12 Duos That Helped Changed Tag Team Wrestling Forver

5. The Wild Samoans

For a very long time, WWE used the concept of the €˜foreign menace€™ to create storylines. These foreigners, which would emanate from a myriad of different countries, would do battle with an €˜all-American€™ hero that would elicit cheers from the audience. While some of these foreign menaces were cold and calculating, none of them ran with the gimmick as well as Afa and Sika Anoa€™I, the Wild Samoans. Despite their comprehension of the English language, they spoke in Samoan, ate raw fish, and behaved like actual €˜wild men€™ when on TV. Though such a gimmick would be wildly out of place in today€™s WWE (pardon the pun), Afa and Sika used the attitudes of the American people to their advantage. They embraced the gimmick to such a degree that some audience members genuinely feared the Samoans because of their almost €˜savage€™ behaviour. Their success served as a template of sorts for subsequent teams: any €˜foreign€™ team that was supposed to elicit a negative reaction from the audience was supposed to live the gimmick as much as possible and reject any €˜American€™ customs that one might expect them to use. Without the Wild Samoans setting the bar so high, €˜foreign€™ teams like the Quebecers, the Un-Americans, and La Résistance, wouldn€™t have worked as well as they did. On a side note, it was Afa and Sika€™s presence in WWE that paved the way for the members of their extended family. Their children, nephews and other family members all managed to find work in WWE, in part due to this duo€™s influence on the tag team division in WWE.