Anoa’i Family Member Accused Of No-Showing Charity Event, Not Returning Payment

WWE

Former MLW World Heavyweight Champion Jacob Fatu has been accused of no-showing a charity event and failing to return payment.

NBC 26 ran a story covering the situation, which you can see in the YouTube video below this news story.

The nonprofit organization in question is Jake’s Network of Hope. Below are the comments in the story from reporter Darby McCarthy and Jen Harper who’s the director of development at Jake’s.

Harper: “One of my old co-workers is an ex professional wrestler, and he’s like, ‘I know a guy, are you interested?’, and I was like, ‘Yes. Yes we are’.

McCarthy: “They booked names like Billy Gunn, Vampiro, Tatanka, Brian Pillman Jr…”

Harper: “… And then Jacob Fatu.”

McCarthy: “But when the day came, Jen says Jacob called out.”

Harper: “Jacob called and said there was a family emergency. We gave him the benefit of the doubt – at Jake’s we are 100% about family, and I said, ‘If you can’t make it, that’s fine’.”

McCarthy: “Jen says all she asked was that her nonprofit be reimbursed for the money they spent booking him (see the breakdown below).”

Pre-Paid: $1,030

Hotel: $548

Original Plane Tickets: $657

Flight Change: $348

8x10s for Autographing: 50

Total: $2,633

Harper: “We rescheduled the flight that he missed originally and about an hour after that flight took off, we were made aware from him that he wasn’t coming. After that, he ghosted us, he ghosted the production team that put together the wrestling show, and he ghosted the person that booked him for us.”

McCarthy: “Jen says she and the staff at Jake’s initially planned to keep quiet about the whole ordeal… until they saw posts on social media from other organizations saying Fatu had done the same thing to them. But some good has come of it. Jen says that a major name from Jacob Fatu’s wrestling family heard about the incident and, though that person does not wrestle anymore, they reached out to offer an appearance at Jake’s wrestling fundraiser next year.”

Harper: “It was kind of really out of the blue to get a phone call from somebody of that magnitude to say, ‘Hey, what can we do, how can we help’.

McCarthy: “I reached out to Jacob Fatu at the numbers provided by organizations who had been in contact with him. He has not responded to request for comment on the situation at this time.”

If you use this transcription or any portion of it, please credit WrestleTalk.com and link to this page.

Jacob Fatu is a member of the Anoa’i family that has become such a staple of WWE’s programming over the past few years as The Bloodline.

PWInsider added that there have been “several reports of late” that Fatu hasn’t been appearing for indie dates as scheduled, taking advanced payments and then not responding when asked for them to be returned.

Fatu is the currently MLW National Openweight Champion but PWInsider notes that Fatu books his own indie dates so this situation is not tied to MLW.

We’ll keep you posted if there are any updates. You can watch the aforementioned YouTube video from NBC 26 covering the story at this link.

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• Anoa'i Family
• The Bloodline
• Jacob Fatu
• mlw

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