Ask 411 Wrestling: How Many Championships Has The Anoa’i Family Won?

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Through Hel Stryer and brimstone . . . it’s Ask 411 Wrestling!

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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Elvis doesn’t just acknowledge the Tribal Chief. He acknowledges everybody!

How many championships have the Anoaʻi family collectively won?

I’ve answered several questions regarding the size and scope of the Anoa’i family over the years, and, as always, the answer is highly dependent on who you count as being a member of the family because the group of people is just so sprawling.

In past answers, I’ve tended to group the family into three main categories, the first being the biological Anoa’i family, that group being based on the descendants of Afa and Sika. The second is the Maivia family, which has no close biological relationship to the Anoa’i family but claims connection to them due to a blood brother relationship between Peter Maivia and the father of Afa/Sika. The third is the Snukas, who aren’t biologically related to the Anoa’is or the Maivias but have a connection in that Jimmy Snuka was married for a time to a woman who was the daughter of a third man who had a blood brother relationship with Afa and Sika’s father and Peter Maivia.

A fourth group that is getting included in discussions about the family more and more are Haku and the members of his family, who again have no biological relationship to any of the above three groups but are closely associated with them in part due to the Rock referring to Haku as his “uncle” and due in part to so many of Haku’s children having been incorporated into WWE’s Bloodline saga.

Since different people have different preferences about who they want to classify as part of the family, I’ve tallied up title reigns for everyone who could evenly arguably qualify, so you can delete anybody who you think doesn’t belong. Here we go . . .

Manu (23), Rikishi (20), Lloyd Anoa’i (19), Afa (19), Sika (18), Jacob Fatu (17), Jey Uso (14), Rosey (14), Roman Reigns (11), Sean Maluta (11), Jimmy Uso (10), Vertigo Rivera (10), Umaga (9), Samu (9), Zilla Fatu (7), Naomi Knight (7), Tonga Kid (6), Yokozuna (5), Gary Albright (3), Black Pearl (1), Lance Anoa’i (1), Journey Fatu (1)

Anoa’i branch total: 235

Rocky Johnson (44), Peter Maivia (19), The Rock (19), Nia Jax (5)

Maivia branch total: 87

Jimmy Snuka (40), Deuce Shade (10), Tamina Snuka (10)

Snuka branch total: 60

Tama Tonga (25), Haku (20), Tanga Loa (14), Bad Luck Fale (5), Talla Tonga (4)

Haku branch total: 68

GRAND TOTAL: 450

That is in some respects an impressive total number, but it also demonstrates some of the odd results that you can get when you ask how many titles somebody has won without investigating the context around how, where, and when they won those titles, because we’ve got a relatively obscure wrestler like Manu holding more than twice as many championships as Roman Reigns and even a guy like Deuce Shade being one title reign off of the OTC’s level.

HBK’s Smile needs an ID on a Jane Doe:

Who is the woman in the upper right hand corner at the very beginning of the current “Then, Now, Forever, Together” intro?

I believe Mr. Smile is referring to the very first second of the intro video, which highlights a host of legendary personalities, including Gene Okerlund, Andre the Giant, the aforementioned Peter Maivia, Gorilla Monsoon, and Dusty Rhodes.

There is also one woman in the shot, and she’s none other than . . .

Mae Young.

As of the time of this writing, the same picture of Mae is used as the header on her alumni profile on WWE’s official website.

The funny thing is that, even though all the men who are on screen with Young in that section of the video had strong ties to WWE and main evented for them regularly, Mae really was not that strongly associated with the various iterations of the McMahon family company until the Attitude Era when she was in her 70s.

I was able to find records of her having fourteen matches for Capitol Sports, promoted by Vince McMahon Sr., in the late 1950s, but in terms of the WWWF/WWF/WWE banners, she only ever had one match before the late 1990s.

Most likely, the company felt that they needed some women’s representation in that part of the video and went with Young because they are gun shy about honoring the Fabulous Moolah after the controversy in 2018 when the company attempted to name a Wrestlemania battle royale after her.

Rahil has chosen an eclectic mix of wrestlers to ask about:

Where, when and against who did these persons have a first match?

-Ultimate Warrior

Warrior’s first recorded match was on November 25, 1985 in the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, Tennessee. At the time, Warrior was called Justice and part of a tag team with the future Sting, at the time called flash. Collectively, they were known as the Freedom Fighters.

Their opponents in that first match were The Spoiler and Tom Branch. If you’re curious as to who those guys were, Branch was otherwise known as Tom Renesto Jr., the son of legendary wrestler Tom Renesto, who was one of the members of the masked Assassins tag team with Nick Patrick’s father Jody Hamilton. Branch wrestled for a few years but actually spent more time in wrestling as a referee.

Normally when we talk about The Spoiler in this column, we’re talking about Don Jardine, but this version isn’t him. Instead, it’s Frank Morrell. Morrell was a journeyman wrestler who worked for 30 years all over the territories and under a variety of different gimmicks, including the French Angel and as half of the masked Mighty Yankees tag team with Charlie Fulton.

-John Cena

Cena started off his wrestling career for the southern California indy group Ultimate Pro Wrestling (UPW), which coincidentally was promoted by Rick Bassman, the same guy who broke Sting and the Ultimate Warrior into wrestling fifteen years earlier.

