Wrestling Monster

"I FEAR NO MAN AND I FEEL NO PAIN! IT'S TIME! IT'S TIME! IT'S VADER TIME!"

"I am the reaper of wayward souls, I am the world heavyweight champion and this, this is the holy grail of everyone who steps foot in this ring. And that is why it was so important that I possess it, because every wayward soul would stray from crossing the path of The Undertaker! But now, consumed by the lust of fortune and fame, the recognition that this championship brings will lead them down a road for which they will be sorry they ever embarked. Because that road ends in my yard. For them it will be a graveyard."

— The Undertaker, Friday Night Smackdown, October 9, 2009.

Is he out to win championship belts? To stand at the top of the tournament? Does he live to entertain the fans? Is it all about the money? No, all he cares about is destruction, preferably the destruction of other living things. His shadow stretches far, his footsteps fall hard, he strikes swiftly, his Battle Cry being the only warning, if you're lucky. He's as strong as he is fast, as tough as he is agile, he's savage and is likely from Parts Unknown. He's a monster!

Some monsters are too dumb to understand anything other than fighting. Some are reasonably intelligent if a little disturbed, criminally psychotic by most standards outside of the wrestling world. Some turn out to not be that bad, simply misled by a depraved manager, but these are bad for the reigning champion, as the manager can give them a focus they would otherwise lack. A monster's strength and fury can be fueled by external forces like medicine that had unintended side effects on him. Some claim to have supernatural powers, some claim to be beasts that only take the guise of men.

What all monsters have in common is incredible endurance. They may be huge, but being big isn't enough. They may be crazy or vicious, but that still isn't enough. Many have power contested only by the The Giant or the World's Strongest Man along with the agility of high fliers, but to be a monster, he must also be insanely tough. Some will teeter but not fall. Others will always get back up. The worst seemingly Feel No Pain at all: move them, bruise them, cut open their bodies, but it will do little to slow them down. After all, reducing his selling is the easiest way to convince the audience this guy is abnormal.

The biggest thing that makes a monster different from The Giant is movement. Monsters are tough, but being unmovable is not nearly as important to their psychology as for giants. Monsters are also more likely to chase down fleeing foes than giants. Wrestlers will often be given giant gimmicks to emphasize their appearance while distracting viewers from their lack of talent. Monsters may lack in some areas of Wrestling Psychology or charisma, but the gimmick is usually given so a wrestler can spend more time showcasing their offensive moves without having to slow down too much to sell. The Wild Samoan is a subtrope.

The term "monster heel" is often used to describe this kind of wrestler, however, since monster gimmicks are usually given to talented athletes it is not unknown for them to take the face role. Depending on how abnormal the gimmick is supposed to be the face examples may overlap with Monster Knight.

---

Examples

Professional Wrestling

• During the 1940s, the Russian born wrestler Maurice Tillet was starting to get over big in the United States as The French Angel. He was billed as "The World's Ugliest Man" and pushed as nearly unstoppable for two years as champion of the Boston territory (Known as The American Wrestling Association but unrelated to that one) and then of the Montreal Territory. He was one of the shortest examples of this trope, standing only at 5'7, which wasn't very tall even in his era, but he had acromegaly, which gave him a fearsome look. Throughout the forties and fifties, several other wrestlers would take up angel gimmicks in his wake.
• "Argentina's Mad Bull" Pampero Firpo, rumored to gain unnatural strength through his hair, which he had a lot of and was all but immune to what should have been the debilitating effect of pulling on it, possessing of Hard Head, not asking for nor giving of mercy.
• Gary Hart's Army had "The Korea Assassin" Pak Song Nam. While he was of above average height at an imperial six foot five, Nam was also fairly thin and legitimately sickly. His illness made him ugly and unnerving to look at, but what really put him into monster territory were his hands and feet being abnormally large for his body, to disproportional levels. So even though his arms and legs weren't too thick people still fretted when he tried to cave in the heads of his opponents. Nam was so fearsome he was one of the first wrestlers chosen when it was time for "The Bull Of Woods" Dusty Rhodes to undergo a Heel–Face Turn.
• Bruiser Brody made a career of being a monster heel, and was one of the most feared men in the ring back in the day — so much so, in fact, that he may have been killed for it.
  
