wrestling / News

Tama Tonga Says He Was Offered A WWE Deal, Explains Why He Turned It Down

January 21, 2022 | Posted by Joseph Lee
Tama Tonga Image Credit: NJPW

In an interview with the All Real Wrestling podcast (via Wrestling Inc, Tama Tonga said that he was offered a deal with WWE at the same time as AJ Styles and the Good Brothers, but turned them down. This would have been in late 2015 or early 2016, which is when the other three came to the company. Here are highlights:

On getting an offer from WWE and deciding to stay in NJPW instead: ‘I actually had committed to WWE with AJ [Styles] and [Doc] Gallows and all them. I committed also. The one thing I had to do was go back to Japan and do one last tour. So I went back to Japan to finish my tour. I told them I was leaving. That’s when [they made] the offer of, ‘What if we bring in your brother? You guys can be a tag team here.’ OK. Let’s do that. So I had to turn down my other contract with WWE, or my confirmation with WWE, I guess.”

On Haku not sharing secrets of wrestling with him as a kid: “I didn’t know anything about wrestling. I just knew what was on TV. My dad kayfabe’d the hell out of us. For all I knew, the punches were real. I mean, it wasn’t a work. So, chair shots is still real. That’s how much my dad loved the business and protected the business.”

On the role of kayfabe in wrestling: “I think if you’re not kayfabing it, maybe we could get more people to have an appreciation for the art of wrestling. You know, just like the art of acting. And then again, kayfabe can be great because it’s the mystery, you know? It’s the darkness behind closed curtains and you don’t know and that can be a rush too. So, there’s like this give and take because I think kayfabe in America is dead but in Japan, it’s still full-on alive and I appreciate it. So, I live in a world where one is alive and one is dead and I see the benefit of both. So how do you distinguish what’s best?”

article topics :

Tama Tonga, Joseph Lee