Just a few months after the death of his brother, Sika, Afa the Wild Samoan has died. He was 81.
The news was broken by Samu Anoa’i on the afternoon of August 16: “It is with deepest regret that we announce the passing of my father Afa Anoai Sr. It was a peaceful transition and he was surrounded by loved ones. Please respect our privacy as we morn (sic) our father.”
Afa the Wild Samoan in an image released by the family.
Afa had faced health challenges since late 2023, including a fractured back, a heart attack and battling pneumonia, so it was a bit of a surprise when his younger brother, Leati Sika Amituana’i Anoa’i, died on June 25, 2024, at age 79.
Afa’s death was prematurely announced on the evening of August 15, likely by persons and websites misinterpreting this post from Afa’s son, Samula, who wrestled as Samu:
As we embark on your final journey home, we express our heartfelt gratitude for the unwavering love and guidance you have bestowed upon us throughout our lives. We find solace in knowing that you will soon be reunited with the Lord Jesus, your parents, siblings, and friends who have gone before us. We have no doubt that you will establish a Wild Samoan training center in the sky, bringing us all together once again. We believe in the power of your love and legacy, and we will continue to honor it in all that we do.
Respectfully your son
Big Sam Anoa’i.
The oldest cousin of the Bloodline clan.
Family and friends fought back against those who had misreported the news, much like Afa himself had fought and fought for the last few months.
They had collected pictures, stories, and memories from those who knew Afa to share at his bedside in his final days, spent in Pensacola, Florida.
Gataivasa Afa Amituana’i Anoa’i was born November 21, 1943, in Samoa, one of 13 children. He came to San Francisco, joining the Marines at 17. In the early ’70s, he began training for pro wrestling with High Chief Peter Maivia and Rocky Johnson. Another worker, Ricky Thompson, took him to Arizona where he furthered his training under Kurt von Steiger and began competing. Once established, Afa sent for his older brother Sika, and the Wild Samoans tag team were born.
Their first title came quickly, in 1973 in Calgary, followed by a reign in Vancouver the same year. “They were relatively green when they were here, but they were such a pair of bulls. They looked the part, and they had some good talent to work with here,” said Stampede Wrestling’s Saskatchewan promoter/photographer/referee Bob Leonard in The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Tag Teams. “I seemed to always get their match. That goddamn big Sika, you’d be trying to push him back in the corner, and he’s just standing there. He would not move for you. It was funny. ‘Get back in that corner.’ He’s going, ‘Heh, heh, heh.'”
Championships followed in Detroit (’75) and Georgia (’82), but it was their WWWF runs, resulting in three different championships that most defined the Samoans. “They were, as we used to say in the magazines ‘a well oiled tag team machine!'” said journalist Bill Apter. “They were excellent but even better when ‘Captain’ Lou Albano became their manager in the WWWF.”
“They were vicious type people. When I saw vicious, I don’t mean in personality, I mean inside of the ring,” said Albano, who considered the Samoans his favorite team. “They really loved to get in there and battle. They’d whack each other. In fact, as brothers sometimes, they’d get in the ring and just start arguing and have a battle.”
Tony Garea faced their often, and traded the WWWF World tag titles alongside Rick Martel with them. They were classic tag team battles, recalled Garea. “I’d never met the Samoans. The first time we worked, Gorilla Monsoon said, ‘You guys are working and this is the finish.’ We talked, and I suggested a way of having the match and they said, ‘Okay, brother.’ We had it and we came out, and they were delighted with the match. It was just my philosophy, having a match, the psychology of it.
Garea expanded on his philosophy: “Make us look good for seven, eight minutes and then we’re all yours, Rick and I, we would sell for say, five, six minutes, and make the tag and come in full of piss and vinegar and fire, and have them cut us off. And then sell again for five or six minutes. Now you get the tag and cut us off again. The next time was the real one. We had the people going up and down, up and down.”
