What’s the story?
As per a report by PWInsider, former WWE superstar The Great Khali is scheduled to return to wrestling action in the US for the first time since he left the WWE in 2014. Khali will be making a few appearances for different wrestling promotions across February and March this year.
In case you didn’t know...
The Great Khali (real name - Dalip Singh Rana) made his WWE debut on an episode of SmackDown in April 2006 where he attacked The Undertaker. On 20 July 2007, Khali became the first and only Indian wrestler to win a WWE title when he won a Battle Royal for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship on SmackDown. His reign, though, was a particularly short one as conceded the title to Batista in a triple threat match, also involving Rey Mysterio, at the Unforgiven pay-per-view a couple of months later.
The heart of the matter
PWInsider has confirmed that The Great Khali will be appearing at The Big Event convention which will be held on 4 March 2017 at the LaGuardia Hotel in Queens, New York. Other former WWE superstars like Hall of Famer Koko B. Ware and Kamala will also be part of the convention as well as boxing great Mike Tyson.
On the same night, Khali will travel to New Jersey and wrestle for a promotion named SWS. Prior to that, ‘The Punjabi Nightmare’ has been advertised to appear at two Big Time Wrestling events in Raleigh, North Carolina and Spartanburg, South Carolina on 10 and 11 February respectively.
The Great Khali will be seen accepting open challenges at the events, which will also feature WCW legend Sting, ‘Broken’ Matt Hardy and former WWE stars Billy Gunn and Carlito among others. Here is an advertisement for the event posted by Big Time Wrestling on their Facebook page.
What's next?
Despite the fact that Khali is making a return to in-ring action, it is difficult to see why the WWE may be interested in signing him up once again unless they want to give Braun Strowman the competition that he wants so badly.
Sportskeeda’s take
While The Great Khali deserves quite a lot of credit for putting India on the pro-wrestling map, one must admit that he was largely underutilised during his stint in the WWE, barring the first couple of years when he was regularly in the title frame.
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