Ask 411 Wrestling: How Many Years Has WWE Employed Anoa’i Family Members?

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David is branching out on the family tree:

This question is sort of a follow-up to the Anoa’i family question you answered for the November 19, 2025 column. In that question you answered “how many Wrestlemanias has a member of the Anoa’i family had a match or significant appearance at”.

My question is, how many years has there been a member of the Anoa’i family employed by the WWE? You can decide how wide you want to cast the net of what determines a member of the Anoa’i family. For each year there was a member of the Anoa’i family employed by WWE, can you list how many and who they were. I’d imagine from the mid-70’s onward, there has always been a member of the Anoa’i family employed by WWE but maybe there are a few gaps.

Because this is a pretty expansive question, rather than going through the entire sixty-plus year history of WWE in all its forms, I’m going to cut this off in 2012 when we see Roman Reigns make his main roster debut, because from that point on you DEFINITELY have at least one Anoa’i employed at all times, and I think that almost everybody reading this will know that fairly recent history.

Also, I will cast a fairly broad net with who constitutes a member of the family and who does not, since it’s probably easier for readers to mentally delete those people who they think don’t county than it is for them to research others who I didn’t list.

In a final ground rule, I have decided that I will only focus on the company’s main roster and not developmental once that became a thing.

Before we get into the specifics of who wrestled for the company and when, if anybody just wants a summary answer, I will say that we had a few runs in the 1960s but, once we get to 1977, there is pretty consistently at least one member of the family employed at all times except for a blip in 1981 and a period between 1988 and 1992.

1960: For about five months, Peter Maivia wrestles for NWA Capitol Wrestling, Vince McMahon Sr.’s precursor to the WWWF/WWF/WWE. Maivia has no genetic relationship to the Anoa’i family but his “blood brother” relationship with Afa and Sika’s biological father is what connects the Maivia family to the rest of the Bloodline.

1969: Rocky Johnson, who becomes part of the family by marrying Peter Maivia’s daughter, makes his WWWF debut, wrestling a series of matches between February and June, including a few against fellow Black standout Thunderbolt Patterson.

1977: Peter Maivia shows up in the WWWF in April and continues on through the end of the year.

1978: Peter Maivia continues his WWWF run for the entire year.

1979: Peter Maivia starts the year with the WWWF but departs in April after putting Bob Backlund over several times. The Wild Samoans debut in October, so we do go about six months without any Anoa’is.

1980: The Wild Samoans become a fixture this year, winning the WWF Tag Team Titles twice, though they leave the territory in December. Peter Maivia wrestles two matches for the company in May, one a battle royale and one a six man teaming with the Wild Samoans.

1981: Peter Maivia wrestles his last match for the WWF (and his only match for the Fed this year), beating Rick McGraw in May.

1982: After a nearly two-year absence, the Wild Samoans return in November. After a thirteen-year absence, Rocky Johnson is back as well.

1983: The Wild Samoans feud with the Strongbows for the first half of the year, including winning the Tag Titles from them in March. In March, Samu (then called Samula) debuts as a third member of the Wild Samoans team. Rocky Johnson is also still with the company, and throughout the year he challenges Afa and Sika for the Tag Titles with a variety of partners, ultimately winning them in November with Tony Atlas, becoming the company’s first Black Tag Team Champions. The Tonga Kid also debuts in May of this year, largely winning in low card matches to help establish him.

1984: Rocky Johnson loses his Tag Team Titles in April but remains with the company, becoming a regular opponent for Roddy Piper. Afa, Sika, and Samula are also with the promotion throughout the year, wrestling both singles and tag matches. The Tonga Kid gets what is probably the biggest run of his career, as he also feuds with Roddy Piper on house shows as an extension of Jimmy Snuka’s issues with the Hot Rod.

1985: Rocky Johnson takes a brief hiatus beginning in November 1984, but he’s back in March 1985, winning a bunch of low card singles matches but departing in May. The Tonga Kid has a handful of matches in January but is gone after that.

1986: In August, the tag team of the Islanders make their debut, including the Tonga Kid (later renamed Tama) and Haku, who is not a member of the Anoa’i family but is very close with them. In the fall, Sika returns, primarily as a single but also forming a part-time tag team with Kamala.

