Global InformationSamoan SWAT Team information
| Samoan SWAT Team | |
|---|---|
| Tag team | |
| Members | Juicy Finau Lance Anoaʻi Jacob Fatu |
| Name(s) | Gangstas in Paradise Hawaiian Beasts Headshrinkers Samoan Gangster Party Samoan SWAT Team |
| Billed from | Hawaii "Samoa" Tahiti |
| Former member(s) | Big Matty Smalls Fatu[1] Great Kokina Samoan Savage Samu[1] Sione Paul E. Dangerously (manager) |
| Debut | 1988 |
| Disbanded | 29 October 2023 |
| Years active | 1988–1996 2022–2023 |
In professional wrestling, the Samoan SWAT Team is a tag team comprising Juicy Finau, Lance Anoaʻi and Jacob Fatu, who work in Major League Wrestling (MLW), with Jacob Fatu a former MLW National Openweight Champion; Finau and Lance are former MLW World Tag Team Champions.
The original Samoan SWAT Team competed in promotions including New Japan Pro-Wrestling, World Wrestling Council, World Class Championship Wrestling, and World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The team later appeared in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now known as WWE) as the Headshrinkers and in Extreme Championship Wrestling as the Samoan Gangster Party (also known as Gangstas in Paradise). The team originally comprised Fatu and Samu, but various iterations included Great Kokina, Big Matty Smalls, Samoan Savage, and Sione.
The Samoan SWAT Team portrayed a pair of Samoan "savages", often displaying uncivilized behavior such as biting into a turkey carcass during a match and dragging each other by their hair. They were also billed as having hard heads that were impervious to pain; any attack that targeted a Headshrinker's head would have no effect, and an opponent who tried to headbutt one of them would end up hurting himself. Having hard heads went with typical professional wrestling portrayals of Samoan wrestlers. Most members of the team were members of the Anoaʻi family.
- ^ a b Shields, Brian; Sullivan, Kevin (2009). WWE Encyclopedia. DK. p. 127. ISBN 978-0-7566-4190-0.