Extract: Pro Wrestling's Pacific Bloodline: Family over Everything

Pro Wrestling's Pacific Bloodline: Family Over Everything is a powerful and personal journey through the legacy of Polynesian wrestlers who shaped and reshaped the global wrestling industry.

From the rise of the Maivia and Anoa‘i families to the cultural impact of The Bloodline, New Zealand-born Sāmoan writer Ite Lemalu traces how Pacific Island wrestlers fought for visibility, reclaimed their stories, and inspired new generations. Drawing from decades of magazine clippings, VHS tapes, and digital storytelling, Lemalu connects past and present through his own lived experience, from childhood fandom to working behind the scenes at NJPW TAMASHII.

Blending sharp cultural analysis with heartfelt homage, this book captures the strength, strategy, and soul of Polynesian wrestling across four decades, two hemispheres, and countless rings.

From aiga to arena, this isn’t just a wrestling story. It’s about legacy, identity, and taking ownership of your narrative.

Extracted with kind permission from Pro Wrestling’s Pacific Bloodline: Family Over Everything by Ite Lemalu

Family Over Everything: The Polynesian Legacy in Professional Wrestling

Professional wrestling has always been a spectacle: a blend of sport and theatre where characters collide in the squared circle. Yet beneath the glitz and grandeur, wrestling reflects cultural hierarchies, inherited biases, and the kinds of stories dominant voices are allowed to tell. As a lifelong fan, I have followed the evolution of South Pacific representation in the industry with purpose.

Pro Wrestling’s Pacific Bloodline: Family Over Everything is not a definitive history of Polynesian wrestling. Rather, it is an intergenerational reflection centred on the Maivia and Anoa‘i dynasties: two family lines that navigated the wrestling industry through different eras and left a legacy that continues to unfold. While early pioneers such as Neff Maiava broke ground decades earlier, my journey through this story begins in the 1970s with Peter Maivia and moves forward through the generations that followed.

I write as a New Zealand–born Samoan whose relationship with wrestling has been shaped by lived experience. My work as a content writer, accessibility advocate, and contributor to NJPW TAMASHII has allowed me to view the industry from multiple angles. I also experience the world with low vision, which means wrestling has always reached me differently. Where others might focus on visual spectacle, I followed the rhythm of commentary, the rise and fall of crowd reactions, and the cadence of storytelling in the ring.

This book is not intended as an academic text. Instead, it functions as a cultural map, a journal of memory and movement. Like the va‘a of our ancestors navigating the Pacific Ocean, this story travels in non-linear ways, circling back, revisiting earlier moments, and connecting past and present. History, like the tides, rarely moves in straight lines.

My advocacy for accessibility has taught me how easily stories can be silenced or reshaped by those in positions of power. Wrestling is no different. When the same voices dominate the narrative, entire communities risk being reduced to caricatures. Pacific wrestlers have long been portrayed through narrow archetypes: silent enforcers, wild outsiders, intimidating physical presences whose cultural identities were simplified for mainstream audiences.

Yet Pacific cultures are deeply oral. Storytelling sits at the heart of who we are. Silence is not our natural state. In many ways, this book exists to reclaim that voice.

The first Polynesian wrestler I remember watching on television was King Haku in 1989. Seeing someone who looked like me, brown-skinned, unmistakably South Pacific in build and presence, changed how I viewed the wrestling world. At a time when American pop culture was dominated by figures such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Hulk Hogan, Haku stood out in a different way. He carried himself with a quiet confidence that did not need explanation.

When I later watched Haku bodyslam Don Muraco at a Bushwhackers homecoming event at Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland, something shifted for me. Until that moment, Pacific wrestlers often appeared on the margins of the story. Watching Haku perform in front of a New Zealand crowd revealed something deeper: we were not simply side characters in someone else’s narrative. We were capable of being the main event.

Years later, returning to university allowed me to examine these experiences through a different lens. Studying sociology and media opened new ways of understanding how representation works. I began to see how cultural narratives are constructed, how power influences whose stories are amplified, and how certain identities become confined to particular roles.

