The Giant

"That right there is one of the most basic moves in the history of wrestling but when it's applied by the Big Show it could be a finishing move."

— Jerry Lawler, on the side headlock take down.

In your basic Professional Wrestling promotion, there's one guy who's much bigger than everyone else. Usually at least a head taller than the next-tallest man on the roster, and a mountain of muscle (and fat) to boot. So, of course, the promoters advertise him as an unstoppable killing machine, regardless of the big man's (lack of) talent.

Such men are almost universally introduced and pushed the same way as "monster" heels, sometimes mixed with a Foreign Wrestling Heel vibe. Because of their billing, they will usually be pushed straight to the top to face off with the top Face, whom they'll generally squash in their first meeting, to give you an idea of how Herculean an effort will be required to defeat them.

An important distinction between The Giant and just being large is that The Giant will have sheer immovability and too often a noticeable lack in the talent department, having a very small repertoire of basic strikes and throws or not possessing Wrestling Psychology. While some with the Giant gimmick will disprove some of the stereotypes by showing a more diverse range of moves along with decent fitness and mobility, their in ring style and psychology are still built almost entirely around being large and hard to budge, as it is the easiest/most credible way to build matches with guys like them. And they will rarely be in a hurry either which, when worked well, can go a long towards making them seem that much larger. Jim Ross used to refer to these types of wrestlers as Hosses, after Hoss Cartwright from Bonanza.

Moves done by giants enough to typically become associated with them first and foremost include the chokeslam, being the obligatory move to show their raw power and simple approach to wrestling, with clawholds if the wrestler has particularly huge hands not being far behind. The classic big boot or stationary kick right to the face of a running, puny opponent is another and, ultimately, if the Giant has a big belly or otherwise a heavy torso, a big splash is the most adequate finishing move.

If the angle goes on long enough, The Giant might get a Heel–Face Turn, rebelling on the manager who brought him in and going his own way. This usually results in them no longer being unstoppable.

Related to Muscles Are Meaningful (large means slow and strong). Comparable to Smash Mook. For mythical giants, see Our Giants Are Bigger.

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Examples:

