In perhaps one of the least surprising pieces of wrestling news of the year, WWE has interest in Hikuleo.
Fightful Select’s Sean Ross Sapp spoke with sources connected to New Japan Pro Wrestling and WWE who said that Hikuleo has interest from WWE, and they expect him to join the company when available. Hikuleo’s brothers Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa both joined WWE and the Bloodline in recent months after runs in NJPW. Bodyslam.net has reported that Hikuleo has officially finished up with NJPW.
Tonga and partner El Phantasmo dropped their tag team titles at this past weekend’s NJPW show. Fightful Select had reported in the past that Hikuleo’s NJPW deal was up in June 2024. We can’t confirm if that’s the case, but we did reach out to him upon Tama Tonga’s WWE debut to ask about it.
Hikuleo confirmed Fightful Select’s report that both he and Tama Tonga had talks with WWE in January of 2023. However, an informal hiring freeze was in place that prevented them and many others from being signed by WWE. By the time it was over, Hikuleo had agreed to a deal that kept him in NJPW until the summer of 2024
Follow our Fightful contract tracker at this link.
This article first appeared on our premium service, Fightful Select and was republished here on Fightful for SEO reasons. If you complain about it being "old news," you have to bring Sour Punch ropes out of retirement for SRS. Subscribe to get exclusive news every day, and a half-dozen weekly podcasts.
To directly support us and our continuing breaking news, interviews, and the like, subscribe to FightfulSelect.com. You'll get exclusive news sent to you directly before anyone else, and dozens of podcasts monthly including Alex Pawlowski's Sour Graps, Sean Ross Sapp's Q&A, Retro Reviews and more
