Ask 411 Wrestling: Who is the Best Wrestler from Each Olympic Country? (Part 1)

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We’re going to do something a bit unusual here and hit two related questions with the same answer. We’ll start with a version of the question asked by feckyou2 from Disqus:

Inspired by your best in state column, can I ask you to choose best wrestlers to feature prominently in the USA from a foreign country? In particular, please include: England, Scotland, Ireland, India, Australia, France, Spain, Germany, New Zealand, Iran (should be an easy one), and Mexico.

For the sake of reference, Mr. Feck is basing his question on a column that I wrote back in March naming the best wrestler from each US state. More recently, I’ve also answered version of the same question about Australian states and Canadian provinces.

Things don’t stop with feckyou2, though. Richard U. chimed in with a variation on the same theme:

Who is the best professional wrestler from every country represented at the 2020 Olympic Games? You don’t have to use the Japanese alphabet!

Richard’s version of the question is a bit more specific and a bit more expansive, so we’ll focus on the Olympics from here on out. Plus, it’s such an expansive question that we’re going to have to break it up over two different installments of the column, so apologies to the portion of our audience who doesn’t care for that sort of thing.

For those of you who may not know, there were 206 teams entered in the 2020 Olympic Games. Of those, one is not affiliated with a particular country, that being the Refugee Olympic Team. As the name implies, it consists of refugees and as a result can’t really be part of the focus of this question.

Also, for those not aware, there are some regions and territories that are part of larger countries which field their own Olympic teams. For example, Puerto Rico has its own team despite its status as a territory of the United States, as does Hong Kong despite it being a “special administrative region” of China. We’ll be treating those regions or territories with separate Olympic teams as separate countries for purposes of this question.

As a final note on our “rules” for the column, as with my U.S./Australian state and Canadian province questions, we are focusing on where wrestlers were actually BORN, not where they were billed from or where they lived the majority of their lives. I know some people aren’t always thrilled with that criterion, but we need a bright line, and that’s as good as any other.

Also, to keep this column from turning into an absolute monster, we’re going to try to keep write-ups on the individual wrestlers to tweet-length.

Of the 205 countries and regions with Olympic teams, there are are 93 that have never produced a professional wrestler as best my research can determine. Those countries are: Iceland, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Aruba, Albania, Armenia, Andorra, Yemen, Uganda, Uzbekistan, British Virgin Islands, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Oman, Cape Verde, Kazakhstan, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Guam, Cook Islands, Grenada, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe, San Marino, Sierra Leone, Djibouti, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Suriname, Sri Lanka, Slovakia, Slovenia, Seychelles, Equatorial Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Somalia, Solomon Islands, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Czech Republic, Chad, Central African Republic, Tunisia, Tuvalu, Togo, Dominica, Turkmenistan, Nauru, Niger, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Bermuda, Palau, Bangladesh, East Timor, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Brunei, Burundi, Benin, Belarus, Belize, Marshall Islands, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Federated States of Micronesia, South Sudan, Mauritius, Mauritania, Mozambique, Monaco, Maldives, Morocco, Montenegro, Laos, Latvia, Libya,
Liechtenstein, Liberia, Romania, Luxembourg, Rwanada, and Lesotho.

There are also 25 countries where I have been able to determine that there is at least some form of smaller independent professional wrestling but not on any level that has produced a standout performer significant enough to put on this list. Those countries are: Angola, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Qatar, The Gambia, Cambodia, North Macedonia, Cyprus, Cayman Islands, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Syria, Senegal, Thailand, Namibia, Nicaragua, Nepal, Bahrain, Paraguay, Palestine, Botswana, Bolivia, Honduras, and Myanmar.

And now, here it is, what I have come up with for the remaining nations:

Greece – Jim Londos: Londos was a major attraction in U.S. wrestling in the 1930s and 1940s and legitimately one of the biggest wrestling stars in the nation’s history. However, his native country was Greece, where he was born in 1894.

Ireland – Fit Finlay: Though Finlay is from Northern Ireland, the Irish Olympic team has typically united the entirety of the island, which is why I have him listed here.

Argentina – Pampero Firpo: Firpo did a “wildman” gimmick, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s, which originally lead me to believe that his billed home country of Argentina was a work, but, no, he legitimately hailed from Buenos Aires.

Antigua & Barbuda – S.D. Jones: This is another billed hometown that was so unusual I swore it had to be fake when I was a kid. However, this undercard WWF wrestler was actually from the Caribbean nation.

Israel – Noam Dar: There have not been many pro wrestlers from Israel over the years, and Dar is the one that has gained the most notoriety on an international basis, even though he’s maintained a relatively low profile in the WWE system as of late.

Italy – Bruno Sammartino: If you say the phrase “Italian professional wrestler,” Bruno should be the first name that comes to any fan’s mind. He and his family survived the German occupation of the country in the middle of the 20th century before emigrating to the U.S.

Iraq – Adnan El-Kaissie: Though there are a lot of American wrestlers that have pretended to be foreigners, General Adnan is a rare foreign wrestler in the U.S. who faked being American, as some of his early success was as “Indian” wrestler Billy White Wolf.

