10 "Foreign" Wrestlers Who Were Actually Born In America

8. Gorilla Monsoon

To those of us who grew up watching the WWF in the 1980s, Gorilla Monsoon was an avuncular man with a nice disposition and a funny name €“ one who seemed like any kindly neighbor or family friend. He was the voice of the WWF, doing commentary alongside Jesse Ventura and Bobby Heenan and providing the upstanding contrast to their fire-fanning antics. After Monsoon's career as an announcer ended, the trust he had engendered with the fans allowed him to make an easy transition into the role of WWF Commissioner. Until he passed away in 1999, he was a beloved member of the WWE family. Decades earlier, though, Monsoon terrorized the WWWF as a mute monster heel, supposedly from the Manchuria rather than his native New Jersey. A far cry from the WWE Hall of Famer we remember today, Monsoon was allegedly a blood-drinking maniac who nearly wrested the WWWF Championship from Bruno Sammartino, and beating him senseless throughout the Northeast as a result. He would also form teams with two of the other most frightening wrestlers of the era, Killer Kowalski and "Professor" Toru Tanaka (more on him later). Though he would eventually turn babyface (and the rest is history), the Monsoon older fans remember was a far cry from the impression with which he'd leave us.