5 reasons the Great Khali is disliked by some wrestling fans

At Battleground, the Great Khali made a shocking return to WWE programming as he helped Jinder Mahal retain the WWE Championship. Though the moment created plenty of shock value in the short term, the next day fans remembered exactly why they hadn’t missed the Great Khali at all.

Khali’s brief appearance, in fact, rekindled the dislike present for the Indian wrestler and the internet was set ablaze with jokes about him.

Dalip Singh Rana spent close to nine years in the WWE as a full-time talent before the company refused to renew his contract in 2014. The 7-footer went on to open a wrestling school called ‘Continental Wrestling Entertainment’ back in Punjab, which is still running today.

It may be good that the Great Khali has preoccupied himself outside of WWE because some wrestling fans do not want to see him back in the squared circle.

Here are five reasons the Great Khali is disliked by some wrestling fans.

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#5 Steals valuable TV time

Khali won 265 matches in the WWE

What do fans hate more than an incompetent wrestler? An incompetent wrestler that takes valuable TV time away from more deserving talents.

When the Great Khali was dominating main events on SmackDown, people like CM Punk and the Hardy Boyz were hardly respected. The show was wrongly billed around Khali and his juggernaut clash with other big guys, what followed was a gradual decline in ratings.

Now the WWE is forever playing catch up with the glory days because Vince spent all of the noughties advertising giants as the main feature of the show, instead of pushing potential stars. Stars like CM Punk who funnily turned out to be the most popular superstar of this generation.

#4 He has no charisma

The Great Khali has appeared in 6 films

Andre the Giant had a presence about him, a type of loving aura that attracted the wider audience to him. What does the Great Khali have besides bad wrestling matches?

It’s not always necessarily about the dialect a man speaks or cannot speak, it’s about how he conveys the message he does. The Great Khali is neither great nor does he have the charisma to be a star.

In the past, the WWE has pushed him to the moon and back to no avail, why? Because there’s nothing to him other than his size. He didn’t draw or attract new viewers to the franchise. When Khali steps in a ring, people look but rarely do they give him a second look once he carries on moving.

#3 Fans are bored of the foreign heel gimmick

The Great Khali and Jinder Mahal used to be a tag team

This has happened since the conception of professional wrestling: the American hero is pitted against the foreign wrestler who apparently hates the country he’s working in. What follows is a tedious ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ rhetoric that gets the crowd going with ‘USA’ chants.

It’s this outdated way of thinking that’s directly contributed to the decline of TV ratings on Monday and Tuesday nights.

The Great Khali is just another in a long list of foreign wrestlers who have been used and abused in the WWE to project hate against a patriotic nation. Fans are bored of it and seeing as that’s all the Great Khali was only booked in that way, it’s hard to dissociate him from the horrible gimmick.

#2 He embodies entertainment, not wrestling

Khali won the World Heavyweight Championship on one occasion

As weird as it sounds, Vince McMahon has proven time and time again that he has an obsession with giant wrestlers. From King Kong Bundy to Andre the Giant to Vader to the Big Show to the Undertaker to the Great Khali, Vince has always had at least one giant on his active roster.

The introduction of giants to the main event scene showed wrestling fans a great deal about Vince McMahon's vision for the product. However, out of all those giants, the Great Khali is arguably the worst of them all.

The 7-footer can barely wobble around the ring let alone execute a quality wrestling match. The boss employed him in the past just to be a special attraction, a marketing ploy that didn't reap rewards.

His presence reminds fans that they're not watching a wrestling show, but a drama series with unique characters. Wrestling fans can smell a bogus act a mile away and when there’s no substance to accompany the initial attraction, they hate it.

#1 He can’t wrestle

Khali wrestled 409 matches in the WWE

Wrestling in the WWE is a very relative term; not everyone can perform the technical moves of a Kenny Omega, but a WWE superstar must possess the wrestling ability to tell a compelling story during the course of a 20-minute match - which the Great Khali can’t.

The best wrestling trick up his giant sleeve is the ability to slap his frying pan-like hands on the chest of his opponents.

Besides that, he’s limited in the ring and barely has enough moves to string together a match. That’s why most of his matches consist of him raising his giant arms in the air.

The WWE have clearly packaged him in such a way that he spends his TV time making it pretty evident that he’s a huge freak of nature, in a hope that it will distract fans from his limited in-ring wrestling ability.