Iran – The Iron Sheik: As feckyou2 said in his question, this was an easy choice.

India – Tiger Jeet Singh: Though he later emigrated to Canada and had his most success as a wrestler in Japan, brutal heel Tiger Jeet Singh was not just of Indian decent. He was actually born there as well.

Ukraine – Vladimir Kozlov: You don’t have to be a good wrestler to be the best wrestler from a particular country, assuming the number of wrestlers that country has produced is low. That’s how Kozlov made the cut for Ukraine.

Uruguay – Rob Etcheverria: Better known as Rob Fuego, this native of Uruguay has done enhancement work for major promotions in the U.S. but is better known as a trainer, with Gail Kim being his most notable protege.

Great Britain – Billy Robinson: Any number of wrestlers from the U.K. could have gotten this slot, but Robinson was one of the best all-around in terms of both star power and in-ring performance.

Ecuador – Hugo Savinovich: Though best known as a WWE Spanish-language commentator by most reading this, Savinovich had a long in-ring career before picking up the mic, most notably in Puerto Rico but also in several territories on the U.S. mainland.

Egypt – Spiros Arion: Though ethnically Greek, this former WWWF United States Tag Team Champion with partners like Tony Parisi, Arnold Skaaland, and the aforementioned Bruno Sammartino was born in Cairo.

Estonia – Georg Hackenschmidt: One-half of the biggest wrestling feud of the turn of the 20th Century, Hackenschmidt was born in 1877 in the “Russian Empire,” though the territory in question is now part of Estonia.

El Salvador – Al Copetes: There is currently a form of lucha libre in El Salvador, but it was even bigger in the 1960s and 1970s, with Al Copetes being credited as the big bad heel around whom the classic era revolved.

Australia – Roy Heffernan: As mentioned in my recent column about the best wrestlers from each Australian state, Heffernan was part of the Fabulous Kangaroos, the group that essentially invented modern tag team wrestling.

Austria – Walter: I almost went with Otto Wanz, but then I decided I didn’t want any NXT fans sending me death threats.

Netherlands – Aleister Black: Thanks to the internet and streaming video, wrestlers from all over the world have been able to get exposure to and contracts with mainstream, global promotions that would not have been possible before. Aleister Black is one of the main beneficiaries of that phenomenon.

Ghana – Kofi Kingston: The first WWE Champion born on the continent of Africa, Kofi was going to take these honors for whatever country he happened to hail from.

Guyana – Ezekiel Jackson: Much like Kozlov earlier on the list, you don’t have to be particularly good to qualify for this column. You just have to be the best from our home country.

Canada – Roddy Piper: This guarantees my cause of death will be getting stabbed by a Bret Hart fan.

Cameroon – David Tita: Tita is an independent wrestler who was born in Cameroon but had a run on the Georgia independent scene in the mid-2010s. That’s Georgia as in the U.S. state, not Georgia the country . . . we’ll get to the country later on.

Cuba – Konnan: I suspect this is another surprise for some readers, as many in the U.S. consider Konnan a “Mexican wrestler.” That is where he became a massive star, but he was born in Cuba.

Guatemala – Gata Negra: There have been two luchadoras named Gata Negra from Guatemala, the first being the great aunt of the second. The first was active in the 1970s, while the second is wrestling throughout Latin America today.

Kuwait – Nasser Alruwayeh: There haven’t been many if any other Kuwaiti pro wrestlers, but Alruwayeh was in the WWE Performance Center between 2018 and 2019 after making a name for himself on the crossfit circuit.

Croatia – Nikolai Volkoff: Though he played a Soviet heel for much of his career, Volkoff came from Croatia.

Costa Rica – Nimrod: The unusually-named Nimrod was born in Costa Rica but came to Mexico to break into lucha libre, being trained by lucha legends like Canek and El Oriental before going to work on the independent scene.

Kosovo – Rezar: One half of the Authors of Pain, Rezar may be the only pro wrestler to ever come out of Kosovo, though he may not be the last given that amateur wrestling is quite big in the country.

Colombia – El Jaguar de Colombia: Active mostly in the 1960s and 1970s, Jaguar wrestled in his home country but also came up to the WWWF, where he teamed with Tito Santana, and in Mexico. He also portrayed El Santo (with Santo’s permission) in a series of movies produced in Colombia.

Saudi Arabia – Mansoor: To my knowledge, the current WWE star is the only Saudi professional wrestler of any significance in history.

Samoa – Afa: There are separate Olympic teams for the independent State of Samoa and the territory of American Samoa. Pro wrestling’s Samoans are split between the two, with Afa being the most notable from the independent state.

Russia – “French Angel” Maurice Tillet: Yes, the French Angel was actually Russian. Tillet had a unique physical appearance due to acromegaly, much like Andre the Giant. He parlayed that into a wrestling career from the 1930s through the 1950s. Rumor has it that his appearance inspired the design of Shrek. No kidding.

And that will do it for now. We’ll be back next time with a look at the rest of the world, including countries like the United States, Japan, Mexico, and many, many more.

That will do it for this week’s installment of the column. We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.