The Last Great Giants
Over the course of the past decade, we’ve seen the death of the traditional, back-to-the-basket big man in basketball. With the rise in analytics and realizing that a three-pointer might be better than a two-pointer, players of all shapes and sizes moved to shooting three-pointers more often. While there are still players that somewhat embody this old era of basketball, like Jarrett Allen, Clint Capela and Jalen Duren, for the most part, this style has gone to the wayside in favor of an analytics-based, higher tempo style of basketball that goes on today.
Despite being a completely different sport and is played under completely different rules, there’s a similar trend that is going on in professional wrestling.
Before the 2010s, you saw the tall, lumbering big man everywhere. Most people know about Great Khali, Big Show, Andre the Giant and Kevin Nash, but there were many more big men that had a prominent spot in wrestling during that time period. Giant Silva had a consistent spot in top promotions, bouncing from the WWF to CMLL to HUSTLE during his career, Nathan Jones’ height landed him jobs in both the WWE and ZERO1 during the early 2000s, and Matt Morgan bounced around from WWE to New Japan and HUSTLE to TNA, being a prominent figure on television for almost a decade and a half.
Regardless of the quality of the wrestlers themselves, wherever you looked in wrestling, you always saw a really tall man in the ring at some point.
As time has gone on, a lot of major promotions have seemingly moved away from the big man, moving towards hiring wrestlers that are less vertically imposing and faster than your typical big man, as they seemingly get a better reaction from the crowd, both in-person and online. Therefore, the archetype has seemingly been phased out.
That doesn’t mean that there’s been attempts to bring in more big men. A lot of modern fans might know about Shanky, who worked for WWE from 2021-2023, but wrestlers like Ben Bishop, Peter John Ramos (also known as Beast Mode) and Talos have all been trying to bring the big man back. But, despite their size and attempts, they haven’t been able to get consistent bookings from notable promotions.
There are two tall men that have been able to stand the test of time the past few years, and break through the glass ceiling that most other tall men in the business will very easily hit, or well graze, their heads upon. Those two are WWE’s Omos and AEW’s Satnam Singh.
Both wrestlers have a good amount of things in common. Both of them played basketball, Omos at the college level for South Florida, Morgan State and King University while Singh played at the professional level for the Texas Legends of the NBA D-League (now G-League) and the St. John’s Edge of the National Basketball League of Canada. Both men are over seven-feet tall, Omos listed at 7-feet, 3-inches, while Singh is listed at 7-feet, 2-inches. Both also had some exposure to the WWE, with Omos currently working for the company and Singh having a tryout with the company in 2017, but never signed with them.
Many of their best matches also revolve around their height being the thing for smaller wrestlers to overcome.

For example, in Satnam’s match against Bryan Danielson on the May 22 episode of AEW Dynamite, we see Danielson, who usually wrestles extremely clean, having to resort to dirtier tactics to get the advantage. A low blow, gouging the eyes and using whatever he can, even the environment itself, to get the advantage. It actually works in Danielson’s favor, being able to get the advantage over a man that has a 17-inch height difference on him until Jeff Jarrett, Jay Lethal, and Sonjay Dutt ran in to have the match end in disqualification.
Even in his few matches in AAA, Satnam acts as the guy to beat, allowing for babyfaces like Psycho Clown, the rest of Psycho Circus and Negro Casas to topple. Regardless of where he is, he seems to play the monster heel role well, not selling a lot of the face’s offense until they decide to act smart, compared to just running into the giant.

In Omos’ case, many wrestlers seem to follow the same format of attack. They run into the giant before finally deciding to wisen up. However, with some exceptions, this never works out. Even in his current run in Pro Wrestling NOAH, Omos just ends up tossing his opponents around. These opponents include guys like El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. and Galeno del Mal, wrestlers that most wouldn’t be able to throw as easily as Omos has.
The whole appeal behind guys like Singh and Omos being in the ring is that essentially just one big “David vs Goliath” story. “Will the obviously much smaller man be able to topple the giant?” might be such a simple story, but it’s one that works time and time again.
In a wrestling world where a story has to be found through fifty layers of irony and “cinema”, having something as simple as “big guy vs little guy” is something that doesn’t need those things. Either the little man finds a way to beat the big man, or the big man tosses around the little guy for a few minutes before beating him. There’s no nuance to any of it. There’s no need to look through all the layers of irony that pro wrestling usually requires. It’s clear and simple that viewers, regardless of them being fans or not, can understand, and it’s what makes the big man special.
But, with giants seemingly going the way of the dodo in major wrestling promotions, it’s unclear how many of these “David vs Goliath” stories we have left. But, at least for now, Satnam Singh and Omos seem to be holding down the position of being the big guy for the babyface to take down.
- The Last Great Giants - January 16, 2025