Pacific wrestlers were frequently framed through stereotypes: dangerous, mysterious, or primitive figures whose strength spoke louder than their voices. Their silence was rarely accidental. More often it was part of the character written for them.

But Pacific identity has never been silent.

Since 2018 I have worked with the New Japan Pro-Wrestling New Zealand Dojo, often referred to as Fale Dojo or the NZ Dojo, as a content writer and Media Relations Manager. The Dojo was founded by Toks Fale, known internationally as Bad Luck Fale, a New Zealand Tongan wrestler who made history as the first foreign graduate of the prestigious NJPW Dojo in Tokyo.

Fale’s journey represents something significant for Pacific wrestling. Many performers from small island nations leave home in pursuit of opportunities elsewhere, navigating unfamiliar cultures while carrying the weight of where they come from. Fale not only succeeded in Japan but later returned to South Auckland to build a pathway for others.

Through the NZ Dojo, young wrestlers from across New Zealand and the Pacific now train within a system that connects them directly to the traditions of Japanese professional wrestling. They learn discipline, technical skill, and storytelling while remaining grounded in their own cultural identities.

New Zealand itself has a surprisingly deep wrestling history. Yet Pacific athletes who represent the country on international stages, including performers such as Bad Luck Fale, Aaron Henare, and Dakota Kai, often receive limited recognition at home. Their achievements travel widely across the wrestling world, but the stories behind those journeys are not always told locally.

That absence of recognition is one of the reasons this book exists.

Through my column Ite Lemalu’s TAMASHII FOCUS, published on the official New Japan Pro-Wrestling website, I have had the privilege of documenting the development of the next generation of NZ Dojo students. These athletes are navigating global wrestling expectations while staying rooted in their Pacific identities. Their journeys reflect a balance between tradition and change, discipline and creativity, heritage and opportunity.

Digital media has reshaped how these stories circulate. On one hand, it has given Pacific wrestlers greater visibility than ever before. Fans across the world can now follow careers that once might have gone unnoticed outside local communities.

On the other hand, digital spaces have also created new challenges. Online forums, podcasts, and social media discussions can easily distort narratives. Individuals with little understanding of wrestling training or Pacific cultural contexts sometimes claim authority over stories they have never experienced firsthand.

This book does not exist to argue with those voices. Instead, it exists to document what might otherwise be overlooked.

Many wrestling books are written by wrestlers themselves, by historians, or by journalists who cover the industry from a distance. Rarely are they written by Pacific fans who have grown up within the culture while also working inside parts of the wrestling ecosystem.

This perspective shapes the way I tell these stories.

From Peter Maivia’s roar in the ring to Roman Reigns raising a single finger as the Tribal Chief, Polynesian wrestlers have reshaped the emotional language of professional wrestling. Their presence carries layers of meaning that extend far beyond scripted rivalries or championship belts.

They are sons of chiefs and daughters of matriarchs. They are performers, storytellers, and cultural navigators whose journeys often stretch across oceans.

While the Maivia and Anoa‘i families form the central spine of this narrative, the story of Pacific wrestling reaches much wider. It includes the pioneers who travelled between islands and continents, the performers whose contributions rarely appear in official family trees, and the communities that supported them along the way.

Their stories deserve to be remembered.

This book is written for the blind and low-vision fans who learned to follow wrestling by listening carefully. It is written for Pacific readers who rarely saw themselves reflected in wrestling magazines growing up. And it is written for the wrestlers whose names may never headline major arenas but who continue to carry the culture forward each time they step into the ring.

The journey of Pacific wrestling is still unfolding.

And the story is far from finished.

Author note:

Ite Lemalu is a New Zealand-born Samoan writer, accessibility advocate, and contributor to NJPW TAMASHII. Ite’s work explores the cultural legacy of South Pacific wrestlers and the evolving representation of Polynesian athletes in professional wrestling.