The Orient Express

The Orient Express was a professional wrestling tag team in the World Wrestling Federation in the early 1990s composed of Pat Tanaka and Akio Sato, who was later replaced by Kato.

History

World Wrestling Federation

In early 1990, manager Mr. Fuji split up the team known as The Powers of Pain (The Warlord and The Barbarian) as he sold their individual contracts to Slick who got the former and Bobby Heenan who received the latter, respectively. Fuji then brought in The Orient Express (Sato & Tanaka) as his latest threat to the WWF tag team division.^[1] While the Orient Express was supposed to represent Japan, Pat Tanaka was born in Hawaii.

The Orient Express kicked off a prolonged feud with The Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty) that started at WrestleMania VI, where Sato and Tanaka were victorious via countout after Sato threw salt in Jannetty's eyes while they were outside of the ring,^[2] and continued off and on for well over a year.^[3] The Orient Express got involved in the Legion of Doom (Animal and Hawk) / Demolition (Ax, Smash and later Crush) feud as Mr. Fuji managed Demolition as well. Demolition was being phased out and the Orient Express began taking on the Legion of Doom instead.^[4] The Legion of Doom / Orient Express feud was extremely onesided due to the Legion of Doom’s massive size advantage.^[5]

After WrestleMania VI, Tanaka and Sato only made two pay-per-view appearances while in the WWF. Firstly at SummerSlam 1990 where the team were defeated by "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan and Nikolai Volkoff.^[6] They were then a part of the Sgt. Slaughter led team "The Mercenaries" (that also included Boris Zhukov. Sato was pinned by Bushwhacker Butch 1:46 into the match and Tanaka was pinned by Tito Santana only moments later, 2:13 into the match.^[7]

When Akio Sato decided to leave the US wrestling scene in the latter days of 1990, the WWF decided to reunite the team known as Badd Company, only this time with Paul Diamond wearing a mask to conceal his ethnicity and using the name Kato.^[1] During this time the team had a very well received match with their old enemies the Rockers at the 1991 Royal Rumble^[8] and another well received match against The New Foundation (Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart and "The Rocket" Owen Hart) at the 1992 Royal Rumble^[9] – which were the only two PPV appearances for the New Orient Express.

Sato briefly rejoined the team in 1991 to team with Tanaka and Kato for a series of 6-man tag-team matches on WWF house shows,^[10] but Sato left the WWF after only a handful of matches together. Tanaka would leave the WWF in February 1992.^[11] Diamond went on to wrestle as a singles competitor in the WWF, first as Kato, then later as Max Moon, replacing the departed Konnan,^[12] neither gimmick meeting with very much success.

Post-WWF and split

After Paul Diamond also left the WWF, the two reunited as Badd Company, working for Eastern Championship Wrestling from late 1993 to early 1994, wrestling against the likes of The Bad Breed (Ian and Axl Rotten) and The Public Enemy, but never won the tag team titles.^{[13][14][15][16]}

Pat Tanaka resurfaced in WCW during 1994 as a singles wrestler billed as "Tanaka-San".^[17] Paul Diamond showed up with the Kato mask on using the name "Haito" shortly afterwards.^[18] The two men even wrestled a couple of matches together, but they never achieved any notoriety in WCW and finally split up for good by the end of 1994.^[1]

In wrestling

• Double-team finishing moves
  • Aided leapfrog body guillotine
  • Superkick-Plex (Superkick / Bridging German suplex combination)
• Managers
  • Mr. Fuji^[1]

Championships and accomplishments

• American Wrestling Association
  • AWA Southern Tag Team Championship (1 time)
  • AWA World Tag Team Championship (1 time)
• Continental Wrestling Association
  • CWA/AWA International Tag Team Championship (4 times)

See also

• American Force
• Badd Company

References