Ahmed Johnson reflects on the reason he left WWE in 1998.
Ahmed Johnson was once one of the top babyfaces during the early stages of the Monday Night War for WWE. Johnson had made history as the first black WWE Intercontinental Champion by defeating Goldust in 1996, but he would leave the company in 1998 with little to no fanfare.
During a new interview with Wrestling Then And Now, Johnson explained the very personal reasons he chose to walk away from WWE. According to Johnson, there were plans for the faction known as the Truth Commission to hang him from a rope. Johnson’s sister was also terminally ill, and he didn’t want the segment to be what everyone remembered him for.
“Well, I had a sister that had gotten very, very sick, and she was on her deathbed. I had to make a decision that night. She said all she wanted to see me do was win, and she watched the WWF religiously,” recalls Johnson. “So they had a setup where I was going to go out with the Truth Commission, and they were going to hang me from a rope, man. I couldn’t do that, man. So I went to Vince, and I talked to Vince. We didn’t see eye to eye on it, and I bailed.
“I couldn’t go with that, them hanging me from a rope, man,” he continued. “I would have been known for that. You know what I’m saying? The black man that got hung from white people. I had a lot of little black kids looking up to me and all the little white kids looking up to me. I couldn’t do it, man. It wasn’t anything against [the Truth Commission]. It wasn’t their fault. It was something that some dumbass agent thought of.”
In the end, Ahmed Johnson says he made the decision to go home because that’s just too serious of a topic and not what he wanted to be known for.
“No, I said, ‘I’m out of here.’ Yeah, that was crossing the racial lines right there. I wasn’t going to be the one that was known for being hung by three white guys. That’s a serious topic,” he said.
Ahmed Johnson’s last on-air appearance for WWE was at the No Way Out of Texas: In Your House pay-per-view on February 15, 1998. Johnson later spent some time in WCW as “Big T” but retired from wrestling shortly thereafter.
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