Who Is Tanga Loa, The Newest Member Of The Bloodline?

A lot of people are likely asking an obvious question by now. Who the heck is Tanga Loa? He appears to have joined The Bloodline this past weekend at the WWE Backlash PLE. People went wild for him when he showed up, and this event took place in France! Therefore, it’s possible that knowing a little about this guy could be useful for fans who just learned about Tama Tonga recently.

Before we dive into who he is and why you should care, we should discuss a few details.

According to The Wrestling Observer, Tanga Loa and Tama Tonga signed their deals with WWE at the same time. It is just that New Japan Pro Wrestling decided to announce Tonga’s departure. This led to people thinking he would likely jump to the WWE. NJPW did not, however, announce Loa’s departure.

Therefore, many fans were under the assumption that Tanga Loa was staying in New Japan or his deal had not yet expired there. It makes sense, as they did not sign their deals at the same time beforehand. Thus, it could be assumed that they did not expire at a similar time. This means WWE purposely took advantage of the fact that people were not aware of Tanga Loa’s deal yet.

Before the Backlash PLE, it had been heavily rumored that Jacob Fatu was on his way to WWE. In fact, rumors were swirling that Fatu was going to be in France to interfere in The Bloodline’s match, the same way Tanga Loa did. However, while Fatu is going to be joining WWE, the company is perhaps responsible for putting out this false rumor to further muddy the waters. Making it much easier to surprise fans with Tanga’s appearance at the event.

WHO IS TANGA LOA?

It is an understandable question, as we cannot expect fans to know about Japanese wrestling. Heck, we cannot expect all WWE fans to watch anything outside of the WWE itself. Even if WWE is now openly referencing independent companies, their championships, and more. Thank you, Triple H, for doing that by the way. As it has always been odd that Vince McMahon wanted WWE fans to be in an echo chamber. Thereby, never getting to experience other professional wrestling companies.

However, it should be noted that this is not Tanga Loa’s first time in WWE. In fact, he was signed with the company several years ago.

He worked for WWE from 2009 to 2014, known mostly as Camacho during his time there. Of course, Tanga Loa is the son of Haku and obviously, Tongan. Yet his WWE character was clearly presented as Hispanic, as he was paired with Hunico in his most notable work. Hunico is legitimately Hispanic, whereas Tanga merely has brown skin. Without a lot of needs in WWE for Pacific Islander characters at the time, Tanga had to play into the Hispanic assumption.

This is not unlike Yokozuna’s issue, as the Samoan played a Japanese character during his career. WWE fans knew more about these territories, so using the “Samoan” or “Tongan” connections did not make sense in the eyes of Vince McMahon.

After dealing with very little television time and a lack of forward progression, Tanga Loa left WWE. He’d bounce around a bit, even working in TNA Wrestling for a small period of time. Eventually, he’d land in Japan by 2016, specifically with NJPW where he’d spend a little under a decade.

TANGA LOA’s CLAIM TO FAME

As we referenced, he is the blood son of Haku. However, he is the adoptive brother of Tama Tonga. After bouncing around with very little direction, Tonga Loa arrived at NJPW where his brother was already working. This led to the two forming a tag team that would come to be known as the Guerillas of Destiny, with the often-used initials of G.O.D. being critical to the name.

With his brother, he would become one of the earliest members of the infamous Bullet Club faction in the company. The duo would operate as their own entity within the BC and would become the IWGP World Tag Team Champions 7 times. Since the Young Bucks were handling the IWGP Junior Tag Team Title scene, Bullet Club never really had any issues within the tag team realm. Seeing as they could be the heavyweight tag champs, allowing the club to hold a lot of gold at any given time.

The two also won the NEVER Openweight Six-Man Tag Team Titles on three occasions. They won two of these with their cousin, Bad Luck Fale. The other they won alongside another Bullet Club member and newest junior heavyweight in the BC, Taiji Ishimori.

The Guerillas of Destiny also won the 2020 World Tag League and even the ROH World Tag Team Championships as well. Eventually, the Bullet Club was becoming too big and too powerful to last. Similar to that of the NWO in WCW years ago. That led to a Civil War of sorts and eventually, both Tanga Loa and Tama Tonga were out of the faction. That led to the start of the Guerillas of Destiny becoming a faction on its own within NJPW.

WHAT TO EXPECT NEXT

It is hard to know what we can expect from Tanga Loa next. While his brother is known to be quite vicious, Tanga Loa is often referenced as a powerhouse. Of course, Loa is not exactly massive, which is why his style has been power-based with a lot of technical skill thrown in. He is in fantastic shape, and it’s a bit interesting to note that his body has not been beaten up too much in Japan. One would expect the opposite, but their schedule is nowhere near as brutal as what one might have experienced in WWE years ago.

Therefore, he might be 40 years old but his body is better than one would expect for his age. This means we can still expect Tanga Loa to bring a brutal style into his matches, alongside his brother. WWE will clearly want to utilize them as a tag team going forward. Do we expect that they’ll win tag team gold in WWE? Oh, most certainly this is going to take place. When it takes place, on the other hand, is unknown.

What does seem to be the case is that both he and his brother seem to be following Solo Sikoa. They are the newest members of The Bloodline, in what appears to be a schism within the faction. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Roman Reigns comes back. However, most feel we’re going to be heading into some sort of six-man action eventually. Where Roman & The Usos will team up against Solo and his Guerillas of Destiny.

This could take place at WWE’s SummerSlam PLE in August. However, it could happen, in some form or another, as soon as the middle of the Summer. We’ll be very interested in seeing what WWE decides to go with.