"The Pacific Prince" Kalani Koa

AT A GLANCE

Ring Name: "The Pacific Prince" Kalani Koa
Born: Carson, California, 1966
Billed From: Honolulu, Hawai'i
Height: 6'0"
Weight: 232 lbs
Active in the GWA: 1989 to 1993
Territory: Pacific Coast
Era: Traditions Era
Finishing Move: The Crown Kick
Championships: GWA Intercontinental Championship (one reign), GWA Pacific Coast Championship (one reign)

EARLY LIFE

Randall Kalani Koa was born in 1966 in Carson, California, to a Hawaiian family in the South Bay, where the harbor and the aerospace plants had drawn Pacific Islander families since the fifties. His mother's family kept the islands in the house: the language in fragments, the music on records, the stories of chiefly names. The street outside was Carson. His parents put him in a kenpo school as a boy, in the same South Bay storefront-dojo world where Hawaiian-born teachers had planted the art after the war, and he spent his teens collecting trophies at strip-mall tournaments from Torrance to Anaheim.

CAREER

Breaking in (1989)

Koa broke in on the Pacific Coast circuit in 1989, a fast light heavyweight in a locker room of bigger men. The Pacific Coast office billed him from Honolulu, and the announcers introduced him as The Pacific Prince, nephew of "King" Kekoa Kanakaole, the island royalty of the Expansion years. Koa wore the billing like it was tailored: grass skirt, haku lei across his forehead, bare feet, and a manner that treated the cheers as tribute owed.

Intercontinental Champion (1991 to 1992)

The billing came true at Showdown Spectacle '91 in Honolulu, when Koa took the GWA Intercontinental Championship from "Ice Cold" Isaac Cole in the city his ring introductions had claimed. The reign carried him through the winter as the belt's defending champion up and down the coast, until "Corporate" Craig Williams took it from him in Las Vegas the following spring. Williams held the championship until the promotion closed.

Pacific Coast Champion and the last card (1992 to 1993)

Koa took the GWA Pacific Coast Championship that summer, a run with the coast's own belt, and worked the circuit to the final card in San Antonio at the end of 1993, still coming to the ring in the skirt, still barefoot.

CHAMPIONSHIPS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS

GWA Intercontinental Championship (one reign)
GWA Pacific Coast Championship (one reign)

IN THE RING

Entrance: A pahu drum figure opened the PA, then The Ventures' "Diamond Head." Koa came to the ring in a grass skirt and a haku lei worn as a crown, with a plumeria lei he handed to a child at ringside before the bell. The skirt and crown came off at the bell.

Appearance: Black hair in tight curls on top, shaved at the sides. He wrestled in calf-length tights in floral and tropical prints, taped ankles, bare feet.

Style: Built on speed: rope-running, arm drags, dropkicks, a top-rope crossbody he threw at anyone regardless of size. Over it sat the kenpo: sword-hand chops to the collarbone, a backfist off the ropes, crescent kicks that landed with the slap of a bare sole the front rows could hear. He gave up power to almost everyone, so he won by accumulation and timing.

Finisher: The Crown Kick, a leaping, spinning crescent kick to the head. He held it back until an opponent was upright and spent.

Mannerisms: On camera he used the royal we and did not raise his voice on the first question. He took a knockdown, got up, and ran a palm over the shaved side of his head before he checked his own lip. He extended a hand to opponents he had beaten, palm down, as if offering it to be kissed.

IN HIS OWN WORDS

"We are asked, all the time, is the crown real. Here is what is real: every name in my family going back further than your promotion, your television, your state of California. The crown is a flower. My grandmother could make one in ten minutes. The name is the crown."

"You don't have to bow, brother. But you're going to fall down. One way or the other, you end up down there."

LEGACY

Koa's whole run sat inside the promotion's final years. He debuted as the coast's island prince, made the billing true in Honolulu, and came to the ring in the skirt and bare feet through the last card in San Antonio.