Professional Wrestling

• The most famous, of course, is André the Giant, billed by WWE as the Eighth Wonder of the World (a title that initially belonged to Pampero Firpo). His most famous match was against Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 3. Though in this case, Andre was a skilled wrestler and much faster than he looked, but adopted the classic Giant style for a combination of reasons; for one, producers told him to slow down because being a Mighty Glacier made it easier to sell him as being nearly impossible to actually hurt, and for two, by the later stages of his career his chronic pain due to gigantism made it impossible for him to execute most of his moves.
• Early during his 1979-1981 WWF run, Hulk Hogan was billed as a "giant," although this was because he was bigger than almost everyone on the roster at the time except for Andre the Giant. It was inevitable the two would eventually meet ... and so the first chapter of a legendary feud was written.
• Curtis "The Cat" Hughes was an example that was less about his height, "only" being six foot five, than about his muscles. Incidentally, he was much more flexible and dexterous than most muscle bound guys and a decent technical wrestler. What made him qualify for this trope, the reason few fans knew of these qualities, was that Cat was very slow.
• Paul Wight, billed as The Giant in WCW and Big Show in WWE. Injuries and weight troubles kept him from reaching his fullest potential, and many fans began calling him "The Big Slow" (a moniker either given to him or made canon by The Rock). However, his most recent return to WWE sees him a good fifty pounds lighter than when he left, and he's moving a little better; on top of that, at least in comparison with The Great Khali (see below), the fans love him. He also epitomizes the giant being pushed to the top, as his first ever match was in the main event of a WCW pay-per-view for the world championship. However, he has put his generally basic repertoire to good use; a chest slap has become one of his signature moves—he shushes the audience, and then smacks the guy, allowing the crack of a hand the size of a frying pan to echo throughout the arena. He had a wide variety of moves in WCW, including dropkicks kip-ups and athletic slams. He was so unique, he is the only wrestler that won PWI's Rookie of the Year and Wrestler of the Year in his debut. He even claims he did a moonsault once or twice at house shows during his WCW tenure.
  • Early on in his WCW run, Wight was billed as being the son of André the Giant, despite not being related to Andre in any way. This was dropped after a while, though. His height was also exaggerated — he's closer to 6'10" than 7', but was consistently billed around 7'4" by WCW.
  • While he was in college in the early 1990s, Wight had surgery on his pituitary gland to halt his gigantism. While he was of course already huge, this means Big Show's disease is no longer progressing the way Andre's did, and thus he's in much better health than a "true" giant would normally be at his age.
• Jorge González, billed as El Gigante in WCW and Giant González in WWE. May be more well-known for the "naked" bodysuit he was required to wear as the latter. He feuded with The Undertaker while "The Deadman" was in his prime (who he can be seen towering over in the top left of the page image; 'Taker is 6'10" himself). His profile at the wwe.com Alumni Gallery lists his height as 8 feet, but it was actually more like 7'6". Incidentally, in spite of his lack of finesse in the ring, he was good enough at basketball to be almost become a member of the Argentine national team; he would have competed in the 1988 Olympics, but he was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks two months before the games.
• Starting in All Pro Wrestling, moving to CMLL, New Japan and finally winding up as the biggest man in WWE, The Great Khali, who at 7'1" is (slightly) taller than the Undertaker, Kane, and the Big Show. He's also one of the least mobile examples in wrestling history, due to the strain his gigantism puts on his body. He's still a huge attraction though, managing to draw a crowd of sixty thousand in his native Punjab to see CWE students, well after his WWE run was over.
• One example that only concerns the wrestler's weight and not height was Yokozuna, who combined this trope with the Foreign Wrestling Heel angle (he was born in American Samoa, but was only billed as being from the Polynesian Islands).
• British wrestler Giant Haystacks, also known as the Loch Ness Monster in Stampede Wrestling and as just Loch Ness during his brief run in WCW in February-March 1996. He debuted before the WCW SuperBrawl VI PPV as the newest member of the Dungeon of Doom, but left the group in time to lose to the Giant (Big Show) at WCW Uncensored 96 in March.
• Also in the Dungeon of Doom was Ron Reis as The Yeti. His being visibly (if only slightly) taller than his stablemate The Giant sort of took the air out of The Giant's gimmick. Especially since he was later repackaged as the Super Giant Ninja — who sounds better, The Giant or the Super Giant Ninja who is taller than the Giant? A few years later Reis showed up again as Reese, the Giant Mook of Raven's Flock.
• Big Daddy, a thirty-stone Yorkshireman christened Shirley Crabtree by a father who had listened to a lot of Johnny Cash and approved of the principles underlying the naming of sons.