  There are two common theories floating around as to why José Gonzalez killed Brody. One is that Gonzalez's daughter supposedly drowned in the swimming pool while on a visit to Brody's family's house.
  Another is that Brody and Gonzalez were going to have a match together once, but Brody didn't want to do it because he thought Gonzalez was too small, which he also said to his face (he called Gonzalez a "fucking midget" to be precise). Gonzalez then stabbed Brody but apparently did not intend to kill him. Unfortunately, Brody had taken 7 aspirins because he wanted to get a good blood flow in his match (a common trick in Pro Wrestling) and as a result he was bleeding too heavily for the doctors to save him. However, at the end of the day nobody knows why Gonzalez did it.
• Big Van Vader, in the early-to-mid 90's was, according to Mick Foley, "The greatest monster in the business", and Mick said he saw rookie wrestlers on several occasions actually quit WCW instead of work a match with Vader. Part of it was that Vader had a tendency to get carried away in the ring and was a notoriously "stiff" performer. In the words of Zach Arnold:
  "He revolutionized what people thought of a monster heavyweight wrestler. He elevated the standards of what it meant to be an agile giant who could make fans believe that he could destroy everyone."
  • Additionally, Vader was an incredibly hard man. During a match against Stan Hansen he suffered a broken orbital bone that caused a stiff punch from Hansen to knock his eye out of its socket (only the swelling of his eyelid kept it from falling out and dangling down his face). Vader simply pushed it back in with his fingers and carried on.
• Goldberg, who steamrolled through the entire roster during his WCW reign and became the biggest face in the company. His monster status became most obvious when he no-sold a flurry of offense from the similarly undefeated Glacier. It took a taser, and Kevin Nash's newly acquired superpowers as head booker, to keep him down.
  • To put this in perspective, Goldberg has apparently never lost a match cleanly (save for a No DQ match, which may or may not count) until his WrestleMania 33 match with Brock Lesnar. In standard matches, he's always come out on top unless cheating is involved.
• The Undertaker, but less so during his biker gimmick. Being a soul-stealing zombie gravedigger, it came with the territory. Besides the standard monster endurance, he could also control electricity and instantly move through darkness, helping to his supernatural side.
• Kane, being the little brother of the Undertaker. He was less known for winning titles than for torturing the rest of the roster. Doomsday (his USWA gimmick) was a prototype of this character. In more recent days, it's been shown that Kane is extremely intelligent and fully aware of his monstrous nature, and has even served as the voice of reason at some points; he warned A.J. Lee off of starting a relationship with him by explaining that his psychosis makes him "not exactly boyfriend material", and also served as the (relative) Straight Man in a team with Daniel Bryan.
• TNA's The Monster Abyss, being equal parts an expy of Mankind and Kane. His time spent not playing this role is considered something of an Audience-Alienating Era.
• Cibernético trying to kill off his would be successor, Asesor Cibernético, caused him to come back from the dead as El Mesías, AAA's wrestling zombie. In TNA, Mesías was revealed to be Judas, brother of Abyss and son of James Mitchell. He went on to become Mil Muertes in Lucha Underground (see below).
• Psycho Sid was nominally billed as one, though many fans thought he fell short. He was pretty convincing against smaller guys like Shawn Michaels if nothing else.
• John Tenta during his heel run as Earthquake was this, with his finishing move being a running sitdown splash called the "Earthquake Splash", which he would often do over and over after the match had ended, usually resulting in his unfortunate opponent having to be carried out on a stretcher. He famously had a feud with Hulk Hogan himself in which he put Hogan out of commission for a while with the move after a sneak-attack during "The Brother Love Show", with Hogan subsequently recovering and defeating him in a series of matches across the country.
• Jon Heidenreich, a violent poem reading barbarian who could not accept the fact he lost to the Undertaker. Famously kidnapped and suggestively punished Michael Cole. Became best friends with Booker T after the latter bashed him upside the head with a chair; Heidenreich thought they were friends anyway.