1987: The Islanders remain a reliable presence on WWF shows throughout the year. Sika’s singles run continues, including notable matches against Jake Roberts and Hulk Hogan on separate episodes of Saturday Night’s Main Event.

1988: Sika remains a presence in the company through March. The Islanders also wrap things up this year, continuing to work as a team through May.

1992: The Anoa’is come back with a vengeance this year. In July, Fatu and Samu debut as the headshrinkers, with Afa in their corner as a manager. In October, we get the debut of Yokozuna, who will very soon be shaking things up.

1993: Yokozuna starts his big tear through the company, winning the Royal Rumble and eventually becoming WWF Champion. The Headshrinkers also continue their run, largely feuding with the Steiner Brothers. Though never on television, Afa returns to the ring to team with Samu in a handful of matches where Fatu is unavailable. The Tonga Kid has a small number of house show matches when the company comes through California, presumably where is based at the time. Though I don’t know that he was ever under contract, Afa’s son Lloyd Anoa’i wrestles as an enhancement talent several times over the summer, sometimes as the Tahitian Savage and sometimes as Fred Williams, the least Samoan name imaginable.

1994: Yokozuna rolls into the year as WWF Champion and continues to serve as a top heel for the entire twelve-month period. The Headshrinkers also pick up gold, turning babyface and defeating the Quebecers for the WWF Tag Team Championship, though their championship reign and the original version of the team comes to an end in August. By September, the Barbarian (renamed Sionne) has joined Fatu as a new incarnation of the Headshrinkers. Afa is in the ring for a few matches again, subbing for Fatu again but also joining both Headshrinkers for some six man tags.

1995: Yokozuna takes a few months off in the early part of the year but comes back in a big way by winning the Tag Team Titles with Owen Hart at Wrestlemania. They hold those belts for most of the year. The Fatu/Sionne version of the Headshrinkers has its last match in June, and in July Fatu is repackaged as a singles wrestler. With no explanation, he stops acting like a savage from the jungle and becomes a reformed gang banger who is now trying to bring positivity to his neighborhood. Samu, along with Lloyd Anoa’i a.k.a. the Tahitian Warrior a.k.a. L.A. Smooth, make television appearances watching some of Fatu’s matches with the implication being that they are antagonists from his past, but the angle is dropped before they wrestle.

1996: Yokozuna is still with the company, though this is where he starts to slow down, turning face to put over Vader and then getting de-pushed once his weight started to get out of control. His last match with the company is in November. However, as Yoko is on the downturn, we get the debut of Rocky Maivia at the Survivor Series in November. Samu and the Tahitian Warrior do a handful of house show matches against the Smoking Gunns in May. Also, Fatu stops “making a difference” and puts on a mask, pretending to be from the Middle East and taking on the name of the Sultan.

1997: The Rock wins the Intercontinental Title in February and defends it against the Sultan at Wrestlemania, though he fizzles as a babyface and gets put into the Nation of Domination as a heel in the fall. The Sultan wrestles throughout the year, but does nothing anywhere as noteworthy as his Mania bout. Yokozuna remains under contract the company, though he does not wrestle due to his health.

1998: As we all know, this is where the Rock blows up. He takes the lead of the Nation, feuds with Triple H and Ken Shamrock, and becomes WWF Champion at Survivor Series. Meanwhile, the Sultan has a few more matches in January but then vanishes. Yokozuna is still under contract through May but remains on the sidelines the entire time.

1999: It’s another year of continued dominance by the Rock, including his classic series with Mankind and his first Wrestlemania main event against Steve Austin. After almost two years away, Fatu is back in November, though now he’s bleached his hair and taken up the moniker of Rikishi Phatu, happy go lucky partner of Too Cool.

2000: The Rock remains the face of the Fed, with more WWF Title reigns and popularity that skyrockets with seemingly no end in sight. Rikishi also has a good run as an upper midcard babyface, becoming Intercontinental Champion as well as over-performing in both the Royal Rumble and King of the Ring. We’ll ignore his ill-advised heel turn late in the year.

2001: The Rock comes and goes this year as Hollywood begins to demand more of his time, but he still manages to face Steve Austin at Wrestlemania and become a key player in the Invasion storyline beginning in August and continuing through year’s end. After a brief tag team with Haku (who the WWF hired away from WCW basically just to piss on that company’s grave), Rikishi turns back face but is injured in May and has to sit out most of the rest of the year.

