Ask 411 Wrestling: Who Has Big Show Turned On the Most?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals, to Ask 411 Wrestling. I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling.

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Scott is not to be trusted:

When Paul Wight signed with AEW, it got me thinking about his many, many, MANY heel/face turns. Don’t worry though . . . I don’t need to know how many times he’s turned (hell, he may have turned three more times in the time it took to write this email). What got me really curious is: Which wrestler(s) has he turned on the most? I feel like Taker, Cena or Kane may wind up on this list a few times, but I’d love to see what your research finds.

The answer appears to be the . . .

n . . .

W . . .

o . . .

(Cue porno music.)

Yes, though he Big Show spent significantly more of his career in the WWF/WWE than WCW, it appears that the majority of his turns involved the New World Order in some way, shape, or form. The first turn of his career came in 1996, when every member of the WCW roster became a de facto face due to the Outsiders’ invasion. Later the same year, he turned back heel when he became the fifth man to join the organization. He turned back face in 1996 when he wanted a crack at Hollywood Hogan’s WCW Title, then turned heel again in 1998 when he inexplicably signed back up with the nWo . . . only to be kicked out of the group again in 1999, turning him face. That was his last turn in WCW before jumping ship to join the WWF, but it was not his last turn involving the nWo. Instead, he switched from face to heel when he joined the 2002 WWE version of the New World Order.

That is three turns involving either Show turning on he nWo or the nWo turning on Show, and that is three turns involving Show turning on the wrestling promotion he was signed to (WCW or WWE) in order to join the nWo. Those numbers outrank any individual wrestler who Mr. Wight would have turned on during the course of his career.

Wrestling Fan Since 1977 is taking us back to 1988, when he was but a wee lad of 11:

After Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard leave WCW for the WWF, what happened in the following weeks to explain where they went? Flair and Barry were left in the Horsemen. Did they consider adding new members?

There wasn’t much direct explanation as to where Anderson and Blanchard went when they bolted out the door to become the Brain Busters. There were just vague references to JJ Dillon having “restructured” the (no longer Four) Horsemen, like the one at the start of this Dillon/Flair/Windham promo from October 15, 1988:

As far as replacements for the departing tag team are concerned, there are persistent rumors that the Road Warriors were considered for the spots at one point, which would be supported by this October ’88 promo from the Nature Boy himself:

However, that never materialized.

As referenced above, Arn and Tully were gone by October of 1988. Around the same time, JJ Dillon was also seen managing Kendall Windham and Butch Reed, though they were never put together with Flair and the elder Windham brother to make a new version of the Horsemen. Instead, in January 1989, Dillon also left WCW for the WWF (working in an office job and never on camera in any substantial way).

With Dillon out of the picture, Hiro Matsuda was brought in to act as the manager of all his prior acts, which saw Flair, the Windhams, and Reed assembled into a stable known as the Yamazaki Corporation, based on the then-prevalent notion that Japanese companies were regularly buying up American interests in many industries. Barry Windham did not last long in the new stable as he too left the promotion in March 1989, after which Michael P.S. Hayes also became affiliated with Matsuda.

Ultimately, the Yamazaki Corporation was seen as a poor man’s version of the Four Horsemen and was totally disbanded in less than six months. Hiro Matsuda’s last appearance was “presenting” the Great Muta to his new manager Gary Hart, with Hart teaming Muta with Terry Funk and others to establish the J-Tex Corporation, a group that would feud with Flair and unlikely tag team partner Sting, which formed the foundation for a new babyface version of the Horsemen in 1990, including a returning Arn Anderson and his “cousin” Ole Anderson.

Beenie is no weenie:

In watching the last Wrestlemania, the New Day were introduced as having won the tag team belts eleven times.

Now I know that Ric Flair has won more world singles titles than any other wrestler, but it got me thinking: Who has won the most titles all together? Kofi must surely be up there, or at least Top 10, with his New Day tag titles plus other titles over the years. So my question who has won the most titles all up in WWE/WCW?

Excluding NXT titles and the 24/7 and Hardcore titles. Including the 24/7 title probably makes the winner R Truth.

And who’s won the most titles without winning a world singles title? Surely Xavier Woods with his 11 New Day tag titles must be up there? At least Top 10?