• The Legion of Doom's primary members, The Road Warriors Hawk and Animal, a monster tag team. Heidenreich was also briefly in the Legion of Doom.
• "The Inhuman Monstrosity" Superbeast, most commonly seen in Empire State Wrestling and In Your Face Wrestling.
• Festus the "Corn Fed Colossus" was usually subdued, only becoming this trope when he heard the sound of a bell. It was revealed that his family were using drugs to keep him sedate, but Jesse discovered that bells made him come alive for some reason, and decided to sick him on WWE.
  • Prior to this, Drew Hankinson had also played the gimmick of the impostor Kane. These days however, the monster gimmick is played down in his role as Luke Gallows.
• Batista used to be this trope, especially in OVW where he was "The Leviathan, The Demon Of The Deep, Guardian Of The Gates Of Hell, Right Hand Of The Devil Himself!". It pretty much came to an end once he was allowed to hold a microphone for over a minute. He remained a tough competitor, but lost the invincibility and the mystique.
• Brock Lesnar, the Next Big Thing. SmackDown had a nice amount of cruiserweight wrestlers to feed him and he was faster than most of them too. He also out-muscled those in his weight class and was pretty much booked to be an invincible heartless bastard, helped by the fact he broke Hardcore Holly's neck, and the fact he finished a match when his own was broken! And then he broke The Streak. And now, with a dominating win over John Cena at SummerSlam 2014 in the books, Lesnar is now being pushed as the ultimate, invincible monster. Being one of the most legit members of the rosters by way of being a UFC champion also helps.
  • The scary thing is, Heyman's WWE promos touting Lesnar as unbeatable might indeed be true, if what Heyman said (in a legit interview about Lesnar's potential as a mixed martial artist) about Lesnar being a once-in-a-lifetime athlete, comparable to Jim Thorpe, Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky are true (and Lesnar, who has had legit health issues including with diverticulitis, remains healthy).
• Hitting moonsaults while weighing around 91 kg at 1.70 meters (201 pounds and 5'7") was impressive enough, but Bull Nakano sometimes completely no-sold back suplexes just to drive in how futile her opponent's effort was.
• Amazing Kong/Awesome Kong/Kharma has been booked as a giant style wrestler, but she can play this role as well. Best seen in TNA where she started as an immovable giant but became better known for never staying down, her all-around skill and her evil manager.
• Her "mentor/rival" Aja Kong is a similar case, who (not unlike the Undertaker) played a monster that claimed to be worse than the devil, yet was a face for long portions of her career. She was even built up as a monster in the WWF where she practically won the Survivor Series by herself.
• To address complaints fans had over Samoa Joe's booking, TNA tried to turn him into one of these. Given the trope's nature, this only led to more complaints. Full Impact Pro had managed to give Joe the whole monster angle to much greater success before hand (but they didn't have a national TV deal)
• The Boogeyman was more so this trope in Ohio Valley Wrestling, where he appeared out of nowhere when the heels spoke his name and briefly no-sold whatever they tried before beating them around the arena. Not so much in WWE, but he would still only briefly gyrate when struck with anything less than a mallet or a Signature Move and would just keep coming. He broke clocks over his head, carried around a heart, and swallowed and regurgitated worms to be force-fed to the wrestlers he defeated. Face. Unlike similar monster gimmicks, The Boogeyman did not have any powers. He was just an actor for a canceled UPN show who got Lost in Character, though he was billed from "The Bottomless Pit".
• Speaking of Kharma, the original Awesome Kong was one half of a tag team. The Colossal Kongs are most famous for their odd dress and for being called the worst tag team of 1993 by The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, but they were convincing monsters. Pretty much all their matches were Squash Matches that were over in under four minutes. That is, until WCW Clash of the Champions XXIV, August 18, 1993, when they found themselves facing Badass Normal Ric Flair and Lightning Bruiser Sting. More specifically, Sting, who slammed both 400 lbs.+ guys in succession with ease and hit Awesome with a Stinger (leaping to an opponent in the corner) Splash and a top rope splash for the win in about 2:14.
• Already something of an Invincible Hero, WCW tried to turn the Ultimate Warrior into one of these. He had many squash matches, but the run is mostly remembered for an infamous mirror scene.