2002: This is the last year you can say Rock did anything close to a full-time wrestling schedule, though he still comes and goes to filming commitments. Rikishi is still a going concern, remaining popular but not doing much of note. After several years in developmental, Three Minute Warning of Rosey and Jamal make their main roster debut in July.

2003: Three Minute Warning rolls on in to the new year but splits in July, when Jamal has legal troubles and gets released as a result. Rosey stays on the roster for the rest of the year, forming his tag team with the Hurricane. Rikishi continues to largely just read water, though he does reunite with Scotty 2 Hotty in October.

2004: Rosey and the Hurricane are still a duo throughout the year. Rikishi becomes a tag team champion again, this time with Scotty 2 Hotty, as they beat the Basham Brothers. However, he is injured in April and then eventually released over the summer, ending his many years as a full-time WWE performer.

2005: After a fairly long run as a team, Rosey and the Hurricane finally win the World Tag Team Championship in May and hold the titles through September, though they break up shortly thereafter.

2006: Rosey starts the year under contract but is never on TV and gets released in March. He does have a dark match teaming with Jamal in January, and there are reportedly plans to reunite their team, but instead Jamal gets repackaged as Umaga, who immediately becomes a top heel.

2007: Umaga challenges for the WWE Title at the Royal Rumble and becomes Intercontinental Champion before main eventing Wrestlemania with Bobby Lashley.

2008: Umaga wrestles for most of the year, though he goes on hiatus beginning in August. In September, Manu (who previously wrestled elsewhere as Afa Jr.) joins the main roster on a full-time basis and is part of the Legacy stable with Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase Jr., though he never seems to quite fit and is off TV by year’s end.

2009: Umaga returns to the ring in January and wrestles through early June, when he is released from his contract due to issues with the company’s Wellness Policy. After his time on the main roster didn’t work out so well, Manu is cut in February.

2010: The Usos join the main roster over the summer, beginning a reign of tag team dominance that continues for an insanely long amount of time.

2011: The Usos continue their act as the promotion’s young, hot tag team.

2012: Halfway through December, a guy called Roman Reigns makes his main roster debut. I’m not really sure what happened after that.

Jorge from Puerto Rico roots for the home team:

I was listening to JBL on a podcast and he stated that Savio Vega was at a time in the spot of being the guy that newcomers had to wrestle with to prove if they could make it. This got me thinking, do you think Savio will ever get inducted in the HOF?

I think it’s entirely possible. With all due respect to Savio, he’s not at the level I would want somebody to be at before I inducted them into a hall of fame, but he’s more deserving than several people WWE has chosen to induct into their hall of fame.

Plus, as we’ve seen over the years, a lot of who gets inducted into the HOF is based on what WWE wants to market at the time, and if they are ever in a phase where they want to appeal to a Latino audience, a Savio induction could help do that – just like we saw him pop back up at Backlash 2023 when WWE wanted to excite its Puerto Rican audience.

Jonfw2 has gotten crosswise with some Marines:

During Shawn Michaels’ hiatus from…sorry…during Shawn Michaels’ winter of 1995 hiatus from WWF, they initially explained his absence as being due to a beating by Sid and a bunch of other top heels. They told that story as for why he had to forfeit the IC title.

But then (seemingly) totally out of the blue they changed the story to what actually happened in real life- which is that he got beaten up by more than half a dozen guys outside of a bar.

Not that I recall, no.

Was there every any kayfabe explanation of how or why they changed the story?

Craig is striving for equality:

With both the women’s Royal Rumble and the women’s Elimination Chamber recently, I got thinking about what gimmick matches we’ve seen from the men but haven’t seen for the women yet. At first I thought this would be pretty straight forward, but the more I thought about it, the longer the list kept getting. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if you want to combine similar matches with different names, i.e. is a falls count anywhere match the same as a hardcore match? Listed below are the ones I’ve thought up so far, might even be a few in there that have been used and I’ve forgotten. Sticking with WWE for ease, good luck with compiling the rest of the list.