• Diesel's entire run as WWF champion could be described as kick and throw throw smaller guy around, eventually pin him, repeat. In his later WCW run he became legendarily lazy and endeavored to do as little work as possible in the ring. It's often joked that Kevin Nash knows about 4 moves, 5 if you count the Hair Flip.
• The 658 lbs Maximum Capacity, Future of Wrestling's 2001 rookie of the year. To a lesser extent, their "next biggest guy" at the time was the 6'11, 302 lbs Punisher. That's right Max was over twice the size of what would be the go to giant of most promotions. A car accident forced Max to take a break from the promotion however and he never seemed to fully recover, so Punisher ended up getting more exposure.
• Just try to stop WWE from using these. In addition to Big Show, everyone else in that picture has been on their television programming at one time or another. Big Show, Mark Henry, Undertaker, and Kane are particular favorites whom WWE can't seem to get enough to of, although relative to the WWE's size, that number's fairly conservative. Of course, The Undertaker is arguably one of the very best big man wrestlers ever, Kane has always been solid—in his prime he could do hurricanranas, and Mark Henry was pretty mobile in the 90s and worked to improve in 2005.
  • Notice that the wrestlers listed above are among the longest-tenured in WWE — this is because the "giant" style doesn't take much of a toll on the body (mostly due to taking few bumps), meaning giant wrestlers can keep working well past the age others might retire at.
  • On the flip side, Team Lesnar in Survivor Series 2003 was built on this trope but had no longevity. It featured Brock Lesnar, A-Train, Matt Morgan, Nathan Jones and the Big Show together as the largest team in the history of the pay per view. Two had just surfaced on TV and 3/5ths of them were gone by next year.
  • Eli Cottonwood, one of the rookies in WWE NXT season 2. He was bad, but he was about 6'10". In vignettes about him the other pros struggled to have anything nice to say about him other than "He's tall." He managed to stick around WWE's developmental league FCW (and later the revamped NXT) for a couple years, based entirely on being large and having no other upside.
  • Braun Strowman was one of WWE's more successful attempts, a 6'8", 385lb former strongman capable of incredible feats of power. While he got off to a slow start in the company, after a few years he got over as an unstoppable Wrestling Monster as both his skills and booking improved and Big Show passed the torch to him in an impressive trilogy of giant vs giant matches.
  • Their latest attempt is Omos, a colossal ex-basketball player billed at a whopping 7'3" and 400lb. After a few Early-Bird Cameo appearances as a giant ninja serving Akira Tozawa in a silly comedy match or the silent doorman of the ill-fated "RAW Underground", he officially debuted on the main roster as AJ Styles' bodyguard and eventual tag partner, often intimidating opponents into making mistakes in matches that Styles could capitalise on by doing what he does best: standing at ringside Being Tall. It was even theorised that his presence contributed to the shocking release of Braun Strowman because Omos was just so much taller than even the "Monster Among Men" that he damaged Strowman's aura. There's just one small problem with WWE's intentions to push Omos as hard as they can: he can't wrestle.
• Chyna, the "Ninth Wonder of the World", who actually held the WWE Intercontinental Heavyweight Title and was built up over a period of months specifically so they wouldn't get in trouble for having men fighting a woman.
• WCW had Midnight (real name Ann Marie Crooks). She was a face and accompanied Booker T, but was only around for a few months. WrestleCrap would also like to remind you of one of her opponents, Asya, who was bigger than Chyna. In a different induction, Midnight was described as "better than Stevie Ray", though.
  • Joey Styles had already made a similar joke about Nicole Bass, a massive female bodybuilder who gained a degree of fame for her appearances on The Howard Stern Show and later spent time in ECW and WWE, saying that she should be named "Russia" because she's bigger than Chyna.
• The late Rhonda Singh, who played former WWF Women's Champion Bertha Faye, and Monster Ripper in Japan. She briefly worked in WCW under her own name as well. She was especially this in WWF, where she wasn't allowed to do most of the moves that got her over in CSP/WWC or Zenjo.
• La Chacala has a long, successful run in this role for LLF. For those of you with no grasp of Spanish, most of the roster has a given name or fancy moniker, she's just "the big one" (and still was even when April Hunter was with them)
• The unstoppable, 275-pound Awesome Kong in TNA and SHIMMER or Kharma (WWE), both at the very beginning of her career before she took off as Lightning Bruiser in Zenjo and towards the end when various issues slowed her down.
• The 6'1, 316 lbs Betsy Ruth or Rosie Lottalove to TNA viewers. However, she went to the Diana promotion in Japan in 2011 and fell off the radar by mid 2012 before resurfacing in late 2014, 127 lbs lighter (still much larger than most but the giant gimmick's been shredded, mostly).
• Melanie Cruise became more and more of one the more she wrestled in SHIMMER. Some found this to be an improvement over her technical-striker ways, as it allowed her to get heat without Annie Social.