• Papa Shango, who would often drop the wrestling and simply use a Voodoo curse to defeat his opponents, not that he couldn't get it done in the ring.
• Big Bad Mama of GLOW had voodoo powers too, but she used hers for mind control. Eventually, someone turned her voodoo around on her, so she resorted to squashing wrestlers the old fashion way. She even got to use the gimmick on an episode of Married... with Children. May she rest in peace. Matilda The Hun was a more mundane example, being a large indomitable athlete with Foreign Wrestling Heel overtones. Both of them feuded with Mount Fiji, the only one who could undermine Mama's voodoo powers and Hun's claims of master race superiority.
• Evil Dead, JCW's wrestling corpse. A little less intact than the Undertaker, his outer layer of flesh is gone. He feels no pain, knows no fear, and has to be restrained by a pair of Monster Clowns when he's not in matches. However, his testicles are still alive, and thus still vulnerable.
• There was an attempt to get world judo champion and STO innovator Naoya Ogawa some monster cred by having him squashing smaller wrestlers and then fight evenly with Goldberg.
• President Ramu, lovingly nicknamed by fans as "La hija del Undertaker", was an eight-year-old girl whose strength was boosted to superhuman levels after she was possessed by a demon.
• Missy Sampson, Aka Big Van Missy, WSU's riff on Vader. She eventually set up The Worf Effect for Hailey Hatred and Jessicka Havok, the latter being an even worse monster who tried to kill Mercedes Martinez, air raid crashed new owner DJ Hyde, beat up Alpha Female and even fought Sami Callihan.
• Mordecai, a zealous Christian-in-all-but-name out to prove strength in the faith of God to all the sinners of the world, was one of the many monster characters WWE introduced with the failed long term plan of feuding with The Undertaker. Unfortunately, Kevin Fertig (the man who played him) had stage fright issues, and had to go back to developmental. He later got called back up and repackaged as Kevin Thorn, a wrestling vampire out to feed on the blood of ECW. Kevin Thorn was a "legit" ECW monster after they ran weeks worth of parodies such as shambling zombies for the Sandman to beat with his cane. Fans suspect he was there to meet the science fiction requirement, back when Syfy was still called Sci-Fi.
• Gangrel and Rio Storm are two more wrestling vampires and they are known for teaming up on occasion. Rio Storm is the more monstrous of the two(though Gangrel had better fangs). He'd also team up with Billy Blade in the tag team known as "Bloodline" and sometimes have Ariel as a valet, whom Billy claimed to have "turned".
• LLF has Reina Vampira and Vampireza.
• One half of Wrestlicious's "Ghouls Gone Wild" was wrestling Vampire Draculetta. The other half, White Magic, was a hoodoo sorceress.
• After Hulk Hogan's No Holds Barred movie, someone got the bright idea to bring his opponent Zeus from the movie into the wrestling world and give him the same monster gimmick. He completely no-sold everything unless his opponents went for his eyes, which not only hurt but apparently made him vulnerable to other things.
• Speaking of Hulk Hogan, the man himself was this in the early part of his career, starting off as a heel who dragged on matches with seriously outclassed opponents just because he could, and was one of the few guys who even held a candle in terms of size to André the Giant. He was called Hulk for a reason.
• Apocalypse in UPW, who was basically a stand-in for WWE's Kane. In Fighting Opera HUSTLE he was the Himalayan Bigfoot and could take a whole lot of punishment without flinching because of his Delayed Reactions but moved really slow. Bigfoot would move a lot faster though if someone poured ice cubes on him.
• The monster army of Fighting Opera Hustle would expand its members by brainwashing regular wrestlers and then turning them into monsters too, such as turning Sonjay Dutt into Monster J, Steve Corino into Monster C or in the case of extant ones, more monstrous, such as MONSTER Naoya Ogawa.
• Giant Silva whenever he wrestled in Japan as a heel.
• Because HUSTLE loved this trope, Generalissimo Takada introduced a superpowered cyborg based on him called The Esperanza, who could even shoot wrestlers with Frickin' Laser Beams. He was so powerful that not even the legendary Great Muta could defeat him.
• Monster Bono of HUSTLE, born when The Great Muta's green mist got on the crotch of Yinling The Erotic Terrorist. The Manchild was one of the too-dumb-to-know-better examples, as he lost his daddy to The Esperanza and he accidentally Killed Off his mother.