WWE Men’s Gimmick Matches We Haven’t Seen Used For The Women (Yet): 1) First Blood; 2) Inferno Match; 3) Kennel From Hell; 4) Ambulance Match; 5) Stretcher Match; 6) Lions Den Match; 7) Blindfold Match; 8) Punjabi Prison; 9) Casket Match; 10) Buried Alive; 11) Paul Bearer In A Concrete Crypt (?); 12) Bar Room Brawl; 13) Brawl For All; 14) Empty Arena / Half Time Heat; 15) Boiler Room Brawl; 16) Unsanctioned

First off, one correction to Craig’s list. (ha, craigslist.) There actually has been a women’s casket match in WWE, and it’s not just because I held on to this question for so long that one happened after it was asked.

Tatum Paxley, who has perhaps my least favorite NXT name in a long line of them, defeated Wendy Choo in a casket match on the October 29, 2024 episode of NXT.

You also had the entire pandemic/Thunderome era of WWE in which, technically, women were having empty arena matches all the time, though they weren’t billed as such.

Also, though Craig limited his question to WWE, I will note that all the way back in 2010 there was a women’s first blood match hosted by TNA, as Tara/Victoria beat Daffney Unger in the bout on the March 29, 2010 episode of Imapct.

TNA also had a women’s stretcher match on its June 23, 2004 weekly pay per view show, and this was a really weird one. Trinity defeated Desire in that match. That’s Trinity the Italian American wrestler who eventually joined WWE’s ECW brand, not Trinity Fatu a.k.a. Naomi. Desire was Kim Nielsen, an indy wrestler trained by Dusty Rhodes in the early 2000s. Also, despite being called a stretcher match, you had to put your opponent into an ambulance on the stretcher in order to win, and Trinity picked up the victory when BIG VITO of all people interfered by slamming the ambulance door into Desire’s face. TNA liked man-on-woman violence to an uncomfortable degree back on those days.

Finally from Craig’s list (makes me laugh every time), AEW did have a lights out match between Thunder Rosa and Dr. Britt Baker on the March 17, 2021 episode of Dynamite. A lights out match is effectively an unsanctioned match.

So let’s move in to the actual question, which is gimmick matches we have yet to see WWE women perform in.

The first thing that comes to my mind is that there has never been a fully women’s cinematic match in WWE. The closest thing you have is the women’s Money in the Bank match for 2020, which was cinematic in nature, though it went on simultaneously with the men’s MITB match and everything was produced in such a way that they were effectively one bout despite having two separate winners. AEW did have a full-on women’s cinematic match, though, with Britt Baker facing Big Swole at All Out 2020.

You don’t often associated a barbed wire steel cage match with WWE, but there technically was one at No Way Out 2005 between JBL and the Big Show. However, there has not been a women’s barbed wire cage match in the promotion to date.

In 2020, WWE introduced the Fight Pit match in NXT, with no ring ropes and a modified cage with a platform on top in addition to knockout or submission rules. Eventually the match made its way to the main roster at Extreme Rules 2022. Two women have never faced each other inside of the Fight Pit, though.

There was also the oddly specific Dungeon Match, which happened exactly once and consisted of Owen Hart and Ken Shamrock fighting in Stu Hart’s basement. The Hart house is no longer in the Hart family, so I’m guessing we’ll never see this one make a comeback with female competitors.

I do not think we have ever seen a women’s Parking Lot Brawl in WWE, which involves two wrestlers fighting in a ring of cars. It seems that there was a time where they company was trying to establish this as a signature gimmick match for John Cena, as he faced both Eddy Guerrero and JBL in such matches.

You may or may not consider a Three Stages of Hell match to be a gimmick match unto itself, because it’s really just a combination of other gimmick matches. Regardless, there’s never been a women’s version that I was able to track down.

That was everything that I was able to come up with, though I’ll welcome additions in the comments.

Nick is like a science fiction, double feature:

Have you ever walked out of a movie theater due to a bad film? I never have. I always want to get my money’s worth, even if it involves suffering through a awful movie.

I haven’t, either, though it’s for different reasons. I don’t go into a lot of movies blindly. Usually, if I’m going to a movie, I will have checked out reviews in advance, and, if they’re bad, I don’t go. Thus, I’m usually pretty confident that I will enjoy the film before I even walk in the door.

Wait, what does this have to do with wrestling?

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.