Wrestling as The Prototype, Cena debuted in a handicap match on a UPW show on November 5, 1999 in Santa Ana, California. He defeated a team called Jobbers-R-Us (no, really) consisting of Funky Billy Kim and Troubled Youth. Kim was another UPW trainee who worked for that company and other indy groups in and around SoCal for about fifteen years between the 1990s and late 2000s, though he never transitioned to the big leagues. Troubled Youth is even more obscure but also appears to be a UPW product. I don’t see any record of him wrestling outside the years 1999 and 2000.

-Sid Vicious

Most databases online have Sid’s first match listed as being in Memphis’s Mid-South Coliseum on February 23, 1987, wrestling as Lord Humongous in a tag team match with Austin Idol against Jerry Lawler and Nick Bockwinkel. (Man, I bet Sid stuck out like a sore thumb in that one.) However, Dave Meltzer’s obituary of Sid in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter states that Dave recalls seeing him wrestling in 1986 at a Memphis television taping in the WMC-TV studios, defeating a job guy whose name has been lost to the ages.

-Big Boss Man

Like Sid, this is one where the details of his first match may be long forgotten. Boss Man’s Observer obituary says that he was trained by “Nightmare” Ted Allen and that Allen would have gotten him booked on some independent shows in 1985, though we have no details as to the dates, locations, or opponents for those bouts.

The first Boss Man match we appear to have a record of comes on January 12, 1986 at the WTBS studios in Atlanta, Georgia. See, before Boss Man got his first gimmick and push as Big Bubba Rogers, he was actually used as an enhancement wrestler in Georgia under his real name, Ray Traylor. In his earliest recorded appearance in that role, he lost to the Barbarian . . . and it looks like we’ve actually go the video.

-PN News

Well, this took a sharp left turn.

Despite not being taken very seriously due to his silly WCW gimmick, News was actually trained by former Olympic wrestler Brad Rheingans in Minnesota, so it’s not surprising that his first recorded matches are for the AWA. Specifically, on March 1, 1987 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the future PN News wrestled under his real name of Paul Neu. Neu’s opponent was Rick Gantner, who in subsequent years would be known as Bull Pain or Psycho of the Texas Hangmen tag team.

Bryan is causing confusion in the marketplace:

We know the WWF had to change its name because of the world wildlife fund, but what I’m curious about is, did the NWA ever face legal threats from the rap group or Nation Wide Airlines?

No, because the National Wrestling Alliance was around before the rap group and the airline.

Besides, the issue with the World Wrestling Federation and the Wold Wildlife Fund was unique in that the two WWFs had an agreement under which they would coexist, so long as the World Wrestling Federation limited its use of the “WWF” acronym in ways that were designed to prevent it from being confused with the Wildlife Fund’s use of the same acronym. The World Wrestling Federation began to violate that agreement, in part by introducing its new “scratch logo” and in part by establishing a website at wwf.com. Had Vince McMahon and company never gone back on the original agreement, they likely could have been the World Wrestling Federation to this very day.

Uzoma has just three amigos:

I felt that when Chavo Guerrero Jr. left the Misfits in Action and won his second WCW Cruiserweight Title as himself, the cruiserweight division started to get revitalized during the promotion’s final months. What do you think?

I think that you’re absolutely correct. The division was being restored to its glory days, and even though Chavo deserves a lot of credit for that, I think you also have to give kudos to guys like Shane Helms, who was being pushed as the young babyface challenger to Guerrero, and even newer names to the division like a young AJ Styles and Jason Jett (a.k.a. EZ Money from ECW).

Will is off to the race:

What do you think of the sudden influx/push of black wrestlers, most notably in WWE? Recently guys such as Trick Williams, J’evon Evans, Oba Femi, Royce Keyes, Carmelo Hayes, and Ricky Saints have debuted and have been pushed to varying degrees, as well as The Street Prophets. It seems like a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) reflection of ‘woke’ culture, a conscious attempt to push more blacks. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence?

No, I do not think that the wrestling promotion that cozies up to the Trump administration at every possible moment is giving in to so-called “woke” culture.

You want to know why Williams, Evans, Femi, Keyes, Hayes, Saints, and other Black wrestlers are being pushed on the WWE roster right now?

It’s because they’re damn good at what they do, particularly given their level of experience, and they have the potential to be so much better the longer they’re on the main roster.

Roughly 70% of NFL players are Black. Roughly 70% of NBA players are Black. Roughly 20% of NCAA Division I athletes across ALL sports are Black.

Pro wrestling is not a legitimate sport, but, worked or not, athleticism remains at its core, and Black people have excelled at the highest levels of sports. Why, then, should it be surprising if Black people make up a substantial percentage of WWE’s roster?

I think most people reading this will be able to flag the answer to that question. The notion that Black people must be getting jobs or advancing at their jobs solely because of “affirmative action,” “political correctness,” “diversity hiring,” or “woke culture” is – whether intentionally used or not – a racist trope that has been around for decades and needs to end here and now.

Tyler from Winnipeg thanks us:

Ballpark, how much money did Perry Saturn get from WWE?

According to the February 7, 2000 issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, when the foursome of Saturn, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, and Eddy Guerrero signed with WWE, Benoit’s contract included a downside guarantee of about $400,000 while the other three wrestlers had downsides of “in the $250,000 range.”

For those who may not know, WWE contracts during that era included downsides, which were effectively the wrestler’s minimum pay, though they could make more based on their share of the gate for shows worked, merchandising, and other add-ons.

Saturn was in WWE for three years – 2000, 2001, and 2002 – so if he had a downside of $250,000 for that period, we know he made at least $750,000. Given that he was with the company during a hot period business-wise, I assume that he made more than his downside, even though he was never the most heavily pushed member of the roster.

That does it for this week. 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.