Man, a lot of basketball players on this list. Australians, too. Normally when giants appear in martial arts films, they're shown to be strong and little else. They outmatch the hero initially, and may even defeat him in an early encounter, but the hero always learns that skill overcomes brute force. Not so with Hakim, Bruce Lee's most memorable opponent from his unfinished epic, Game of Death. Hakim was played by the 7'2" Kareem Abdul Jabbar, one of Bruce Lee's real life pupils. The original premise of the film involved a martial artist ascending a pagoda by defeating masters of various fighting styles by identifying their weaknesses; the Escrima master relied too heavily on fixed attack patterns, the Taekwondo master had poor economy of movement, et cetera. The final test would be Hakim, whose free-flowing Jeet Kun Do would match the hero's skill while far outmatching his power. In the end, Lee's Billy Lo triumphs not via skill but by fighting dirty: he recognizes that Hakim's shades belie not only an unfortunate 1970's fashion sense, but also a sensitivity to light, and blinds the giant by tearing down the drapes.
