I've always liked the Super Heavyweight performers in the wrestling business, Earthquake was a favourite of mine back in the day, Loved the Angle when he attacked Hulk Hogan and injured him .would have liked to see him have a run as WWF Champion but it wasn't to be  

Yokozuna was another excellent performer for a man his size as was Viscera although he was well known for injuring his opponents too often. 

Mark Henry though was the most talented of the lot in my opinion, His heel turn and the whole 'Hall of Pain' run was excellent and showed how much improvement he'd made  

Anyway who's your favourite Super Heavyweight Wrestler? & what favourite memories do you have? 

Hardcore Holly.

I was never a big super heavyweight guy. When I picture a wrestler, I picture somebody with good cardio, relatively strong, not some big fat dude who looks like he's going to die of a heart attack any second. If I had to pick one, it would be Mark Henry. For years, he was my most hated wrestler on the roster. They had him work Taker at a Wrestlemania and I thought it was the biggest waste of time, especially since Taker was coming off one of his greatest matches with Kurt. Then for whatever reason it clicked with me when he became ECW Champion and had this really underrated feud with Matt Hardy.

I know we're talking about super heavyweights, but Matt Hardy's time on ECW was incredibly overrated. Everything Christian achieved a year later, Matt had already done and yet only one of them seems to receive any recognition. Anyways Mark stepped it up again in 2011 with the Hall of Pain stuff and was having good matches with Sheamus, Randy, Show, Bryan & Punk which really cemented him.

Then I remember a Wrestlemania where he was just killing it on every radio interview. So much so, I think it must have got back to the WWE since he ended up going over Ryback when Ryback was being given the Braun Strowman push. Not long after that, he cut one of the best promos of the decade where he announced his retirement and the rest they say is history.

Looking back on his Sexual Chocolate run, as green as he was, he still did some crazy athletic moves and he was one of the biggest personalities on the show. I think if anyone did the Mae Young or the Trans angle, they would have been eaten alive. Mark got the fans to eat it up and was getting some of the biggest responses of the night.

The sexy answer would be to say Vader, Bam Bam, Tenta, Morishima etc. but I didn't get a chance to see them evolve and they didn't win me over like Sexual Chocolate.

Mark Henry definitely gets major bonus points for his evolution over his longevity.

Earthquake kinda started strong, then went down hill. Same for Yoko. At least Yoko's start was arguably stronger, and his shorter run left less time for much of a downhill descent and wallowing.

Vader and Bigelow were kinda plateaus throughout, as far as what I'm familiar with, with both some highs and lows.

Viscera/Mabel is kinda like Henry in that he had evolution over his longevity, but it's not a gradual improvement over time like Henry's was. MOM was a fun enough tag team, but the Mabel singles run was a mess... then Viscera had an interesting look, but that was about it (didn't help being saddled with Mideon) before disappearing and then reappearing in pajamas as some sort of "Love Machine"... only really got good in the end as Big Daddy V, IMO... but then that was short lived, and arguably overshadowed by the things Henry was doing.

Typhoon/Tugboat isn't in the conversation for any reason.

Then there are those old timer guys like Haystacks Calhoun, Gorilla Monsoon, and even Andre who I'm not really equipped to talk about.

Someone who I always thought got criminally underrated was King Kong Bundy... but then again, he did do himself no favors with his 1995 WWF return. But young Bundy was awesome and could cut some Mark Henry-level good promos.

Unlike Pete I didn't mind super heavyweights growing up. I didn't really turn on them until the internet told me they sucked in the late 90s. I grew up during the Hulkamania era. The top good guys were musclemen. The top bad guys were hefty monsters the musclemen had to slay. That was main event pro wrestling in my mind for years and years. I didn't ever see it changing until it did. Hell, even my beloved action figure leagues followed that formula to a tee until the mid 90s. And as a fan of the bad guys the super heavyweights were often my best hope.

Boring choice but I'm going with Vader. Was actually a mild Vader hater during his WCW peak due to being a Cactus & Flair fanboy. Came around on him a little bit when he feuded with Hogan just because he was feuding with Hogan. Although, to be honest, I barely paid attention to that feud, and was back to indifference once it ended. Loved him almost immediately when he came to WWF though. Vader's WWF arrival just so happened to coincide with the beginnings of the Monday Night War, getting into the Apter Mags (they loved Vader), and tape binges. He was my favorite wrestler for most of 1996. Fizzled after that in real time but I grew to love him in tape form. Best moveset of any super heavy. Hit the hardest. Most athletic. Took the biggest and best bumps. Just the best really, really large dude in wrestling history.