• HUSTLE had a flying vampire tag team.
• CHIKARA of course has a few, such as the mute swamp monster.
• Kaiju Big Battel is basically what happens when 90% of the roster is made up of wrestling monsters, many of whom have Sizeshifter powers.
• The first ever World Wrestling League Heavy Weight Champion, Monster Pain, as his manager Mistress Glenda Lee would tell you in so many words if his name fails to get the point across. In fact, she has to keep him chained up when away from the ring and sometimes even that doesn't work.
• Argentinan Titanes En El Ring had La Momia, or the "The Mummy"
• The Dungeon of Doom had several: Kamala, the Shark (John Tenta), Meng (whose Red Baron was "The Monster", though that came only after the group had disbanded), Loch Ness, and, most importantly, the centerpiece the Giant (Paul "The Big Show" Wight).
• Lucha Underground has had a few.
  • Mil Muertes, the man of a thousand deaths. A menacing masked luchador, at the time he debuted he was the largest man on the LU roster. His backstory: He was nearly killed in an earthquake as a young boy, and his soul is linked to a piece of rubble from the quake. Which means now that he has superhuman strength, endurance and durability, and even if he should be defeated, he just comes back even stronger. He was portrayed by El Mesias, also known as Judas Mesias in TNA.
  • Cage "The Machine" is another example - bulging with muscles, stuffed with brutality and almost impossible to put down, he absolutely HATES it when an opponent gets up after he's knocked them down and will make them pay for their audacity. Not a perfectly straight example as although he's a power wrestler, he's also startlingly agile for his size (like most of the LU roster) and is easily capable of flying over the top rope in pursuit of his victims... which only makes him even more intimidating!
  • Matanza Cueto quickly stole the mantle of the biggest monster in Lucha Underground. His brother Dario Cueto entered him as the last man in Aztec Warfare, and Matanza made quick work of nearly half the active roster, winning the Lucha Underground title in emphatic fashion. Like Cage, Matanza isn't a giant (while he's scarily bulky, he's only about 5'10"), but also like Cage he's also much more agile than a man that strong has any right to be, capable of pulling off a standing shooting star press! And for good measure, he defeated both Cage and Mil Muertes in singles matches.
• United States champion Rusev may border on it, but so far he's been billed as an indestructible fighting machine who has so far defeated everyone in his path, with only one person unofficially giving him his first real defeat since his debut. And then he had the misfortune running into Roman Reigns...
• Sylvester Terkay cut his teeth in the wrestling business as Predator, the resident wrestling monster of Pro Wrestling ZERO-1. He was brought to WWE and briefly given a monster heel push, but he somehow never really connected with the fans and was released less than a year into his run.
• Jason The Terrible, a legacy monster gimmick that started in Canada's Stampede and is based on the Friday the 13th films. While no one knows anything about the powers of the villains in the movies, Zodiac claimed Jason was blessed by Cosmic Entity The Almighty Luke.
• "The American Tragedy" Zack Monstar would start out as a expy to Jason from ''Friday The Thirteenth" movies in New Era Wrestling and also show up as the "human horror show" in Nova Pro. REAL Pro Wrestling, by contrast, decided to give him a Freaky Is Cool baby face push, though he remained as violent as ever and thrived in gimmick matches.
• Following the new Brand Extension in 2016, Raw gained two: Former Wyatt Family henchman Braun Strowman for the men, and Nia Jax of the Samoan wrestling dynasty for the women. Both have routinely squashed jobbers (up to three at once in Strowman's case), and each also has curbstomped a main roster opponent twice (Sin Cara for Strowman, Alicia Fox for Nia). Both are sold as unstoppable monsters in their respective divisions, with the Raw commentary crew often wondering how one stops Strowman, and Strowman has even gone so far as to personally threaten Raw general manager Mick Foley in the name of getting better competition. As a result, he got Sami Zayn.
  • Conversely, SmackDown has only one: Baron Corbin. He hasn't bothered much with jobbers, unlike Strowman and Jax, and went straight up after the main roster superstars that irked him, such as Kalisto and Jack Swagger, curb stomping almost all of them. His finisher, the End of Days, has never been kicked out of after he's delivered it to his opponent. And at the Royal Rumble Corbin did the thing many other wrestlers would consider impossible: he eliminated Strowman.
