Jacob Fatu has been the Samoan Werewolf for his entire career, and until this week nobody had ever asked him where it came from. The answer is Twilight.
Fatu explained it to Stephanie McMahon on What’s Your Story?, and seemed slightly surprised the question had never come up before.
“It started from the movie Twilight.”
The context was a training exercise his uncle Rikishi was running when he first came into the business, built around the idea of teams representing different cities in the way the NBA and NFL do.
“When I first got into wrestling, my uncle Rikishi, we were doing this like NBA, NFL, different teams from different cities in wrestling versus different cities, territory league.”
The teams needed characters, and Fatu was put alongside one of his trainers.
“We were on the same team. He was a vampire. Twilight vampires need a werewolf, and the guy’s name was Jacob.”
The vampire was Gangrel, who Fatu is careful to credit as a significant part of how he was trained.
“I gotta be very clear. I was trained by my uncles Rikishi, Reno, my father as well, but Gangrel, David Heath, had a lot to do with my training. Shout out to him.”
The two of them worked out the rest from there, and Fatu had one reservation about the comparison.
“I told my wife, I was like, his body looked way more better than my body. So shout out to Jacob on Twilight.”
The obvious objection came from inside his own family.
“My uncle, you know, they don’t got werewolves in Samoa. I was like, yeah, well, how do you know they don’t have werewolves in Samoa? I’ve never been. I’ve been there when I was one years old, but I don’t remember. But like he said, my mother said the same thing. Who knows what they got in Samoa?”
He turned it into a point about the family’s reach rather than a joke about folklore.
“Look, man, we came from this little bitty island. Now we’re making a huge impact. So shout out to my people from that little bitty island out there.”
Gangrel wrestled in WWF between 1998 and 2001, most famously as the leader of the Brood alongside Edge and Christian, an act built around an entrance in which the three of them rose through a ring of fire. He has spent the years since working the independent circuit and training, and Fatu is among the wrestlers he has worked with.
McMahon was enthusiastic about the connection, calling the Brood’s entrance music one of the best things WWE produced in that period.
The training Fatu describes is the kind of thing Rikishi has built a second career around. He runs a wrestling school in Southern California, and several members of the family have come through it.
Fatu also passed on something he learned about his trainer during that time. Gangrel’s distinctive walk, he says, dates from an injury rather than being part of the character.
“I knew where my trainer’s walk started from. It started with his foot getting caught.”
The Samoan Werewolf name followed him through his independent run, including his time in MLW where he held the World Heavyweight Championship for more than two years, and came with him to WWE when he signed. He debuted in May 2024.
Fatu is part of the Anoa’i family, the son of Sam Fatu, known as The Tonga Kid and Tama, and a nephew of Rikishi and the late Umaga. Yokozuna was his uncle. Roman Reigns, Jey Uso, Jimmy Uso and Solo Sikoa are all cousins.
He was on the losing side at SummerSlam night one, teaming with Jey and Jimmy Uso against LA Knight, Solo Sikoa and Royce Keys.