• The 6 ft 9 Isis the Amazon (real name Lindsay Kay Hayward), of the American indie scene. That's her dominating the lineup in the bottom-right corner of the page pic; you can see that the top of A.J. Lee's head is about level with Isis' breasts. She's done a bit of acting too, and consequently holds the Guinness World Record title for the tallest women ever to play a leading role. She was very briefly in WWE developmental as Aloisia.
• From GLOW, there was Foreign Wrestling Heel Matilda the Hun (aka Queen Kong) billed at 280 pounds and her rival, Mountain Fiji, billed at 350 pounds. The face, Mountain Fiji, played the roll much straighter. All the heels of that season had to work together just to take her off of her feet and even then Mountain Fiji was never knocked to the mat in a match.
• Linda Miles, also known as Shaniqua. Tall and muscular but was clearly not ready when she was put on television (just like everyone else from Tough Enough 2). Ohio Valley Wrestling bookers stopped trusting her not to injure other women, including body builders like Melissa Coates and amateur standouts like Beth Phoenix, concluding no opponent smaller than Shelton Benjamin (roughly her size) would be safe in a ring with Miles.
• Parodied by CHIKARA wrestler Hydra, who does the whole Giant schtick despite being 5' 6" and 140 pounds. CHIKARA's had a few real giants on their roster since - Tursas (billed at 6'8" 376 lbs), Max Smashmaster (originally billed at 6'4" and 400+ lbs, he's slimmed down to around 350), Nokken (a little taller but a good deal slimmer than Tursas), and Deucalion (billed as "Bigger than Tursas", although he was wearing bulky gear and wasn't quite a giant underneath it all). They also had Abominus Rex who was the biggest of them all, but something went sideways between him and the promotion and he was only there for a couple cards.
• Giant Baba of Japan, who was close to 7 feet tall (which is even more unusual in Japan than it is in the West). Unlike many Giants, Baba was actually quite a talented pro wrestler, though he didn't age well. Also, while his strikes were put over, he didn't really wrestle like a giant so far as the powerful part of the archetype goes. That's not to say he didn't use his size to his advantage, though. Baba was known to use his long legs to put his opponents in leg scissors during mat segments to break their momentum, most famously using this tactic against the Destroyer in their 1969 match.
• The late John Tenta had a good run at a giant archetype as Earthquake in the WWE, feuding with Hulk Hogan at the height of his career, eventually alongside the similarly gigantic Typhoon (Fred Ottman). They called themselves the Natural Disasters.
• Tenta later joined The Oddities, an entire stable of giant men managed by the much smaller Luna Vachon, the Insane Clown Posse, and briefly Sable.
  • Kurrgan, previously The Interrogator of the Truth Commission and later Kurrgan The Interrogator during an attempted singles monster push, was around 7 feet tall and in the mid 300s in weight.
  • Giant Silva was actually bigger than The Big Show, and was actually released to make sure he didn't overshadow the soon-to-arrive Show. Nonetheless, Silva was an awesomely agile giant, and could perform top rope moves, hurricanranas and sunset flips during his later stay in Japan and Mexico.
• King Mabel, Viscera, Big Daddy V and all his other gimmicks were this. Six Foot nine, five hundred pounds, not a lot of mobility by wrestler standards and the large majority of his matches revolved around how someone could manage to do anything to him. He was also one of the most infamously unsafe workers WWE ever employed, once almost breaking Diesel's back during their SummerSlam match for the WWE Championship just by careless sitting on him and smashing The Undertaker's face with misaimed leg drops.
• Kamala was billed as the Ugandan giant but was shorter and more nimble than most examples. His weight was really what put him in this trope's territory - he was billed at as much as 450 lbs.
• Jeep Swenson, better known for playing Bane in Batman & Robin than for wrestling, was 6 ft 4 but weighed 405 lbs. And it was all muscle.
• Ernie Ladd, who was a skilled collegiate wrestler and not the biggest guy in the Territories anyway. Subverted in wrestling anyway, played completely straight in his professional football career as a defensive tackle, where he was prized on his size and strength alone. He was part of a foursome largely credited for the Chargers AFL title win.
• Happy Humphrey, who weighed a whopping 800 pounds! He was somewhat immobile, especially compared to his quicker moving contemporary rival Haystacks Calhoun, who was still something of an example simply for weighing 600 pounds, which was still too much for most wrestlers to slam.
• The McGuire Twins, best known for being photographed while riding motorcycles, weighed over 700 lbs each and were close to 7 feet tall.
• Akebono was a legendary sumo who turned to professional wrestling after he retired. He's very fat, but also quite tall at 6'8". He was built up as being so heavy not even Brock Lesnar could lift him. (He was only 16 pounds heavier than the Big Show, whom Brock could lift, so he should have been able to do it).