And since contriving fancy salads when people ask for a burger is my thing....

Yokozuna would be runner up. He squashed Hulkamania! That automatically puts him high on any list. Was also a great squasher with a killer moveset. I totally bought into the Banzai Drop as the ultimate death blow. His rare bumps seemed to shake the entire arena. Very short peak though. And possibly no great matches. But he squashed Hulkamania! So who cares about the negatives?

Earthquake would be my bronze medalist. Squashed Warrior AND Hogan! All the points! Like Yoko, he had some cool moves like his great powerslam and elbow drop. Also like Yoko, I bought into his butt-related finisher as the ultimate death blow of its era. Stopped caring when he turned on Jimmy Hart but he did have a short-lived rebound with the "I'm a man!" stuff feuding with that jerk Big Bubba in 1996 WCW.

As for the other wrestlers mentioned....

I'm going to give Hall of Pain Mark Henry a chance. Enough people have pimped it that I feel like I kinda have to at this point. But Henry was one of my absolute least favorites from 96 until I quit watching in 09. Came in with a big babyface push. Flopped. Sexual Chocolate was good for the occasional chuckle but was mostly crap. Plus he still stunk up rings. Went away for a few years. Came back suddenly hyped as this top prospect on par with Brock Lesnar. Flopped. Got a minor push on 2003 Raw during a time when I'd half-watch Raw at my restaurant job. I'd literally go back to doing my work whenever Henry came on. Went away again for a few more years. Came back in 2006 with his biggest push yet. This is when I really grew to loathe Henry. Before that he had just been a boring midcard annoyance. Now he was competing for World Championships and wrestling Undertaker on Big 5 PPVs. Wtf! But at last there was light at the end of the tunnel! FINALLY his 10 year contract was coming to an end! Then WWE in their infinite wisdom decides to re-sign this albatross. NO! To the surprise of absolutely nobody he'd soon get hurt and disappear again. I don't really remember anything he did after that, including his WWECW title run. But I will give Hall of Pain Henry a shot one day soon. Fwiw he had a weirdly good Raw match with babyface Owen on a Raw in '98 and an even better bout against Taker on Smackdown a few weeks after their 'Mania encounter. Think Great Khali debuted during or after it. I also liked the out of control way he'd do that JJ/Bossman "straddle on the ropes" move. I would have bought that as his finisher. Hell, I'd have greatly preferred it to the World's Strongest Slam.

I wasn't a big Bam Bam Bigelow guy. Sometimes it's hard to shake first impressions and I always viewed Bam Bam as a loser due to flopping in 87-88 WWF after a huge amount of hype. Just never got into him after that. His 2nd WWF run is mostly a blur. Had long, boring feuds with Doink & Tatanka. I wasn't into the LT stuff or his Flotuses babyface run. His best stuff was in 80s Memphis followed by ECW. Also love his Spring Stampede match with Sandman in WCW. Good athleticism and a great look. But all in all I found him rather bland (somehow) and he could never shake that "Bust From The East" perception. It's also worth pointing out that even his WWE Greatest Wrestler blurb mentions the lack of good matches he had with the company.

Mabel broke out the occasional cool move (Big Package!) but I was never a fan. The closest I ever came was taking a "wait and see" approach after he won KOTR. But he didn't do it for me and I soon turned on him. Hated all his comebacks. It annoyed me that this 80s style retread kept getting chance after chance when so many better, more contemporary style wrestlers never did. Loses even more points because Big Daddy V showing his titties week after week on WWECW is one of the more disgusting things I've ever seen in wrestling. 

I liked King Kong Bundy as a kid. He squashed a midget and beat Hogan! By countout. But still! Plus he was on Married With Children. And I was into his mid 90s comeback. But looking back he kinda sucked. Just a stereotypical slow, lumbering big man.

Natural Disasters were cool for a little while but Typhoon was mediocre at best. Only cool things he ever did were turn on the stupid Bushwackers and create belly welly sandwiches with Quake.

