10 Wrestlers With Surprisingly Successful Japanese Careers

Modern day wrestling fans are probably most familiar with Albert as head of WWE NXT development Matt Bloom. But before he moved on to train the next generation of WWE superstars Bloom had a wildly successful wrestling career. Just not in North America, where a seventeen-year career culminated in exactly one championship.

In Japan, booked as Giant Bernard, Albert was exceptionally successful. Debuting in All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) he was immediately thrust into the heavyweight championship challenging for the Triple Crown Title. Shortly, thereafter Bernard would form a very successful tag team with Karl Anderson called Bad Intentions. They would win the IWGP tag team championship, NOAH tag championship, the G1 tag league and be named the Wrestling Oberserver tag team of the year by Dave Meltzer.

In addition to tag team success Bernard would have main event level feuds with Hiroshi Tanashi, Shinsuke Nakamura and Yuji Nagata. His crowning achievement was winning the New Japan Cup, the biggest single elimination tournament in Japan. Of all the accomplishments Albert would have in Japan perhaps most impressive was that he was a main eventer for all seven of his years there.

Unfortunately for the big man sandwiching the decorated portion of his career were two lengthy, uneventful runs in WWE. Originally brought in with a the joke gimmick Prince Albert (thank you Attitude Era Vince Russo!) Albert's main duties included acting as the muscle for mid carders like Droz, X-Pac, Justin Credible and the Big Bossman.

Now, during his first run Albert did win the intercontinental championship but that run was prefaced by a failed tag team called 'T&A' (Russo strikes again!) and a second failed tag team with Scotty 2 Hotty where he was referred to as the 'Hip Hop Hippo'. His second run in WWE came after his long stint in Japan and where he was known as Lord Tensai.

Despite a brief winning streak, which quickly then morphed into a lengthy losing streak Tensai became known as Sweet T, going out with a whimper as part of yet another failed tag team called 'Tons of Funk'.

Of all the wrestlers on this list the disparity between Japanese megastar and failed WWE, midcarder is most pronounced in the Albert, everyone's favourite 'Hip Hop Hippo'.