The stories of the toughness of the Wild Samoans are legion. Perhaps none compare to a match in Jackson, Miss., against Jake Roberts and Junk Yard Dog. Roberts hot tagged JYD, who “came running in the ring doing that Junkyard Dog gimmick. He was very excited and I tried to calm him down. So he started throwing punches, stuff like that,” recalled Afa. “He hit me right by my eye, and my eyeball, it popped out. It was hanging there. I yelled at him, saying ‘I’m hurt. My eye is hurt … So I had my hand here, holding my eye and I knew my eyeball was right here so I held on to it because I didn’t know what to do. I could see my career going down the line … So I fell back into the corner and I tagged my brother, and my brother came in and continued the match.” As Sika finished the match, Afa popped the eyeball back in, though a little hair got in the way and it had to be reinserted. In the dressing room, a doctor tended to him and sterilized the area. At the hospital, a physician told him he was within seconds of losing sight because of the stretch of muscles. Today, he has perfect vision.
Bill Watts concurred. “Afa and Sika were a formidable team … Afa and Sika were a great team, that gimmick of theirs, they were tough guys, they were tough guys. You had to believe in them.”
Sika explained why it worked. “My brother and I were so good because we knew what the other was thinking all the time,” said Sika in an interview on the Wild Samoan training camp website. “We also had an advantage since we spoke Samoan and no one knew what we were saying. We were the best because we put our heart and soul into every match.”
They had loyal Samoan followings, even when working as heels, said Randy Colley, who worked against them as Moondog Rex. “We worked together so many times over the country. I don’t think there’s a state or a country we hadn’t worked in. All over Australia,” he recalled. “Afa and Sika, they were just natural. In California, I didn’t know they had so many Samoans …They were at the back door, and we could hardly get in the building! They knew we were going to wrestle Afa and Sika. They wanted to kill us before we even got to the ring!”
One of the teams the Samoans beat for the WWWF titles were the Strongbows. Jules Strongbow (Frank Hill) recalled his initial foray into the ring against them. “The first time, it was kind of intimidating because I had only seem tapes of them and watched them wrestle. I really didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “I kind of got the feeling that they were there to have fun. They were there to make the money and enjoy what they were doing at the same time, because that’s what they had been doing all of their life.”
Indeed, as the 1980s progressed, Afa and Sika dropped out of active wrestling, but turned their attention to training the next generation of Samoan warriors and managing. Afa took the Headshrinkers (Samu & Fatu) to WWF tag team gold in 1994. Through their Wild Samoan Training Centers — one in Whitehall, Penn., one in Pensacola, Fla., they worked with Dave Batista, Yokozuna, Rikishi, Three-Minute Warning — Rosie and Jamal, and others.
Compared to his brother, Sika, Afa was downright chatty, doing many interviews, participating in social media, and happy to be front and center at events. His World X-Treme Wrestling (WXW) promotion was perhaps not the busiest of indy companies, but the shows he did run had impact and drew well, partly because of the extended family. They came to spend time with “Pops” as Afa was affectionately known. WXW held a ceremony in April 2024, where Afa Anoai Jr. took over the promotion.
“I formed my promotion to give the fans top quality professional wrestling,” Afa told WrestlingClothesline.com. “I started my camp, the Wild Samoan Training Center to give young hopefuls the best possible chance to make their dreams come true.”
Afa married his wife, Lynn, in 1960, and they had five children: Samula, who wrestled as Samu, Afa Jr. who was also known as Manu, Bernadette, Lloyd who works as L.A. Smooth, and Monica (who married wrestler Gary Albright).
But the “Bloodline” was, of course, much larger, as just about any Samoan claims to be related to every other, particularly in pro wrestling. But it went beyond that too, with the family always welcoming and creating deep relationships both in the wrestling business and out of it.
Funeral arrangements are not known at this time.
TOP PHOTO: Left, the Samoans in Stampede Wrestling. Photo by Bob Leonard; right, the Wild Samoans are inducted in the WWE Hall of Fame. SlamWrestling.net photo
RELATED LINKS
- Aug. 16, 2024: Family, friends remember Wild Samoan Afa
- Roman Reigns and Anoa’i family story archive