Andre is another one I liked as a youngster. He beat Hogan for the belt! But after rewatching those matches in the 90s I thought Andre was one of the worst of all time. Slow. Sloppy. Immobile. Crap offense. Awful on the mic. He had to be carried by Hulk f'n Hogan! In my mind Andre was basically Giant Gonzalez with good publicity. I was positively brutal to Andre and Andre fans for about 10-15 years. It didn't help that most of their arguments boiled down to "But he was really tall!" or "He was in movies and tv shows!" I've went back and watched some earlier Andre and eh. I appreciate him as a legend but I'm never going to be a big Andre the Giant guy unless I somehow magically become a kid in 1987 again.

More salad....

Big Show- Giant was awesome in 1996 WCW. Thought he was the future of wrestling. Had his moments after that. One of my favorite impersonators, for example. I liked his WWECW title reign much more than I was expecting for the awesome Flair match if nothing else. Had a miracle match with Mayweather. But he also had long stretches of suck and I don't think he ever came close to reaching the potential he showed early in his career. Still carved out a nice, long career for himself though.

Kamala also deserves a mention. Gets bonus points for being the first wrestler to ever scare me. Kamala was all over WWF tv when I began to watch wrestling. Other wrestlers beat guys. Kamala injured, or possibly killed them. I genuinely believed this. Hospitals were filled with Kamala splash victims while the poor victims of Kamala's rarer top rope splash ended up in the morgue. Careers were over after a Kamala splash. Bye bye Jack Foley. It was nice knowing you. Too bad we'll never see or hear from you again. Played his character to perfection. Had a certain aura. Great presentation. Carved out a nice 5 year career for himself in the waning days of the territories as a monster attraction. Sort of a traveling evil Andre the Giant. Had surprisingly good athleticism. Capable of leapfrogs and even superkicks when they were still pretty rare. Got neutered in 1992 WWF. Became a joke after that. Babyface Kamala was babyface Doink levels of suck. But 80s Kamala ruled. 

I have One Man Gang as a middle of the pack-slightly below average super heavy. Never really liked him as the Gang. I dug Akeem as a kid without really "getting" the character. It was more like "Ooh nice outfit!" Plus he was managed by the Doctor of Style and teamed with Bossman so he was cool in my book. I've seen some real stinkers from him (a Kamala match from World Class comes to mind) but also some good stuff like Twin Towers vs. Rockers and a neat match with Dibiase from UWF. How random was his 1998 ECW run?  Less random than Jack Victory, I suppose, but still pretty damn random. Heyman made some very odd personnel decisions over the years.

Does Scott Norton count as a super heavyweight? What about earlier, portlier Bossman? I say yes to both. Both were 350+ in kayfabe. If so, they'd round out my Top 5. Norton looked like a brick wall. Cool offense. Badass aura. Loved his team with Ice Train. Bossman was such a mean bastard and memorable character. Twin Towers were a cool team. Plus he took a superplex off the top of the cage from Hogan. That was like the 1989 equivalent of Angle moonsaulting off the cage against Benoit.

I'm sure I'd have been a Big John Studd fan had I seen his prime in real time if for no other reasons than he was managed by Heenan and feuded with Hogan. But I just missed out on Studd's big run. He came back a few years later with lots of hype and Bam Bam Bigelowed it after winning the Rumble. Did not impress in tape form. One of the lower ranking super heavyweights for me. Best thing I've seen from him was carrying Ted Arcidi. It wasn't a good match, mind you. But it could have been all time bad if Studd had decided to phone it in. 

Vader and it's not even close. No other Super Heavyweight had his combination of skill, athleticism and ring presence.

Good for Mark Henry having a good run, but it's pretty hilarious he came into his own in year 12 of his career.  :lol:

Super Heavies are mostly thought of as fatties, but tall dudes are Super Heavies too. Undertaker is a Super Heavy. He's a 300 pound dude approaching 7 feet tall. He shouldn't get penalized for counting calories. 

Mar 10, 2018 15:08:17 GMT Big Pete said:

Hardcore Holly.

I was never a big super heavyweight guy. When I picture a wrestler, I picture somebody with good cardio, relatively strong, not some big fat dude who looks like he's going to die of a heart attack any second. 

Hardcore Holly doesn't count. He transcends mere super heavyweightdom.

