10 Incredible WWE Moments Nobody Ever Talks About
5. Mantaur
The Mantaur gimmick was obviously terrible.
It was a bizarre and lame anachronism, and as such has essentially become shorthand for the WWF being woefully behind the times. A cartoonish man and mythological beast hybrid character arrived just before 1995: the year in which WWE never needed to change more badly.
To describe Mantaur as "incredible" is hyperbole, of course, but he was nowhere near as bad as said shorthand suggests. You'd expect a slow, plodding oaf in a dumb animal head, where in reality, he was a dynamic monster in a dumb animal head.
Though he was exposed whenever he was paired with a star in a back-and-forth match, he was a wildly underrated squash match guy. In a May '95 hammering of Sonny Rogers, he started the match by sprinting, picking up Rogers, and smashing his back against the turnbuckles in one monstrous motion before bealing him across the breadth of the ring. He absolutely manhandled the poor sod, who it felt was in actual danger.
Mantaur had more than decent form with his suplex game, and he even boasted a cool proto-nope spot by swatting away Rogers' ankle from an attempted dropkick. His gorilla press set-up into a falling power slam finish was unreal too, the sort of move that a modern, more athletic hoss could bust out to a big pop in 2023.
Mantaur: better than your kick pad fave.