Well, I added it all up. Before we get there, a note about the members of the New Day, who inspired the question: To a certain extent, where they wind up on these lists depends on how you count their various tag title wins. Yes, if you add up every time that every combination of the trio has held a championship, you get to 11 reigns. However, that’s not how their reigns have really worked, regardless of how things were announced at Wrestlemania. There were a couple of reigns early on, before their full face turn, where they held the belts under the old Freebird rule and all three men were recognized as co-champions. However, after those reigns, most title histories list the champions as being only the two men who actually won the belts. As a result, though you will see one New Day member on our lists below, he’s flying solo.

If you do as the question asked and count all WWE and WCW championships except for the NXT titles and the WWE Hardcore and 24/7 Championships, the top two title holders are Edge and Booker T., each of whom have had 31 different title reigns. I think that a lot of people forget about Booker in discussions like this, neglecting the fact that he was a ten-time WCW Tag Team Champion before he even became a singles wrestler or set foot in WWE.

Beyond Edge and Booker, the remainder of the top ten consists of: Chris Jericho (30), John Cena (25), Triple H (24), Rey Misterio Jr. (23), Ric Flair (22), Kofi Kingston (21), Chris Benoit (21), Jeff Hardy (20), Mike the Miz (20), and Christian Cage (20).

As you can imagine, adding in the WWE Hardcore and 24/7 Titles does change things up quite a bit. (Side note: WCW briefly had a Hardcore Title as well, though I included in the frist list up above because it was never defended under 24/7 rules.) As Beenie predicted, R-Truth tops the list when the rules are changed, as he has 53 reigns with the 24/7 Title and 5 regins with other titles (including 2 with the Hardcore Title) for a grand total of 58.

After Truth, the top fifteen are: Booker T. (33), Chris Jericho (31), Edge (31), Raven (30), JBL (25), John Cena (25), Triple H (24), Crash Holly (24), Jeff Hardy (23), Rey Misterio Jr. (23), Ric Flair (22), Dustin Rhodes/Goldust (22), Stevie Richards (22), Kofi Kingston (21), Chris Benoit (21), and Christian Cage (21).

It’s interesting to note that the addition of these two championships does not do a lot to change the totals of the men who were already on the list – though it does break the tie between Booker and Edge – but it adds quite a few men to the list who would not have been there otherwise.

I should also note that I did inclue women when I was making my tallies, but there was nobody of the fairer sex who made the cut, probably because both promotions had long periods of their history without active women’s championships.

Tyler from Winnipeg is dealing with a case of mistaken identity:

How did Umaga go from being a Headshrinker to being a real WWE main eventer on PPV? I love Umaga but it seemed like a lot of time from Headshrinker to the main event.

Here’s the thing . . . though he is part of the vaunted Anoa’i wrestling family, Umaga wasn’t a Headshrinker.

Umaga’s real name was Edward Fatu, and he was the son of Elevera Anoa’i and I’aulualo Fatu, Sr. Elevera was a sister to the original Wild Samoans, Afa and Sika, and she and her husband had three sons who became pro wrestlers, Edward, Samuel, and Solofa. As noted, Edward was Umaga. Samuel gained his initial fame as the Tonga Kid and later became Tama of the Islanders. Solofa is best known as Rikishi.

Of the three brothers, only Solofa/Rikishi was truly a “Headshrinker.” That tag team name was first used in the WWF in 1992 by Solofa, then called Fatu, and Afa’s son Samula Anoa’i, who at the time wrestled under the name Samu. Samu and Fatu were the Headshrinkers from the team’s debut through September 1994 when Samu left the company to allow nagging injuries to heal.

When Samu left, he was replaced by a new Headshrinker, Sione. Sione was the wrestler who was known for most of his career as the Barbarian, and he was an odd addition to the team given that he is neither a member of the Anoa’i family nor a Samoan. The newer version of the Headshrinkers stuck around in the WWF from September 1994 through June 1995 when Fatu went solo and inexplicably became a reformed gang banger instead of a wild man from the Polynesian islands.

There was also an independent version of the Headshrinkers that attempted to keep the name alive on the independent scene between 1998 and 2006. That team was Samu and Alofa. Alofa is Samu’s brother, Lloyd Anoa’i, who never really got an extended run in a major promotion but wrestled for many years under the name LA Smooth.

So, yeah, three versions of the Headshrinkers consisting of four different guys, and none of them were Umaga. One was a brother, two were cousins, and one was completely unrelated.

