Other Aliases: The Ugandan Giant
Biggest Fan: Joe Reardon "The 1st man brave enough to challenge the Undertaker to a casket match. Also, two managers!"
Real Name (Douglas): Troy Shane Martin
Other Aliases: Dean Douglas
Biggest Fan: Joe Timmins
At #93, our experts, statisticians and mathematicians were unable to determine a way to break the tie between Shane Douglas and Kamala. So, from this day forward, the two shall forever be linked. Each of these men will be remembered for different things, no doubt. Kamala was a cannibal from Africa who stood 6'7" tall and weighed 375 pounds. Douglas was a 6'1" ECW champion with no outlandish characters or gimmicks. One similarity they share, though, is that they both got their names from wrestling colleagues born in Tennessee. Jerry Lawler (and Jerry Jarrett) helped Jim Harris develop his character and name, while "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert (with Missy Hyatt) bestowed upon Troy Martin his wrestling moniker, naming him after actor Michael Douglas.
Shane Douglas was trained by Dominic DeNucci, whom you may remember shared the tag team titles with Dino Bravo in the WWF, at the same time Mick Foley was training with him. After his training, Douglas wrestled many big superstars under his real name, including Randy Savage, Terry Taylor, Paul Orndorff and Gilbert. He formed a tag team with Johnny Ace (brother of Road Warrior Animal) called The Dynamic Dudes during his first stint with a major federation, WCW in the late eighties. Douglas bounced back and forth between the WWF and WCW, even appearing at the 1991 Royal Rumble, where he lasted in the ring for more than 25 minutes. In 1993, after ending another stretch with WCW, Douglas altered his career trajectory significantly by signing on with Eastern Championship Wrestling.
While 1993 saw Douglas beginning a new career, putting the "Extreme" in ECW, Kamala was changing professions as well: he began working as a professional truck driver and songwriter. Jim Harris has written over a hundred songs, many of them dealing with his dissatisfaction with the wrestling industry. He felt that during his many brief stints in WCW and the WWF, he was unfairly compensated for his efforts. Despite feuding with some of the biggest names in wrestling, Andre the Giant, Jake the Snake, Hulk Hogan and the Undertaker, most of the time Kamala was paid just a fraction of his opponent's wages for the very same match. Kamala didn't appear in the ring with any amount of regularity, from that point on, but continues to pop up in the WWE and other independent federations when the time is right for Harris's unique blend of belly-slapping, backhand chopping and hilarity.
Shane Douglas and Kamala are like professional wrestling journeymen. They both seemed to bounce around from promotion to promotion, Kamala providing nearly four-hundred pounds of comic relief and Douglas showcasing the extreme grappling skills that he used to help launch ECW to the top. Which makes for a better superstar? That's something that not even our experts could decide.
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