3-Minute Warning - History

History

Anoa'i and Fatu trained together at the Wild Samoan professional wrestling school operated by members of their family. When their training was completed they debuted in their uncle Afa's World Xtreme Wrestling (WXW), where Matt held the WXW Tag Team Championship as one half of the Samoan Gangstas with another cousin, Lloyd Anoa'i.

In 1996, Matt and Eddie were brought into the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) together to take part in an angle with Eddie's brother Solofa Fatu who was working under just his family name with a gimmick that he wanted to be a positive influence on kids and that he wanted to "make a difference" in inner city neighborhoods. Matt and Eddie were brought in as two silent "gangsters" who would watch Fatu's matches from the entrance aisle and stalk him around arenas, making him nervous. Neither gimmick lasted long, and Matt and Eddie were sent to the WWF's Heartland Wrestling Association (HWA) "farm league". There they used the individual names Ekmo Fatu (Eddie) and Kimo (Matt), with the team name Island Boyz. They held the HWA Tag Team Championship once, and for a time Haku served as their manager. They left HWA together, and in 2000 traveled to Japan to wrestle for Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling, where they held the FMW Hardcore Tag Team Championship. The next year they returned to the United States to wrestle for Memphis Championship Wrestling, where again they held gold, holding the MCW Southern Tag Team Championship on three occasions in the span of one month.

In 2002 they returned to (the now renamed) World Wrestling Entertainment as enforcers for Raw brand General Manager Eric Bischoff. Now known as Jamal (Eddie) and Rosey (Matt), the team was used to squash any activity in the ring that Bischoff deemed "boring". They made their debut on the July 22 episode of Raw, interrupting a match between D'Lo Brown and Shawn Stasiak that had been previously allotted three minutes. When the time limit expired Rosey and Jamal entered through the crowd and laid out both men, to the delight of Bischoff watching on from the entryway. The gimmick continued over the next few weeks, with Bischoff either giving people three minutes to entertain him before they were attacked or otherwise deciding that three minutes of a segment was enough before the team appeared to end it. As a result of the time period, the team became known as Three Minute Warning.

For a time, the team used the 2 Skinnee J's song 3 Minutes as its entrance music. According to 2 Skinnee's guitarist, Lance Rockworthy, the band did not receive any compensation for use of the song.

During the September 12 episode of SmackDown! Three Minute Warning and Eric Bischoff crashed the "commitment ceremony" being held for the Billy and Chuck tag team. Afterward Rico, Billy and Chuck's manager, started managing Three Minute Warning full time. With Rico by their side they engaged in a feud with the Dudley Boyz (Bubba Ray and Spike) and Jeff Hardy which resulted in their highest-profile match as a team — an Elimination Tables match at the November Survivor Series.

The team stayed on the low- and mid-card until June 2003, when Jamal was released from WWE, reportedly after his involvement in a bar fight. Rosey then went to form a superhero tag-team with The Hurricane, while Jamal did a short stint in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling under his "Ekmo Fatu" name before returning to WWE and being repackaged as Umaga. He was eventually released and later died in 2009.