Prince Iaukea
American professional wrestler
Michael Laauli Hayner (born August 1, 1964) is an American semi-retired professional wrestler. He is best known for his appearances with World Championship Wrestling from 1995 to 2000 under the ring name Prince Iaukea and later The Artist Formerly Known as Prince Iaukea or simply The Artist.
Hayner made his WCW debut in 1996 and mainly competed as a fan favorite underdog. He was utilized as an enhancement talent during the early months of his career before winning the World Television Championship in 1997 and holding the title for nearly two months. Hayner then fell in the ranks due to some issues with management before being repackaged as "The Artist". He dominated the cruiserweight division during the first half of 2000, winning the company's Cruiserweight Championship twice before departing the company later that year.
Professional wrestling career
World Championship Wrestling (1995-2000)
Training and debut (1995–1996)
After being trained by Dean Malenko and Rico Federico, Hayner made his first appearance in World Championship Wrestling (WCW) at the 1995 Fall Brawl pay-per-view as a cadet delivering papers to Cobra for Craig Pittman. Later, Kevin Sullivan brought him to some television tapings and was so impressed by his professionalism, overall attitude, and respect for the business that Sullivan gave him the "Iaukea" name taken from King Curtis Iaukea, a good friend of Sullivan. Hayner was thus given the ring name "Prince Iaukea".
Hayner made his first appearance in WCW on the May 18, 1996 episode of Saturday Night, where he teamed with Rick Fargo as enhancement talents against Chris Benoit and Kevin Sullivan.
“Prince Iaukea” enters the record as american professional wrestler. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Prince, Iaukea and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7244091. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1995, 2000 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Prince Iaukea” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.