The Secret WWE History Of The Bloodline
After losing the WWE Championship at WrestleMania, Yokozuna teamed with Crush to lose to The Headshrinkers before spending the rest of the year setting up a return loss to The Undertaker that came at the Survivor Series. He disappeared until WrestleMania XI the following spring, in the first of several breaks designed to help him lose some of the weight he'd gained since hitting the road full time with the company way back in 1992. The story sadly repeated itself multiple times between then and his tragic passing in 2000, as Yokozuna's size visibly increased on screen.
As Owen Hart's surprise tag team partner he served a fun purpose throughout most of 1995, but the physical limitations were showing even when he wasn't having to work the entirety of the contest. Breaks in 1996 were yet again installed to try and help him shift weight, but he continued to miss more targets than he hit, and he wrestled just two matches in the last few months of the year before another departure that proved make or break.
As 1997 became the year everything changed for WWE, a domineering fixture missed all of it. Numerous stories suggested that Yoko was destined for The Hart Foundation during their anti-America peak, having previously worked alongside and against Bret Hart, Owen Hart and Davey Boy Smith, but the numbers on the scales only got bigger and he was officially released in 1998 when multiple state athletic commissions wouldn't clear him to perform.
After working independent dates where he was able to, Rodney Anoa'i passed away in October 2000 during a UK tour for All Star wrestling. He was just 34 years old. Though there'd been no whispers of comeback to WWE during his final years, his legacy was being honoured by former ally Fatu, during an unexpectedly powerful gimmick change that had drawn universal acclaim. When “Rikishi Phatu” burst back onto screens in the summer of 1999, he was greeted with equal doses of warmth and shock. The face was instantly recognisable and WWE weren’t trying to obscure it.
The name was even a nod to the former Headhsrinker, but updated in yet another sign-of-the-times attempt to squash the New Generation into the Attitude Era, such as Bruce Prichard’s aborted pitch to have Doink The Clown kick off “DTK Enterprises” or The Quebecers as flavourless kick-punch heels with a droning riff for a theme. The recognition collided with just how much Fatu had increased in size and indeed how WWE were choosing to exploit it.
Rikishi (the “Phatu” was eventually dropped) was a dangerous and imposing man, but a sense of humour clearly lurked under there if he was willing to put his buttocks out there for the masses, hidden only by a thong/sumo attire hybrid that paid unique tribute to Yoko while simultaneously encouraging fans, commentators and fellow wrestlers alike to, uh, crack, jokes about massive behinds.
Like so many others that broke big during this era, he had the benefit of doubt from a lot brand new eyes. Those that might have seen clips of The Headshrinkers but wouldn’t recognise Makin’ A Difference Fatu if he’d done a Say No To Drugs talk at their school. The Sultan mask and bald head did such a good job of covering his identity in the in-between that you’d be forgiven for watching the show and still not picking that up. WWE was white hot in 1999 and the difference in perceptions for performers that may as well have been mainstays was apparent.
The magic moment for Rikishi came when he was linked up with Too Cool - fellow recently-repackaged regulars Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor. As ‘Too Sexay’ and ‘Scotty 2 Hotty’, they were goof heels in theory, but played the roles with such gusto that fans gravitated towards the silliness of it all.
Rikishi was theoretically good muscle for them, but because the act as a trio was instantly a babyface one, the script flipped and it became about him doing their bits, rather than the other way around. When the monster dropped the facade and sported the shades for a post-victory dance, the money-drawing act was complete. Considered to many a shorthand for the fabulous creative freedom on display at the time, Too Cool & Rikishi’s act was the sort of thing that could have only gotten THAT over in a hot time, but the three experienced workers made sure to maximise this amazing moment in the sun.
They constantly added in-character choices to big spots to enhance the value for the live crowd. Sexay rubbed his ridiculous goggles before hitting his Hip Hop Drop legdrop, Scotty famously incorporated “The Worm” into his comebacks as an opening match version of The People’s Elbow, and Rikishi…shoved his arse into people’s faces. The Stinkface was a quite disgusting and fundamentally flawed bit of offence, but over is over and the spot is over enough a quarter of a century later that wrestlers can start TwitterStorms doing it on house shows. It got the right kind of heat as well.
Evolving from a mid-match comedy spot, it became the ultimate punishment for a heel, the sort of thing you could for weeks before a dastardly manager or star finally got what was coming to them. Gross-out comedy was huge in 2000, and WWE now had an upper midcard babyface that was incorporating some into his act in a way even the likes of Steve Austin and The Rock couldn’t.
Steve Austin and The Rock. The Number One and Two babyfaces respective in WWE by 1999, and (awkwardly) the same-but-reversed in 2000. That summer, having strapped up his working boots for matches against Triple H, Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, Val Venis and others, Rikishi was comfortably in that third placed spot. In a woefully misguided attempt to capitalise (?) on his popularity and deliver a bombshell payoff to the biggest angle of the prior year, WWE killed his babyface momentum by revealing him as the man that ran Austin down with a car just so Rock could ascend.
The kayfabe rationale hung together until it didn’t - Rikishi reasoned that WWE was never going to let a Samoan wrestler be the number one top guy, so he took matters into his own hands and cleared the way for The Rock. His own rise, he noted, had been a supplemental benefit. Rock was unquestionably the top man on the show as Austin convalesced, but the racism reasoning didn’t hold enough water four years and five (!) WWF Championship reigns into Rock’s run.
Following the reveal, Austin gobbled up Rikishi in revenge brawls, and a feud with Rock himself didn't salvage the turn despite 'The Great One' doing his best in the matches to convert the dancing babyface's move set into something a heel might do. Rather than acknoweldging the scale of screw-up, the company instead performed emergency surgery on the whole thing by making Rikishi nothing more than a hitman doing Triple H's dirty work. He was marginalised from there, and never was this clearer than when he was dropped into a heel tag team with Haku following his return from WCW in 2001.
By the end of the year, he was a babyface once again, and in an only-in-2000s-WWE bit of trivia, his run as an Attitude Era relic on SmackDown undercards went three times as long as his 2000 peak before he was let go in 2004. With The Rock also parting ways formally with the group around the same time, the last remaining Samoan with visibility on the main roster was Matthew Anoa'i (son of Sika, brother of Roman Reigns) working as Rosey, The Hurricane's superhero sidekick.
It was undercard fluff for Anoa'i following the collapse of an intriguing heel run as part of Three Minute Warning - a team alongside Eddie 'Jamal' Fatu that debuted in 2000 but ended abruptly in 2003 when Eddie was fired after a bar fight. They'd been on thin ice before then due to certain injuries sustained by talents during particularly brutal Monday Night Raw beatdowns as Eric Bischoff's henchmen, but the real life drama was more than enough for the company to make the call.
Anoa'i was released in 2006, but interestingly not before Three Minute Warning were reunited for a dark match in January when Fatu was rehired. Anoa'i sadly saw the door before the team could gather steam again, but Fatu was given a new gimmick that rolled the clock back several decades to the days of The Wild Samoans.
Such stereotyping drew derision before the character was rolled out on the post-WrestleMania 22 edition of Monday Night Raw, but as the newly-christened Umaga prepared to work WrestleMania 23's biggest match one year later, critics were forced to eat their words. Against the grain and against the odds, 'The Samoan Bulldozer' was one of the decade's biggest success stories.