8 Wrestling Gimmicks That Were Much Darker Outside WWE

In 1983, Skandor Akbar, sick to his back teeth of the Von Erich hegemony in Dallas' WCCW, unleashed his latest addition to his army. By his own admission, the new recruit was far from ready - or rather, North American wrestling wasn't. The Ugandan Giant 'Kimala', waving a sharpened spear and with fiercesomely painted face, was the cruelest African stereotype the industry had ever seen.

That cruelty often got the better of him. Not au fait with the finer points of the sports' rules, the 'untrained beast' would frequently find himself on the end of a disqualification. It rarely mattered; the damage had already been done. Such was the case when he challenged for Harley Race's NWA Championship outside the company in October of that year. Quite why he cared about titles is unclear.

Kimala - or 'Kamala', as he was now known - displayed similar savagery in his first WWE spell, devouring a live chicken before taking on Hulk Hogan for his belt. It was a similar story, as the match went to a double countout.

When Kamala resurfaced from the jungles of Uganda just under ten years later, he was no less savvy about the regulations but significantly less scary. The 1992 version of Kamala who went up against The Undertaker was not just severely out of date but also deeply sympathetic, a terrified man being coerced into battle by his (white) 'handlers'. Far from being the fearless warrior, Kamala turned tail and fled from the stalking Undertaker at SummerSlam '92. Who could blame him in the face of such oppression?