Super Heavyweights II: A Depressing Addendum

Latter day Yokozuna epitomized "some big fat dude who looks like he's going to die of a heart attack any second." It was sad to watch. So fat, he broke the ropes against Austin. Gimmicked or not, it was a sign of how far the mighty had fallen. Then there was that time in the late 90s when I saw a morbidly obese Yoko looking terribly sad at my local indie fed, MCW. It took two chairs for him to sit on. One would simply not suffice. Nobody was waiting in his line at intermission for an overpriced photo and autograph. So I wasted my money mostly out of pity. But also because he was a Foreign Fanatic and a Camp Cornette member who main evented two Wrestlemania's and squashed Hulkamania! Show a little respect, people! But, yeah, this was one of the first times I realized what a cruel business pro wrestling can be.

If you want to pinpoint where my youthful love/believability in super heavyweights died then look no further than Loch Ness. I missed his debut on WCW's Sunday Night show but my friends Rick & Brandon quickly filled me in. "Loch Ness Monster! 700 pounds! Bigger than Yokozuna!" were excitedly spit phrases I still remember. I was super hyped to see this new behemoth. Surely Hogan vs. The Loch Ness Monster~! was the future of WCW's main event scene. Then I saw him in "action." Yikes! "Some big fat dude who looks like he's going to die of a heart attack any second" is the perfect description of Loch Ness. He made latter day Andre look like Rey Mysterio. Giant squashing him at Uncensored 96 was one of the first times I remember feeling genuinely sorry for a wrestler. New monsters just didn't get treated that way. Loch Ness looked so out of his league. Like what is this guy going to do now? His wrestling career is obviously over after that. I doubted a guy like him could just get a regular job. It's probably looking way too deep into things, but now I almost see it as a mission statement. Like Loch Ness was the old guard big man- slow, lumbering, out of shape. While the young, athletic, rather jacked Giant represented the New Big Man.

Then there's Mad Dog O'Malley who was a local Maryland indie wrestler in the late 90s who looked like a slightly smaller Loch Ness and may have been even slower. "Some big fat dude who looks like he's going to die of a heart attack any second." Yep. That was Mad Dog O'Malley in a nutshell. But it was even sadder because at least Loch Ness had his cup of coffee in the big time and Yokozuna had been a mainstream wrestling main event superstar. Mad Dog O'Malley was never going to achieve those heights. The business had already evolved beyond Mad Dog O'Malley types. In the 80s he might have gotten a run against Hogan, or at least a big run in the territories, but by the late 90s he's just a very unhealthy looking dude who's never going to move beyond indies that rarely, if ever, even get Apter Mag coverage.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since I mentioned Loch Ness now I feel obligated to mention his UK nemesis, Big Daddy. Big Daddy was awful in the ring. Let's get that out of the way first. His matches were short and painful, consisting almost entirely of belly wellies. But bah gawd I have a soft spot for the guy. His connection with the crowd was downright Hoganesque. I have a weird fascination with local wrestling heroes nowadays. Blame Cheetah Master. Everything about Daddy is so gloriously cheesy....so gloriously pro wrestling.....that I can't help but like him a little. The army of children following him to the ring....the sparkly hat and jacket....the 100% crowd support....the "Easy" chant....Wtf does that even mean? Who knows! Who cares! Oh, and not only did he have entrance music (The Seekers- We Shall Not Be Moved) when that was still a rarity, he also had his own customized version of it which may have been released for purchase to the British public. Here it is in all its glory.



 EDIT: If Taker counts he wins in a landslide. Even The Man They Call Vader has no shot against The Deadman.

Vader easily for me for all the reasons thereallt stated. Plus his varied career wrestling all over the world and in different styles makes him vastly more interesting to watch and really helps boost his resume even when compared to the likes of the Undertaker.

For me Super Heavyweight is 350 lbs and up so I didn't count guys like Taker or Stan Hansen. They would have easily been my top 2 if I had

Growing up in the 80's its easily Kamala. Baker I could not have described him better myself. He was everywhere and in all the magazines. His Mid-South run and feud with Duggan was awesome.

Another name from the 80's not yet mentioned Crusher Jerry Blackwell. To be honest I did not see much of him growing up but he too was in all the magazines.

Mar 11, 2018 13:45:00 GMT thereallt said:

For me Super Heavyweight is 350 lbs and up so I didn't count guys like Taker or Stan Hansen. They would have easily been my top 2 if I had

346 pounds.

Modern era have to give a shout out to Abyss