Put Umaga In The Hall Of Fame

Umaga's star burned for a short time, but it burned brightly enough for people to still be talking about his work to this day. Put him in the Hall of Fame!

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As I’m sitting here thumbing through old WWE PPVs because someone put the stacked card to Unforgiven 2006 on my timeline, I’m seeing a name pop up repeatedly that I feel doesn’t get the credit he deserves for how he shaped the future of the industry at the time: Umaga

We all know the lineage…the…*ahem*…Bloodline, if you will. The great Anoa’i family has littered the annals of wrestling history with legend after legend. Eddie Fatu was no different. For a man of his size to possess the skill set that he had, it was unbelievable. He could do it all. The younger brother of Rikishi made his WWE debut in 2002, billed as ‘Jamal’ as one half of the (underrated) tag team 3-Minute Warning alongside his cousin Rosey (Matt Anoa’i). I always felt they never got a fair shake as a tag team because they had the dumb gimmick of Eric Bischoff sending them down to beat people up after three minutes of him being fed up with whatever they were saying or doing. But, they had some good matches. After nearly a year, Fatu was released from the WWE after reportedly gaining a reputation for being a little reckless in the ring and after reportedly getting into a bar fight on the road. 

Maybe Fatu did have a little maturing to do, but the potential and the talent was still clearly there. He had runs in TNA and All Japan before he got his second chance with the WWE. This time would be different. The WWE really went all in on the Umaga gimmick. He was undefeated from his debut in April of 2006 all the way to his first loss at the hands of John Cena in a WWE Championship in January of 2007. 

I’ll admit – at the time, I didn’t quite get the gimmick. It felt a little out of touch with modern audiences. Umaga, this savage that only answered to his manager, Armando Alejandro Estrada, felt like something about 15 years behind the times. Maybe Umaga was introduced to the WWE audience at the worst possible time for the gimmick to really get over. It was before the refresh that the PG era brought with it, and it came after the Attitude Era had passed. But, fans at the time were still clinging to that edgier content. We rebelled against “Super Cena” with “fuck you Cena” chants, and most of the gimmick efforts of the time were completely dumped on by fans (male cheerleaders? a literal Boogeyman? what are we doing here guys?). I always felt like that caused a disconnect with Umaga as I came to truly appreciate his work later on in my life. Now, he’s one of my favorite wrestlers of all time despite my feeling like he was kind of stuck in a void of time and space – somehow working a gimmick that was both behind the times and ahead of his time, while working a style that translates throughout just about any era in wrestling history. He would’ve looked like a phenom in the early 1990s. He’d be appreciated for his dynamic skillset in 2022. But, he just never seemed to get as over as he deserved in 2006-08. Maybe it was the combination of the gimmick and the move set. People were still accustomed to seeing guys crash off of 20-foot ladders at the time – a thumb to the throat and a flying headbutt probably aren’t moving the needle a whole heck of a lot at that time. 

The undefeated angle felt contrived and a little too by-the-book in 2006, but if you go back and watch some of his matches, man, it felt like one of the best undefeated streaks of all time. At a time when Kane began to feel largely uninteresting, Umaga put on a banger of a feud with him. He had some matches with Jeff Hardy that elevated the Intercontinental Championship. Something about the style of those two just clicked, and Umaga’s versatility allowed him to do anything with Hardy. It was the rare magic that two wrestlers have together sometimes. The streak culminating in a loss to Cena kind of took the wind out of the sails for Umaga. I remember feeling like “is that all this was? A nine-month bit just to make Cena look strong?” It was another example of how clunky the booking and presentation of Umaga was. But, it led to one of my favorite matches of all time, a brutal and intense Last Man Standing match between Cena and Umaga at the Royal Rumble 2007. To this day, I fire that bad boy up every once in awhile.

He would go on to represent Vince McMahon in the Battle of the Billionaires at WrestleMania 23 in a match against Bobby Lashley. The two would go on to have some excellent matches, including a highlight reel moment when Lashley crashed THROUGH the steel cage and onto Umaga on the outside. Umaga lost the Intercontinental Championship to Santino Marella in the Miracle in Milan, a moment in which we were to believe a fan had just upset one of the most dominant wrestlers of the last year. He absolutely made Marella, and though he would go on to gain notoriety as a comedy wrestler, he got his start because Umaga made people believe in him. It’s not exactly how I would’ve booked the guy, but hey – I don’t run a billion dollar corporation, so what do I know? I acknowledge it as an example of just how valuable he truly was to the industry because they could really put him in any spot and he was able to shine. 

It felt like he was “fed” to Cena. He was “fed” to Lashley. Later in 2007, he was “fed” to Triple H. At WrestleMania 24, he was “fed” to Batista. After he returned from a torn PCL in 2009, he was “fed” to CM Punk. Later that year, he violated WWE’s Wellness Policy, refused to enter rehab, and was released because of it. He made a few indie appearances before his untimely death in December of 2009. Fatu suffered a heart attack, but toxicology reports concluded that there was a cocktail of painkillers in his system at the time of his death. It was a truly tragic event for one of wrestling’s greatest families. I would’ve loved to have seen matches against Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns. 

Umaga is an all-time example of “what if?” What if the WWE had done the Umaga gimmick just a little bit differently? What if they had granted him one of those wins over Cena? What if he had gotten help for his addiction? Regardless, he’s one of wrestling’s greatest athletes. He was a true phenom for the things he could do in the ring with anyone. The man had influence in the wrestling community. I didn’t realize it at the time, but you hear so many guys today talk about how good he was, and what an impact seeing a man of that size do the things he did had on them. 

When we have these conversations about who should or shouldn’t be in the WWE Hall of Fame, I usually err on the side of “hey, let’s just let everyone in.” I mean, they put The Bushwhackers and Koko B. Ware in, for fucks sake. They had to pull from each act’s work in the territories back in the day to pad their resumé. It’s an illustration of how it’s not necessarily what you do onscreen that makes you so valuable to wrestling. It’s about what you mean to people – and Umaga clearly meant a lot to a lot of people in addition to being able to go in the ring. 

His star burned quickly, but it burned brightly…hot enough to still be remembered distinctly as a one of a kind to this day. That kind of legacy deserves to be honored among the best in the history of pro wrestling. 

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

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