Jorge Gonzalez, AKA "Giant Gonzalez", AKA "El Gigante", AKA "The Worst
Professional Wrestler In Recorded History."
Jorge Gonzalez is approximately seven and a half feet tall. Gonzalez
was originally from Argentina; he was brought over to the United States
as a prospect for the Atlanta Hawks, an NBA basketball team.
He never made it, though, primarily due to bad knees.
World Championship Wrestling signed him to a contract in July of 1990,
where he was known as El Gigante. Keep in mind Gonzalez had absolutely
no wrestling experience--he was uncoordinated, spoke bad English, and
had no muscular build. He was TALL, though, and that was enough for
the early 1990s.
During his short stay in WCW, Gonzalez managed to be involved in two
of the worst things in the history of professional wrestling--Great American
Bash '91 (the worst PPV of all-time), and the Chamber of Horrors match
at Halloween Havoc '91.
He left WCW in early 1992 and was for some inexplicable reason signed
by Vince McMahon, joining the WWF. Oh, wait, it is explainable:
He had absolutely no wrestling experience, spoke bad English, and had
no muscular build, but he was TALL, and McMahon loves big tall oafs with
no skill even more than WCW.
And so, Jorge debuted in late 1992/early 1993 in the WWF as his most
(infamously) well-known character, Giant Gonzalez. He was managed
by Harvey Whippleman.
Oh, I forgot the best part.
Having no muscle definition of his own, the WWF put him in a fur suit
airbrushed with muscles to give him the illusion of being powerful.
I'm gonna repeat that: He walked around in a jumpsuit with muscles
PAINTED ON IT, and fans were supposed to take him seriously.
Gonzalez fought the Undertaker in a brutally awful match at Wrestlemania
IX (the worst Wrestlemania ever, incidentally), which Gonzalez won by
disqualification after smothering 'Taker with a choloroform-soaked rag.
And wouldn't you know it, McMahon thought the feud was going so well that
the two of them fought a REMATCH at SummerSlam '93 in a match that wasn't
quite so bad. It was still awful, of course, just not
as bad as the first one. Gonzalez turned on Whippleman after the
match for some stupid reason and subsequently disappeared from the World
Wrestling Federation soon afterwards.
Disenchanted with life in the United States, Jorge returned home to
his farm in Argentina and currently resides there.
As an aside, I could SWEAR that I once saw Gonzalez as the special
guest star on an episode of Baywatch. I think it was during his
WWF stint. This is too surreal to be believed, but I've got confirmation from IMDB that I wasn't just smoking too much crack at the time.