Call him what you will, but WWE has never really seemed to know what to do with this big man. He seems to have spent half his time being portrayed as a monster and the other half as a joke, all spread over two runs with the company. These runs bookended a wildly successful time with NJPW between 2006 and 2012. Within a month of starting with the company, Giant Bernard (as he was called) would win the New Japan Cup, earning him a shot at the IWGP World Heavyweight Champion. Whilst Bernard was unsuccessful here (he was facing Brock Lesnar after all), the match was the first IWGP title match featuring two American wrestlers for 16 years. Bernard wouldnt reach such singles heights again, but his tag resume in Japan takes some beating. A two time IWGP Tag Team Champion and a two-time winner of the G1 Tag League, his team with Karl Anderson was undoubtedly one of the most dominant teams in Japanese wrestling history. They were called Bad Intentions, and they held onto the IWGP tag titles for a whopping 564 days, a record that still stands today. This run also included an undefeated streak that lasted an entire year, non title matches included. Bernard would return to WWE in 2012 as Lord Tensai, and would be reduced to a dancing fat man within a year.
Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.
