Continuing the theme of big men portrayed differently across the continents, heres another guy who made a name for himself in the Land of the Rising Sun. You might remember him as one of the myriad of people that found themselves in the nWo (or as part of the wonderfully named Vicious and Delicious team with Buff Bagwell), but in Japan Scott Norton was big business. He made his debut for NJPW in 1990 and was primarily a tag wrestler for the first few years. This tenure included two IWGP tag title reigns, first with Tony Halme (you may know him as Ludvig Borga) and secondly with Hercules Hernandez, as part of the fantastically named Jurassic Powers team. If you add Fire & Ice to this, Norton was a part of some excellently named tag teams. After the split of the Jurassic Powers, Norton would mill around with a variety of partners, tasting little success. All this would change in 1998 however, when Norton defeated Yuji Nagata to become the IWGP Heavyweight Champion. Norton would hold onto the title for four months, before losing to Keiji Mutoh in January 1999. A second reign followed in 2001, but this lasted less than a month. Aside from being one of only six foreigners to hold New Japans top title, Norton also worked as a bodyguard for Prince, which might be cooler than anything mentioned in this list. He was also a professional arm wrestler, and I'm pretty sure he would have wiped the floor with Owen Hart in the picture above.
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.