Interestingly, until he was actually Umaga, Edward Fatu managed to largely avoid the stereotypical “savage” gimmick that many of his family members adopted. His earliest run of a promotion in any size came in Japan’s Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling, when he and cousin Matthew Anoa’i (a son of original Wild Samoan Sika perhaps best known as Rosey in WWE) teamed as Armageddon #1 and Armageddon #2. They appeared in FMW in that gimmick throughout 1999 and returned in 2000, though in that year they wrestled as the Samoans, Eddie Fatu and Matty Samu.

By 2001, the two men found themselves in the early days of the WWF’s developmental program, wrestling first in MCW and later in the HWA as the Island Boys, Ekmo (Umaga) and Kimo (Rosey). Though they were called the “Island Boys,” they were not portrayed as being anything other than a couple of couple of American guys of Samoan ancestry. Eventually that lead to a main roster callup in 2002 as Three Minute Warning, with Ekmo becoming Jamal and Kimo becoming Rosey.

However, the team lasted less than a year because Jamal was released from the company.

When he left WWE , he first spent several months trying to continue his career in the United States, teaming with his cousin Samu in MLW and Sonny Siaki (a Samoan wrestler unlreated to the Anoa’is) in TNA. Interestingly, his final match in TNA as a regular involved CM Punk as one of his opponents, and Jamal and Punk would later lock it up again in WWE when Jamal was rechristened as Umaga.

. . . but before we get there, let’s talk about the run that prepared Jamal to become Umaga.

On November 23, 2003, Jamal – still using that name – made his debut for All Japan Pro Wrestling. He was introduced as part of Roughly Obsses and Destroy, a.k.a. RO&D, a heel stable that was lead by TAKA Michinoku but otherwise consisted of American wrestlers brought into the company. Jamal’s first task as part of RO&D was serving as the partner for Justin Credible in that year’s Real World Tag League tournament. Credible & Jamal made it to the finals, where they ultimately lost to Satoshi Kojima & Kaz Hayashi. Jamal also entered the 2004 Champion Carnival tournamnet, where he finished in the middle of the rankings overall but did get one impressive victory over Keiji Muto. In June ’04, he received a shot at vaunted AJPW Triple Crown, falling to champion Toshiaki Kawada in Nagoya.

Jamal would get his biggest Japanese victory in November 2004, when he and Taiyo Kea teamed up to win the Real World Tag League, defeating the prior year’s winners, Kojima & Hayashi, in the finals. They parlayed that tournament victory into a successful run with the AJPW World Tag Team Titles, defeating the team of Hiroshi Tanahashi & Yutaka Yoshie in a match for the vacant championship. (Tanahashi, though primarily a New Japan wrestler, was making guest shots for All Japan around this time.) They went on to have three successful championship defenses, prevailing over the teams of Keiji Muto & Suwama, Chuck Palumbo & Johnny Stamboli, and Giant Bernard (Matt Bloom/A-Train) & TARU.

In April 2005, Jamal would again enter the Champion Carnival, where he finished second in his block to advance to a final four bracket that also included Kensuke Sasaki, Toshiaki Kawada, and Satoshi Kojima. Sasaki pinned Kawada and Jamal pinned Kojima, who was Triple Crown Champion at the time, in the semi-finals. From there, Sasaki beat Jamal to win the whole tournamnet. However, because Japanese booking usually MAKES SENSE, Jamal’s victory over Triple Crown Champ Kojima in a non-title match earned him a rematch with the title on the line. Unfortunately, the Samoan was not successful, falling to Kojima in a match in Hokkaido.

Jamal then had one last Real World Tag League run in 2005, teaming with Kea again, though this time they came up short in their block and could not make the finals, which was instead the truly bizarre match of Keiji Muto & Akebono losing to, of all teams, the Dudley Boys.

Jamal’s last match in Japan came on December 5, 2005, when he, Kea, & TAKA Michonku were victorious in six man tag team action against Akira Raijin, Katsuhiko Nakajima, & Kensuke Sasaki. A month later, Jamal was back in the WWF fold, having re-signed with the company, though he would not debut on television as Umaga until April 2006. Though he had always been a professional wrestler with some natural gifts, it is my opinion that his two years in Japan, regularly working against bona fide legendary in-ring performers like Sasaki, Kawada, & Muto – put him over the top and gave him the chops he nededed to succeed as a main event singles star as opposed to being just another tag team wrestler.

That will do it for this week’s installment of the column. We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.