10 Times WWE Asked You To Blindly Hate Foreigners
3. Kamala
Though not completely crafted by Vince McMahon, Kamala achieved his greatest success over several runs with WWE between 1984 and 1993.
Over the near-decade he dipped in and out of the company, the character was placed in several segments designed to portray him as fearsome, inhuman, stupid or a combination of all three. From eating a live chicken, to wailing chants of fear/hate (delete as appropriate), covering opponents face down and going ten pin bowling in a 'humanising' exercise, Kamala wasn't the same as everybody else and WWE loved letting audiences know.
Mississippi-born James Harris had wrestled under several pseudonyms before arriving in Memphis, where Jerry Lawler and Jerry Jarrett gave him the 'Ugandan Giant' persona that would make and break his career.
Half-man, half-beast, Kamala was presented as cannibalistic terror from the jungles of Uganda, playing to fears of the crowd from National Geographic insights into the East African country and a series of horror films portraying natives as flesh-eating killers.
Despite the cack-handed and derivative representation, Harris was exceptional in the role. As a heel, he was a fearsome monster, and during times in which he'd kowtow to handler Kimchee as a downtrodden babyface, his expressions drew tremendous sympathy from the crowd.