10 WWE Wrestlers We Initially Misjudged

When Umaga - the repackaged Jamal - first debuted in 2006, many fans feared that he would sit squarely in the tired tradition of generic, big monster heels (like Snitsky, Heidenreich, and Nathan Jones before him).

But, in fact, the Samoan Bulldozer felt somehow fresh. He didn't have a complex, tortured origin story, so instead they relied on the age old WWE trope of depicting someone as menacing and evil simply because they are foreign and have a tenuous grasp on the English language (which, it turned out, wasn't as tenuous as we first thought).

For whatever reason, Umaga worked where others failed - perhaps because, unlike those before him, he could seriously shift in the ring, pulling off moves that we seldom see a 300-pounder not named Samoa Joe perform.