4. Osamu Nishimura Turns Into A Squid (The Calamari Wrestler, 2004)
While neither Osamu Nishimura nor any of the other popular early-2000s Japanese wrestlers in The Calamari Wrestler have ever worked in a WWE ring (Nishimura did have a short stint in WCW in the mid-90s), the film is simply too bizarre for a bit of technical accuracy to keep it off of the list. Nishimura plays pro wrestler Kanichi Iwata, who contracts an illness that turns him into a giant squid (you know, one of those illnesses). Rattled but undaunted, Iwata does his best to get his life on track and reclaim all that he's lost. It was a well-received movie that also featured Akira Nogami and Yoshihiro Takayama, but chief among the film's takeaways is that a wrestler turns into a squid.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
