Jimmy Snuka was upset at how Tamina was being booked, taught her the Superfly Splash

Superfly Jimmy Snuka is a proud dad, so he wants the best for his daughter Tamina. Naturally, he was upset about how she was booked in her early days, as after getting an initial push, was relegated to being the jobber to the stars for the WWE Divas involved in title feuds. Speaking to Arda Ocal of theScore TV Network, he said:

I taught both her and my son. At first they were using her pretty good, but all of a sudden they start [having her lose] and I thought ‘what’s going on here’? It’s kind of early into the show [with] whatever gimmicks [WWE] are trying to work out for her. So I’m watching this thing mostly every week to try to catch her. She hurt her wrist and was out for a while and now she’s back again. She looks even better than ever and I’m so proud of her. I tell her to put only one focus in your mind and take care of number 1 and that’s it.

It’s understandable that the WWE Hall Of Famer would support his daughter, as what guy wouldn’t? However, strong support can also lead to a cloudy judgement. In the early days of her run, Tamina was pea-green, so it would have been irresponsible to push her hard – plus, WWE was still looking to bed in a character for her. Around this time last year, she was given her first big push, receiving a Divas title match against Beth Phoenix at Elimination Chamber but was unable to wrest the belt away. However, she showed how far she had come, and there was a buzz around her challenge. After taking three months out to recover from her wrist injury, she emerged as a heel at Survivor Series and received a new push of sorts. She’s better suited as a heel because of her size advantage over the other women, but even now, her heel character still doesn’t seem to be defined enough.

Elsewhere during the interview, Jimmy explained how he was the one who taught her how to execute the Superfly Splash, and was her first victim:

I’m so proud. She did it to me four times. I came up close to the ropes; I said ‘get up that first rope’, and she Superflied me… and then I moved out some more and she did it the second Superfly on me, and I moved it out pretty close to the middle of the ring and she Superflied me again. I said ‘alright, that’s the third time, this is the one that counts’.

So I moved way over into the middle of the ring, and when she was climbing up and she turned around I moved a little bit more over from the middle of the ring and said ‘now show me that you can do it’. It was incredible, I was so proud of her, and I said ‘you take care of yourself, you’re ready to go, you’ve got the whole idea of the thing… I said ‘fly brudda’.

I’ve pointed out before that Tamina’s Superfly Splash is an unpretty facsimile of the original, but I’ll also be fair when I say she has probably only been doing it for three years, and at a much slower rate that her dad was doing it. At the moment, she flails in the air, rather than soaring through it – but give her time, and it may come to her. However, at 35-years old, how much time does she have before WWE decides that she is past their perception of a use-by date?

You can listen to the full interview with Jimmy Snuka below.

- Lee Burton
- Photos by WWE