Best NJPW Giants

For many fans, New Japan Pro-Wrestling lives up to its nickname, “The King of Sport,” delivering competitive, high-quality matches featuring some of the best wrestlers in the world. That said, NJPW is still a pro wrestling promotion, which means it also values wrestlers with impressive physical appearances, including absurdly large performers, commonly referred to as “giants.”

Since New Japan’s establishment in 1972, the promotion has been host to numerous giants over the years, many of which are pretty well known to Western fans. Let’s take a look at 10 of these big men in NJPW history, starting with the worst of them and working towards the best.

10 El Gigante Wrestled In NJPW After Leaving The States

El Gigante Is Also Known As Giant Gonzalez

A former basketball player who at one time was drafted to the Atlanta Hawks, Jorge Gonzalez transitioned to pro wrestling in the early 1990s, wrestling for WCW as El Gigante and rather infamously for WWE as Giant Gonzalez. During his brief in-ring career, Gonzalez wrestled for NJPW in two distinct runs — one before WWE, and one after. During his time in New Japan he often wrestled in tag matches, sharing the ring with juniors like Jushin Thunder Liger, but did have two notable singles opponents: Big Van Vader and The Great Muta.

9 Giant Singh Will Surprise Fans

Western Fans Know Him Best As WWE’s Great Khali

From 2006 to 2014, Dalip Singh Rana wrestled for WWE, where he was infamous among fans for his poor mobility in less-than-stellar matches (with some exceptions). Before that, however, he had a run in NJPW under the ring name Giant Singh, and fans going back to watch his work back then will likely be shocked. While he was still a rookie at only a couple of years into his in-ring career, the future Great Khali was far more agile and fast than he was during his time in WWE.

8 The Undertaker Had A Forgotten Run In NJPW

His Ring Name Was Punisher Dice Morgan

Besides height, The Great Khali and El Gigante have a rival in common: The Undertaker, also had a run in New Japan Pro-Wrestling. It was back in 1990, having already debuted in WCW as “Mean” Mark Callous, but the future ‘Taker worked a different gimmick, wrestling under the amazing ring name of Punisher Dice Morgan.

The legend’s New Japan run was only a 20-day tour with the promotion, during which he mostly wrestled in tag team matches, at one point challenging for the IWGP Tag Team Championship alongside Scott Hall. While fans will notice that Punisher Dice Morgan was already using some of The Undertaker’s go-to moves, he was still considered a newcomer at this point

7 Hikuleo Is A Current NJPW Fixture

The Best Parts Of His Career May Be Ahead Of Him

Trained by the Dudley Boyz, Hikuleo is the adoptive son of the legendary Haku and the actual brother of Bullet Club co-founder Tama Tonga, and as such ended up joining the gaijin heel stable alongside his brother. Given that he’s only seven or so years into his in-ring career, Hikuleo arguably has time to develop into a great performer. Currently, he’s not highly rated by fans, but has held a few titles, including the NJPW Strong Openweight Championship, the Strong Openweight Tag Team Championship, and the IWGP Tag Team Championship.

6 Doc Gallows Was A Three-Time Tag Team Champion

Gallows Was With Bullet Club During Its Peak Years

After runs in WWE (as Festus and Luke Gallows) and in TNA (as D.O.C.), the rechristened Doc Gallows arrived in NJPW in 2013, where he immediately linked up with “Machine Gun” Karl Anderson to win that year’s World Tag League tournament. Never really a singles guy, Gallows always shone as a tag team specialist and/or henchman, making him a perfect fit for Bullet Club. As such, it was in New Japan that his association with Anderson began — a partnership that’s continued to this day.

5 Giant Bernard Had A Strong Run In NJPW

Matt Bloom Wrestled As Albert, A-Train & Tensai In WWE

Current WWE Performance Center head coach Matt Bloom was another big man who worked a number of gimmicks in WWE (Albert and A-Train) before moving on to NJPW and forming a successful tag team with Karl Anderson. Renamed Giant Bernard, Bloom thrived in New Japan working a stiff, powerhouse style that opened the eyes of fans who only knew him for his WWE work. While his Bad Intentions run with Karl Anderson yielded a record reign with the tag belts, Giant Bernard also went for singles titles, taking on Brock Lesnar and later Hiroshi Tanahashi for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship.

4 Giant Baba Is One Of Japanese Wrestling’s Pillars

Baba Only Wrestled Under The NJPW Banner Once

New Japan founder Antonio Inoki’s counterpart in All Japan Pro Wrestling is Giant Baba, who Inoki worked with in a previous promotion under Japanese wrestling pioneer Rikidozan. Given that Baba was running his own promotion, most of his work happened in AJPW, but he does technically have a NJPW match to his credit.

Happening late in his career, Giant Baba wrestled at The Wrestling Summit, a show jointly promoted by not only AJPW and NJPW, but also WWE. There, he teamed up with Andre The Giant in a winning effort against WWE tag team Demolition.

3 Lance Archer Was One Of NJPW’s Great Modern Giants

Archer Has Since Moved On To AEW

For big men, it seems like New Japan is where undervalued big men from the West get to be powerful hoss monsters, and one of the most successful is arguably Lance Archer. From his arrival in 2011 all the way to the group’s end in 2022, Archer worked heel as a member of the Suzuki-Gun faction, where he was a compelling, credible threat, and developed the “Murderhawk Monster” gimmick that carried him over to AEW. He was a success in NJPW as well, capturing the IWGP Tag Team Championship three times alongside Davey Boy Smith Jr. as the Killer Elite Squad.

2 Masashi Ozawa Was Also Killer Khan

Ozawa Wrestled In NJPW Under Both Gimmicks

Initially part of Rikidozan’s Japan Wrestling Association, sumo wrestler turned pro wrestler Masashi Ozawa joined up with NJPW in 1973, wrestling under his real name until departing for the West, where he became the Mongolian heel Killer Khan. During his time in the States, Khan entered an epic feud with fellow big man Andre The Giant, which included an infamous angle where Khan broke Andre’s ankle. Eventually, their feud went from WWE all the way to New Japan, where they put on some epics for Japanese crowds.

1 Andre The Giant Is One Of Pro Wrestling’s Great Icons

The Legend Was Popular In Japan As Well As In The West

For much of his career, the iconic Andre the Giant was a traveling wrestler, moving from territory to territory so that his act would never get stale — that is, before WWE locked him down in the 1980s. Before that, Andre would make regular trips to Japan, where his size and in-ring abilities made him a legend overseas as well as in the West. First showing up in 1974, Andre The Giant took on Japanese stars like Antonio Inoki and Tatsumi Fujinami as well as fellow gaijin like Stan Hansen and future WWE rival Hulk Hogan, in addition to the aforementioned Killer Khan.