dead, Champion did what wrestlers do best: wander. He tagged with his brother Mark Starr as Wild Side, feuding with — who else — the Rock ’n’ Roll Express. It was déjà vu with less hair spray. They even managed to grab the CWA Tag Titles for a spell before losing them right back.
But Champion’s greatest reinvention came in the most absurd of forms: dressing up as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. That’s not a metaphor. Under the hood as Kowabunga in Memphis, he’d bounce to the ring in a green bodysuit, fighting Jerry Lawler and Dirty White Boy like Splinter had just sent him on a mission. Fans ate it up because wrestling fans are degenerates who’ll cheer anything if it’s wrapped in enough Lycra and gimmickry. And for a guy like Champion — forever on the fringe — it was the kind of role he was born to play.
Enter the Dragon (Tattoo)
Then came WCW, 1993, and a gimmick that aged like milk: Yoshi Kwan. Managed by Harley Race, Champion painted his face, penciled on a Fu Manchu, and pretended to be an Asian martial arts master from Hong Kong. Problem was, he was a white guy from Worcester, England. Still, he knocked off Brad Armstrong, Marcus Bagwell, and even tussled with Cactus Jack at Fall Brawl. The dragon tattoo drawn on his arm looked like it came out of a Sharpie, but WCW was desperate, and Champion gave them what they wanted: another mid‑card oddity for fans to boo while buying Sting foam fingers.
A knee injury at the wrong time sent him packing, and Yoshi Kwan faded into wrestling’s great “what the hell was that” scrapbook.
The Road, the Stroke, the Return
Champion wasn’t done. He went back to Japan, worked indies, even resurrected his turtle suit in BattlARTS. By the late ’90s, he was rolling out new gimmicks like a man flipping through cable channels at 3 a.m. — one night a mystic, the next a gothic “Sinn,” always on the move, always searching.
In 2002, the punchline came early. He suffered a massive stroke, the kind that usually ends both careers and lives. But Champion, stubborn to the bone, clawed back. He wrestled again, booked indie shows, and in 2017, put the paint back on for one last cameo as Yoshi Kwan. By then it was less spectacle and more nostalgia — like watching a cover band that only remembers half the lyrics.
Final Bell
On August 22, 2018, Champion’s story ended the way it always seemed destined to — not with fireworks, but with another stroke, this time fatal. He was 57. His daughter confirmed it, friends mourned, and fans dug up old tapes where he strutted around in neon tights and turtle shells, trying to convince us that tomorrow was worth believing in.
The Legacy of a Wrestling Oddity
Chris Champion never headlined Madison Square Garden. He never sold out Tokyo Dome. But he mattered — in the way cult wrestlers always do. He was the guy who dressed like a Ninja Turtle and took bumps in Memphis. He was the guy who sold you a ticket to 2002, when the future was bright and silly. He was the guy who made you laugh, roll your eyes, and sometimes cheer.
In wrestling, not everyone gets to be Ric Flair. Some guys are the footnotes, the weirdos, the side quests in a video game you didn’t even know you were playing. Champion was that, and maybe that’s enough.
Because in a business built on broken bodies and broken promises, Chris Champion left behind something better than gold belts: a trail of bizarre, unforgettable gimmicks that proved once and for all that pro wrestling isn’t supposed to make sense. It’s supposed to be fun. And if you squint hard enough, maybe it’s even supposed to be stupid.
Chris Champion gave us all three.