• Ryota Hama also became a pro wrestler after sumo, and he's almost an exaggeration of the "guy who isn't really that tall but is incredibly fat" version of the trope — 5'9" (a little over average height for an adult Japanese man) and nearly 500 lbs.
• Bishop Cross, previously known as Giant Magnum, Giant Titan, Tower, Colossus, Gigante Extassis and Dementus is a proud 2010s example of this trope, describing his wrestling style as all around power.
• Every last faction in Kaiju Big Battel has their own giant - namely Slo Feng of the Heroes, Mota Naru of the Swarm, Napalean of Dr. Cube's Posse, and Vegetius of the Rogues. Napalean is noted on the website to be the single largest kaiju in competition.
• Jerry Tuite, best known as The Wall in WCW. Unusually for this trope he never had much of a singles push beyond the midcard, and mostly played the role of a bodyguard or the enforcer in a stable.
• Tommy "Tiny" Lister, the actor who played Zeus from No Holds Barred, had a short wrestling career almost solely because of this trope.
• Bob Sapp was tall and heavy enough to fit the trope, even more in Japan. Ironically he was even more this trope in kick boxing and mixed martial arts than traditional pro wrestling. As a pro wrestler Sapp had a lot of moves, even if almost all of them involved picking up and dropping the other guy or running into them. His matches occasionally saw something resembling a long term game plan on his part. Sapp's professional fights could almost always be described as him charging forward flailing his arms, however.
• PWX rookie standout NYX wanted the gimmick of a mysterious gothic technical wrestler, but at six foot five, two hundred and sixty pounds most promotions usually booked her as an immovable giant, especially against other women. Occasionally she got to wrestle as she wanted against a man of comparable size, but most times when she was with a man it was she acted as the bodyguard or dominatrix to a tiny one.
• Rycklon Stephens is this among Homicide's students, in a similar manner to Curtis Hughes mostly for his musculature, being a former body builder who is only about six foot two but weighed about three hundred pounds. Unlike Hughes and similar to Sapp, Stephens is fairly quick but his arsenal is very repetitive and more simplistic than Hughes (but more complex than Sapp). He was less this and more big guy in WWE as "Ezekiel Jackson" but his giant attributes truly shined through on Lucha Underground, or would have if not for Vibora (although Big Rick had been gone for almost 2 seasons by the time Vibora debuted).
• As Enzo Amore reminds everyone, Big Cass◊ is 7 feet tall and you can't teach that! He was easily the tallest person during his WWE NXT run. The second tallest was Baron Corbin at 6'8".
• Vibora was the resident giant on Lucha Underground. His performer, Austin Matelson, is actually only 6'5" tall (although commentary put him at 7'), not particularly gigantic by the standards of this trope, but since Lucha Underground is on average a much shorter promotion than WWE, he towers over most of the roster in a most intimidating manner. Slow and immobile (possibly deliberately) in his season 3 debut, training with Johnny Mundo between seasons improved his skills dramatically, making him insanely fast and agile for his size. After LU closed down (and Vibora was Killed Off for Real early in season 4 anyway), he went to AEW as Luchasaurus of the Jurassic Express, teaming with the slim Jungle Boy (who rides on his shoulders) and TINY Marko Stunt.
• Nia Jax is a pretty good example. Six feet tall and billed as weighing 275 pounds, which is bigger than many of the men WWE employs, and she was fast tracked out of their developmental program to their main television show to win the women's title belt, despite having less wrestling psychology than many losers of the diva searches. (WWE, for their part, did slow down her push when the novelty wore off and fans started getting bored.)
• Maxxx Testosterone is basically a giant for higher in Canada, especially in Quebecois enterprises like Federation Canadienne de Lutte. Thanks to the size escalation wrestlers have underwent over the decades he's not that massive overall, being around an imperial 6'2 345 lbs, which makes him only about 20-30 heavier than long running star of the nation's circuit Dru Onyx, but Maxxx gets booked in the kind of one on two squash matches and such expected of giants almost immediately after debuting.
• The Giant Kyote of Australian promotions such as Pro Wrestling Alliance Queensland and AWF, is just two inches short of seven feet tall and weighs at least four hundred pounds. The bad news is that the next biggest guy is often Jake Paragon, his Alpha Giant Tag Team partner, though sometimes it's the 6'7 364 lbs Massive Q, who is more likely to compete against Kyote.
• El Gigante Nihan is the purest example of this trope associated with CSP/WWC. Yes Andre The Giant was there before him, but it was hardly Andre's home promotion and Abyss would like to remind you that he got his start in Puerto Rico but was really only an example of this trope using the Abyss gimmick(which he didn't initially have) and even that became more Garbage Wrestler over time. Nihan however is a dedicated WWC mid card talent who is pretty quick for a man his size and does do an occasional fairly flashy move like a knee drop but is mostly a brawler with a few power moves and little on the mat finesse.

