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 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 as his latest threat to the WWF tag team division. 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 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, and continued off and on for well over a year. The Orient Express got involved in the Legion of Doom / Demolition 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. The Legion of Doom / Orient Express feud was extremely onesided due to the Legion of Doom’s massive size advantage.
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. They were then a part of the Sgt. Slaughter led team "The Mercenaries" at the 1992 Royal Rumble – 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, but Sato left the WWF after only a handful of matches together. Tanaka would leave the WWF in February 1992. Diamond went on to wrestle as a singles competitor in the WWF, first as Kato, then later as Max Moon, replacing the departed Konnan, 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 and The Public Enemy, but never won the tag team titles.
Pat Tanaka resurfaced in WCW during 1994 as a singles wrestler billed as "Tanaka-San". Paul Diamond showed up with the Kato mask on using the name "Haito" shortly afterwards. 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. Pat Tanaka showed up in singles matches during 1996 in WCW. The two reunited in 2006 as the Orient Express on the independent circuit until 2008.

Championships and accomplishments