Jacob Fatu nearly walked away from his WWE dream a decade before he ever signed with the company. The Samoan Werewolf, who challenges Roman Reigns for the World Heavyweight Championship at Backlash on Saturday night in Tampa, told Peter Rosenberg on Cheap Heat that a 2015 tryout ended with WWE telling him he had no future there because of a teenage robbery case.
“I had a tryout 2015, 16, and they told me I would never work here because of the mistakes that I made when I was 18,” Fatu said. “I went in for robbery. Fresh 18. I literally turned 18. My birthday is March 7th. I got the case in May.”
Fatu was already in the parking lot, ready to leave, when a referee came back for him. The closing meeting with Norman Smiley and William Regal still ended in rejection, but with one sentence that kept him in the business.
“I broke down. I was crying, man. I didn’t have anything else to do,” Fatu said. “Right before I was about to hop in the car, the referee come get me. I remember Norman Smiley and William Regal. ‘I’m not saying you will ever work for this company.’ And then he goes, ‘My suggestion is just keep staying at it.’”
The Drug Problem That Burned The Bridge
Fatu was open about why the years between that tryout and his eventual WWE signing were so rough. Pandemic instability, the streets, and addiction kept him from showing up.
“I would have one foot in the streets or another foot in wrestling and it didn’t work like that,” he said. “I had a little drug problem back in the day. Pandemic too. I had a lot going. I had a lot riding.”
The lowest point came when he no-showed Booker T’s Reality of Wrestling.
“I missed Booker’s show cuz I was hanging in the alley 5:30 in the morning, supposed to leave. I was still one game in, one game out.” Booker eventually let him back in: “My door never closed. Yeah, you messed up. Yeah, I was hot. But my doors never closed.”
The Phone Call That Got Him To WWE
The call that got him to WWE came from Solo Sikoa, not Roman Reigns or the Usos. Fatu has been clear from the start that he refused to lean on his cousins to get signed, even when his name was already in the conversation around the Bloodline storyline.
“Solo gave me a call. That’s when nobody called me,” Fatu said. “He was like, ‘I seen my dad’s post. Man, write Paul [Heyman].’ I didn’t go through Usos and Roman. I got it on my own.”
Fatu doesn’t romanticize what he survived. He thinks the timing was the point.
“I’m happy those rough times happen. If I would have been in WWE even a day earlier, I probably would have been let go.”
Saturday’s Backlash main event is the answer to all of it. “This match tomorrow could really make me or break me,” he said.