Anime and Manga

• Booty Royale: Never Go Down Without a Fight!: Minor character Veronica Lin is a former US pro wrestling heel-turned-MMA fighter who stands 205 centimeters tall and weighs 110 kilos, making her one of the biggest characters in the manga of any sex. In her first match, she beats her opponent unconscious in a performance compared to being hit by a truck, though the much smaller Maria Luisa Riviera beats her in the round of 16 by outmaneuvering her and choking her out.
• Several villains in Kinnikuman and Ultimate Muscle get by mostly on superior size and strength. Perhaps most emblematic is the Mountain, one of the largest and heaviest wrestlers in either series. His ultimate finishing move is a simple frog splash (with the Name of Power "Mountain Drop"), but it's absolutely devastating because of how massive he is.

Comics

• Super Pro K.O.
  • Mighty Monolith, a 7 foot tall behemoth weighing in at a frightening 350 lbs. He also exemplifies the "heavily pushed" facet of giant wrestlers; after his first match, he nearly cracks the top ten of SPKO's Power Rankings. His opponent, cruiserweight fellow-rookie Joe Somiano, easily ran rings around him, but couldn't stand up to his physical might.
  • Slightly shorter but even heavier is Prince Swagger, 6'9" and 375 lbs of pure punching power. Management is trying to get him over, but other SPKO wrestlers are afraid to fight him — his size and strength, coupled with his lack of experience in the ring, makes facing him very dangerous, especially in a setting where Pro Wrestling Is Real.
  • The first volume also featured Yoko Nono, who was an Expy of the above-mentioned Yokozuna.

Literature

• Gregor "the Mountain that Rides" Clegane from A Song of Ice and Fire, who is a giant in the literal (he's around eight feet tall) and medical sense - he has gigantism, which translates to horrible splitting headaches that the local equivalent of opium does very little to soothe. This in addition to a bad case of Parental Favoritism doing nothing to curb his tendencies (his torturing and scarring his little brother was covered up, and it's likely he murdered his father for his inheritance) make him a perfect example of a Psycho for Hire. And after his duel with Prince Martell, he's a Technically-Living Zombie who might not even have a head, but is just as strong.