• Also on The New '10s is WALTER. Unlike other examples on this list, WALTER admittedly doesn't have much on the Wrestling Psychology side, but between his size, appearance, and the fact that in many promotions he has been fed midcarders and main eventers alike. Not to mention THOSE. CHOPS.
• King Kong Bundy was 6'6, 458 lbs., very strong, had the five-count gimmick, and was the rare wrestler who was not intimidated by Jake "The Snake" Roberts' snake Damien.
• Bray Wyatt was a borderline case up until he lost far too regularly for fans to take seriously any more...and then he became the Fiend, an unstoppable Eldritch Abomination who can kick out of any finisher on the WWE roster, shrug off weapon shots unfazed, and survive being set on fire.
• Drew McIntyre is a subtle, but consistent long-term example. Starting from his NXT days, where he won the brand championship to the tune of kicking out the Glorious DDT three times, the giant Scot has gone on to prove, even while he was stuck in the main roster midcard, that he's almost unprecedentedly hard to defeat. It took Drew a 16-foot fall through the announce desk and a surprise RKO at Hell in a Cell 2020 to lose his first WWE Championship, and he's one of the only people in the known universe to have kicked out of the Spear and the Jackhammer.
• All Elite Wrestling have recruited a number of established monsters, as well as created a few new ones of their own:
  • Wardlow, MJF's hulking bodyguard and enforcer, is a cold, emotionless monster who crushes whoever MJF points him at. He eventually turned face after he got massively over with the crowd by changing his Finishing Move from the F10^note a spinning F5 which was hard to execute properly for the "Powerbomb Symphony" where he grabs his opponent and powerbombs him... over and over and over again.
  • From NJPW they recruited "the Murderhawk Monster" Lance Archer, pairing him with the legendary Jake Roberts as his manager. He lives to destroy everyone, regardless of whether they're his opponent or not, in accordance with his Catchphrase "Everyone dies!"
  • Jake Hager, enforcer of the Inner Circle, and MISTER Brodie Lee, the Exalted One of The Dark Order, are examples of performers who weren't really booked as monsters in their previous runs in WWE (as Jack Swagger and Luke Harper respectively) where their imposing size didn't stand out so much against other large wrestlers. In the comparatively smaller AEW, Hager is an imposing, stoic thug who does Chris Jericho's bidding with brutal efficiency, leveraging his genuine undefeated MMA record. Mister Lee, on the other hand, is a cold, calculating, intelligent monster who directs the Dark Order with callous brutality, but is a sadistic, violent juggernaut when it comes time to get his own hands dirty, justifying his position as the Exalted One. He ended inaugural TNT Champion Cody's reign in less than five minutes of pure savagery, shrugging off Cody's opening flurry and destroying him without mercy.
  • They also recruited the aforementioned Brian Cage, who was initially managed by Taz. After Cage eventually split from Team Taz, their new monster was the huge and muscular "Powerhouse" Will Hobbs.
  • In the women's division, "the Native Beast" Nyla Rose is possibly the most-feared competitor, a Native American trans woman who is far bigger and more brutal than any other woman in the division (with Awesome Kong having retired), sadistically destroying anyone who opposes her.
  • Abadon, the Living Dead Girl from the Black Hills, is the other terrifying member of AEW's women's division. While much smaller than Nyla Rose (she's actually quite short but stocky), she's a psychotic, zombie-like literal monster who communicates in gutteral snarls and screams, shrugs off her opponent's best efforts with little effect, and looks like she's constantly only a hair's breadth from leaping onto her opponent and eating their face.
• Invoked and subverted with The Mauler. WCW repackaged career undercarder Mike Enos as biker and gave him a diminuitive jobber named Steve Doll to manhandle. The match dragged on with Mauler beating and beating on Doll, no-selling what little offense Doll got and not trying to actually win, the crowd was vocally displeased with the match... and then Scott Hall showed up, overshadowing The Mauler so badly that Mauler just wandered away from the ring, disappeared for a couple months and returned to being Mike Enos.

