12 Greatest Ever Fictional Wrestlers

12. The Russian Mummy - Starsky & Hutch

the wrestler mickey rourke
ABC

When I first heard that Richard Kiel of "Jaws" fame played a wrestler on an episode of Starsky and Hutch, I had many questions. When I found out that that wrestler was the Russian Mummy, I had even more. At first, I thought he was a Russian mummy in the Soviet, creepily-preserved-corpse-of-Lenin sense, but nope. He's a straight-up Old Kingdom Egyptian, with linen wrappings and canopic jars to store his organs, the whole nine. He's a Boris Karloff-style mummy that came to life and defected to the USSR for some reason.

I mean, I think. The episode actually deals with the predetermined nature of the sport (gasp!), and the fearsome Commie Corpse is actually a shy dude named Iggy. But that's not to say Iggy doesn't take his role seriously; there's a wonderful scene of him getting in a full workout in full mummy wrappings, despite the apparent risk of heat exhaustion. Maybe that's why he's only pressing like 35 pounds, but whatever. Iggy lives the gimmick, man. He probably thinks Undertaker's killing the business for showing up on his wife's Instagram.

Contributor

Long-time fan (scholar?) of professional wrestling, kaiju films and comparative mythology. Aspiring two-fisted adventurer.