Sports

• Ernie Ladd - the same one mentioned above under Pro Wrestling - was a successful football player as well. One of the page quotes comes from an opponent on the football field describing being lined up against him.
• The NBA has also had its share of giants on the basketball court. Effective big men are hard to come by, though, and misfires like Gheorghe Mureșan, Jake Voskuhl, and Wang Zhizhi are all too common. 7 footers and up are always in demand, based on the reasoning that if the 7'0" guy needs polishing, you can teach him to be better, whereas you can't teach a guy who's already good to be 7 feet tall.
  • Greg Ostertag was a notable shot blocker, setting a school record at the University of Kansas that stands to this day and leading the NBA in block percentage twice. He was also notable for being bad at virtually every other aspect of the game.
  • Manute Bol was literally the tallest man to ever play in the NBA (tied with Mureșan, technically), and while he was a dominant blocker and good three-point shooter, he was also dangerously underweight for his size — 7'7" and just 200 lbs.
  • Yao Ming is a most notable example, as he was extremely talented, and when on top of his game, was capable of dominating the lane with an iron fist.
  • Shaquille O'Neal is another prominent example, at least as far as his lane presence is concerned. His free throw ability, not so much—famously so.
• Emmanuel Yarborough was a little-known sumo wrestler and MMA fighter, but his main claim to fame was as the holder of the Guinness World Record for World's Largest Athlete, at 6'8" tall and over 800 pounds. Interestingly, although he was a shoot fighter he very strongly resembled a Giant pro wrestler, with a moveset that mostly consisted of basic punches and trying to crush his opponent under his weight, and his fairly limited MMA record consisted mostly of losses to scrappy, much smaller underdogs. He even worked for the Catch Wrestling Association in Germany for a time, though his gimmick was mostly based on his sumo background.
• In the NHL by Zdeno Chára, the tallest player ever to play in the league, who is considered one of the top defensemen playing at the moment. Ironically, some thought that his height was the only reason he even had a job during his rookie season, disregarding his actual skill. On the flip side, the second tallest NHLer of all time, Steve McKenna, was not very good at all, and found himself a frequent healthy scratch before going to Australia to become the coach of their national team.
  • That all said, the idea that bigger is automatically better in hockey is becoming increasingly discredited. While it may seem counter intuitive, you should go with the shorter goalie every time. (The puck rarely goes far above the ice, and since hockey goals aren't very large, you want shorter goalies, who can drop to the ground faster to stop the puck.)
• Hong Man Choi has an MMA career almost solely because of this trope in gimmick matches. His opponents have included baseball's Jose Canseco and the previously-descibed Akebono (3 times).
  • While his MMA matches are pretty much gimmicks, Choi actually is a decent kickboxer and holds a respectable record in K-1 (9-6 not counting the three wins against Akebono).
• Another MMA example: Even among the UFC Heavyweights, Stefan "Skyscraper" Struve stands out at 6'11 and 260. His tallest opponent was 4 inches shorter. His shortest, a full foot shorter than him. However, he owns a 25-6 record and is very accomplished on the ground.
• Nikolai Valuev, "the Russian Giant", multiple title world heavyweight champion, was the tallest and heaviest boxing champ ever at 7'0 and 320 pounds. He was often criticized for having little boxing skill compared to his opponents... but he was so big that he still ended up with a 50-2 record, with both his losses being contested split decisions.

Videogames

• Hugo Andore, standing at 8 feet and being a near-Expy of Heel-era André, exhibits next to no finesse in his attacks compared to other grapplers. The same thing can be seen on Raiden (based on the legendary Vader, who was hugely popular in Japan) from Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters.
  • Zigzagged with Zangief, who has some elements of this (Mighty Glacier and specially in the earlier games, Husky Russkie, really freaking big, several grapple and piledriving-based moves) but often ends up subverting the trope (much friendlier and boisterous than the average giant personality-wise, and wasn't that much of an asshole beforehand)
• Titanic Tim from the Saturday Night Slam Masters games is a 7'9" goliath whose fighting style is even listed as "giant wrestling"... but he's actually pretty good at grappling and such anyway. Still, in a league where other fighters can throw grenades or turn into meteors, a lunging karate chop is pretty basic.
  • Titanic Tim was based on Japanese wrestling legend Giant Baba, who despite being extremely tall did not have a limited or basic repertoire of moves.
• The Giant, a call name and the heavy template you can choose for your CAW in the WWE Day Of Reckoning games, is essentially this wrestling style. It has the most simplistic moves of the "big man" choices.
• The later Fire Pro Wrestling games have a number of wrestling styles in the character editor/CAW creator. The Giant style has poor Affinity ratings in everything except for punching and dirty attacks; it doesn't even feature high ratings in the Power category. One assumes this is to reflect the extremely limited movesets of most real-life 'giant' wrestlers, especially since low Affinity rating for a move causes it to drain a lot of stamina. The lack of beneficial offensive stats leaves a lot of points to put into defense for Create-A-Wrestlers, though. "Giant" is also a defensive style you can select, whereby you can't be thrown by even the most basic grapples until you've been sufficiently worn down with strikes and holds.
• Craig Marduk from Tekken is a good example of this trope, even though his official fighting style is Vale Tudo as opposed to wrestling.

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