Fictional Examples

Anime And Manga

• One Piece has Jesus Burgess, a Top Heavy ogre of a man who claims to be a wrestling champion and instigates fights with whoever he can to prove it. He is strong enough to rip a hotel from the ground and toss it at his enemies.
• A few heels in Tiger Mask have such gimmicks.
• A story arc in City Hunter had a gang leader use help from his Yakuza boss father to enlist the help of a gigantic former wrestler who was banned from fighting for killing an opponent. Ryo beat the crap out of him off-screen, and even complained about it having been too easy.
• One show up in Kyō Kara Ore Wa!!, having been hired as a bodyguard by the villain of that story arc... Who loses control of him. Mitsuhashi, who was the one who pissed him off, defeats him by tricking him into a race until he became tired before punching him out.
• A story in the Batman manga has a masked wrestling Monster Heel known as the Hangman (guess the gimmick), who tries to set himself up as an Anti-Hero Substitute for Batman. It is revealed that he was outright evil from the beginning, talking a brain-damaged retired wrestler into committing a robbery so that he could kill him to set up his rep as a ruthlessly effective vigilante. The story climaxes with Batman invading a wrestling show and challenging him to a "loser unmasks" match.
• A literal example is the monster Rhino Wrestler in One-Punch Man.

Comics

• Since All Myths Are True in Marvel's Fantasy Kitchen Sink, wrestling leagues often employed real monsters. Most of these were from the group known as the Deviants, who were too ugly to live unexposed in regular society.
• "The Other" in Super Pro K.O., a bizarre, massive creature who seems to have tentacles coming out of his head. It doesn't talk, it has very unclear motivations for everything it does, and it's pretty much an even more mysterious, creepy, and threatening version of the Undertaker.
• Waylon Jones a.k.a. "Killer Croc" has a rare condition which gives him a crocodilian appearance as well as superhuman strength and endurance. For a time he wrestled as part of a traveling circus, where his monstrous nature was an advantage.

Film

• Parodied in Nacho Libre. The local monster team is made of two hairy, horned, beast men who squeal like pigs...and are only three feet tall...and pull off some of the most impressive offensive maneuvers in the whole film.
• El Mascarado from the slasher film Wrestlemaniac is a luchador serial killer who 'unmasks' his victims by ripping their faces off.
• In the first Spider-Man movie, Bonesaw McGraw (played by the legendary "Macho Man" Randy Savage) embodies this during his brief moment on screen. He is kicking the crap out of an entire gauntlet of wrestlers to the point where one has to be carried out on a stretcher. Even though Peter is superhuman, he is still nervous when he gets into the ring. Of course, his demeanor changes once he realizes he can beat Bonesaw.
• Monster Brawl is a most literal example, featuring a wrestling tournament for monsters.
• No Holds Barred has Zeus, played by 'Tiny' Lister.

Live Action TV

• The Golden Boy from Night Man was given this kind of gimmick and he secretly hated it because Kayfabe meant people thought he was a monster in real life.
• Kenny vs. Spenny: In the episode "Who's the Best Pro Wrestler," Spenny becomes "The Nice Guy", and Kenny becomes "Yarp Yarp," an uncontrollable monster from an experiment gone wrong.
• In Spartacus: Blood and Sand, the gladiator Theokoles The Shadow Of Death is portrayed as something of an Ancient Roman version of this. He's a huge man who mostly screams and hisses instead of speaking, takes ungodly amounts of punishment, and sometimes pretends to be dead so that he can shock the crowd and his opponents by "coming back to life".
• A literal example from an episode of Legends of Tomorrow, where the magical fugitive Konane escapes Time Bureau custody and winds up as a wrestler dubbed "El Lobo" (since he's a wolfman) in 1961 Mexico City.

Tabletop Game

• Vampire: The Masquerade had the Extreme Wrestling Confederation, run by a subsidiary of Pentex, in which vampires, shapeshifters and other supernaturals compete. First mentioned in the Children of the Night sourcebook, along with the Nosferatu luchador El Diablo Verde.
  • It's worth noting that WWE took the name "Gangrel" and the whole idea of the Brood, his team with Edge and Christian, from this game. Any CDs that included his music or any releases/publications that included Gangrel always included a mention in the liner notes/credits that Gangrel was a trademark of White Wolf, Inc.
• Another literal example can be found in "The Unspeakables", an entire team of wrestling eldritch abominations^note a man turned into a slug-like abomination after accidentally encountering a Lovecraftian god below the sea, a sorceress from a race of pre-human Snake People, and the spawn of the aforementioned Lovecraftian god-thing in the Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game RPG. Ironically, it was also done by White Wolf.

