Why Bigger Wrestlers Underacheive in Wrestling

Why Bigger Wrestlers Underacheive in Wrestling

I was thinking about this today and wanted to share my thoughts.

While there's been tons of big men over the years, most of them usually aren't that good. Some of the reasons are obvious, while others might be less so.

One of the issues many big men have is that being so big, they tend to be immobile. Sometimes this is due to weight and sometimes this is due to height. Either one leads to balance issues and the wrestlers being physically less able to do various things in ring. Even if they can do a lot of the moves, their opponents also have to be able to lift them, which can be a problem.

Being not able to move however is not necessarily a death sentence. There's plenty of wrestlers over the years who had limited movement, but yet were able to be successful. And this ties into the next issue.

Most bigger wrestlers don't get chances because they are good wrestlers, they get them strictly because they are big. While I've always said that size is important in wrestling, it doesn't matter how big you are if you can't do anything with your size in ring. While most wrestlers have to hone their craft for years to get some rub on the main stage, many bigger wrestlers are given chances without any experience at all. Like in basketball, where bigger people have to prove that they "can't" play, even some of the worst big guys ever got multiple chances to prove their lack of worth while many smaller guys never got their first chance.

Honing your craft in wrestling isn't strictly about having good matches however. Character, charisma and/or personality, depending on how you want to phrase it, is much more important than even having the best matches are. Due to how fast a lot of bigger wrestlers get put on the main stage, they don't get to develop personalities that could make up for their limitations.

One of the reasons I've never seen brought up is that bigger wrestlers get slotted in traditional roles, like they would in movies. Bigger wrestlers are almost always the tough guys, and usually if that fails, become comic relief. While smaller wrestlers get chances to be anything they can imagine and often get more than one shot to try out a different character if need be. People like Brutus Beefcake, Demolition Ax and others as I talked about in a previous post, got tons of chances to explore their personalities, very few big men have.

One final reason a lot of bigger wrestlers fail is that due to their size, they get forced into a limited style of working. Bigger wrestlers spend most of their time squashing smaller wrestlers, no selling or fighting people their size who are also going to be more limited. While many guys spend years having 10+ minute matches with a variety of workers, few bigger wrestlers ever get that chance unless it's a main event, when they are likely to fail.

Overall, bigger wrestlers have a tough time in wrestling. They are often limited by their size, pushed too fast and they get slotted in limited roles while having to live up to high expectations. Then when they fail as it should be expected, they are often they are blamed and punished for things completely out of their control. So the next time you see a bigger wrestler fail, hopefully, this will give you some perspective as to why they often fail.