10 Weirdest Wrestling Characters (That Didn’t Work)

4. Golga

As Earthquake, former professional sumo John Tenta was one of the greatest super heavyweights in the history of pro wrestling. Charismatic, dangerous and endlessly fun to watch, Earthquake starred as an enemy of Hulk Hogan and wowed as one half of the super-sized Natural Disasters tag team, alongside Fred Ottman, AKA Typhoon. Standing at 6,7€ and weighing in at an anvil-like 468lbs, Earthquake was an impressive sight to behold in his prime. He may not have been a giant-size acrobat like fellow big men Bam Bam Bigelow and Big Van Vader, but the Earthquake Splash, during which Tenta would simulate a massive tectonic shift by jumping up and down around his fallen opponent, before delivering a massive sitdown splash to his chest, was every bit as convincing as a Vader moonsault. Sadly, Tenta wasn€™t nearly as impressive in WCW, where he wrestled as Avalanche and The Shark, respectively, bargain bin versions of his former glory. To make matters worse, WCW wasn€™t alone in its misuse of Tenta. When the big man returned to the WWF in 1998, he€™d lost a lot of weight, so he was given the new identity of Golga and forced to wear a mask in order to make him appear deformed. As a member of The Oddities stable, Golga participated in some genuinely head scratching moments, which were made all the stranger by his character€™s obsession with a plush doll of Eric Cartman from the animated TV series South Park. At the time, the show was a major teen craze and having the newly rechristened Golga carrying a Cartman doll was WWF pandering at its most shameless and pathetic. The man who was trained for the ring by Dory Funk, Sr, Giant Baba and The Greak Kabuki, amongst others, really deserved better. Fortunately, Tenta€™s last appearance in a WWE ring saw him reprising his greatest and most memorable gimmick, that of the monstrous Earthquake.