Video Games

• In Pro Wrestling, the Amazon is a masked wrestler who plays a Half-Human Hybrid and bites people.
• "Monster" is one of the reversal templates one can choose for their CAW in the WWE Day Of Reckoning games. It and UNDERTAKER are the most elaborate of the "big man" choices and Undertaker's an example of this trope anyway.
• The King of Dinosaurs from The King of Fighters, whose gimmick is that he's a beastly and savage dinosaur wrestler whose attacks often involve biting and clawing at his opponents and talks about striking fear into the hearts of the crowd. He's actually Tizoc, having undergone a Face–Heel Turn due to him losing a match against newcomer Nelson and wanting to settle a grudge match with him, even though said behaviour is unbecoming of a Face like him, neccesitating the turn. He also has a pretty bad habit of slipping back into his original Tizoc self sometimes, such as going on about justice, before correcting himself. Also, the rest of the cast aren't exactly fooled by his change in the slightest.
• Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II brings us Wraith, a hulking brute in a cloak who attacks by producing snakes from his sleeves and hood.
• While he officially uses Vale Tudo as his fighting style rather than professional wrestling, Craig Marduk from the Tekken series otherwise fits the trope pretty well. He's a hulking No Celebrities Were Harmed Nathan Jones (with a few references to Goldberg and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin thrown in) who's an absolute brute both in and out of the ring. He fights because he likes hurting people, it remains his motivation even after he has a Heel–Face Turn at the end of Tekken 5 and becomes the tag team partner of King. Somewhat ironically for this trope, despite being set in a world where people have Ki powers or the genetic ability to turn into winged monsters that breathe fire or have Eye Beams, he's an ordinary human save for cutscenes portraying him as having Charles Atlas Superpower level strength.

Western Animation

• On one episode of Kim Possible Executive Promoter of GWA (Global Wrestling Association), Jackie Oakes uses an Upgrade Artifact to turn himself into a giant jackal man and attacks the wrestlers booked in the main event without anyone batting an eye because they think it's All Part of the Show. It actually was planned to be part of the show but Jackie turned it into a shoot. His two prized wrestlers, Pain King and Steel Toe (Goldberg and Andrew "Test" Martin), were also this trope, but their biggest real-life fault was to think the idea of Jackie fighting them was a joke.
• The What's New, Scooby-Doo? episode "Wrestle Maniacs" had the gang come up against a monstrous wrestler known only as the Titanic Twist, so named because he was given a forbidden wrestling move of the same name that caused both of his arms to be on one side of his body.
• Parodied in the Dial M For Monkey episode "Rasslor," a Whole-Plot Reference to Marvel Two-In-One Annual #7. The title character, an unbeatable alien pro wrestler (voiced by Randy Savage) comes to Earth to challenge its greatest heroes for the fate of the world. He clobbers the Justice Friends until only Monkey is left. Despite being repeatedly pounded into the ground, Monkey refuses to give up. His display of fortitude moves Rasslor to spare the Earth for producing an opponent whose spirit could not be broken.
• In Star Trek: Prodigy, Rok-Tahk used to be this in a staged battle show where nobody could understand her speech and vice versa. The "hero" (an older swordsman) would fight her, but his swordstrokes were actually harmless on her rocky skin. Eventually, she got too upset and frustrated at being the big scary one and turned one show into a slapstick farce, which went over great with the crowd but not with the owners, and they sold her to Tars Lamora.
• The Pro Wrestling Episode of Steven Universe has Amethyst turning into a huge (male) wrestler named Purple Puma to compete in the local circuit and proves pretty much unstoppable. In a possible inversion, Amethyst is actually a super-powered alien, but seems to be trying to pretend she's a human so the other Crystal Gems won't find out about her. Amethyst is also too interested in beating people up to cultivate any specific image, only managing to be an effective heel thanks to Steven's showmanship once he becomes her tag partner.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003)'s Fast Forward episode, "Headlock Prime", the villainous three-headed behemoth Triple Threat makes his grand return to 2105's version of Madison Square Garden. In addition to trying to rob the arena's latest wrestling event, he reclaims his old heel persona to prove how "soft" the field of professional wrestling has become, taking down the main contenders one by one for real.

---