Giant wrestler finds fame in India

Whilst browsing BBC's news website as I do every day, I stumbled across a story that was one of the most emailed of the day.

You can read it here.

I was flabbergasted to find that the BBC had posted such an article on its' website. More shocking perhaps was the fact that this public service organisation had actually published an article which was incredibly lazily written and seemingly a regurgitation of a press release.

Khali is referred to as a "Former labourer". Which is about as true and vague as saying that I'm a "former child". What it fails to mention is the fact that Khali is also a former police officer. One who is actually AWOL from his post. One who's still been getting paid his basic police officer salary while he's been earning six figure sums in the US as a wrestler.

The entire article stinks of Khali's publicist being the author. Scraping the barrel of association by claiming he enjoys top-billing along with Hulk Hogan (click here to see the only time they met) and The Rock. Funnily enough, I can't find a video of him and The Rock together because it's never happened.

Having spent a year in Japan, the article claims, Khali had been duped by his agents. I would be inclined to agree. Having watched this match, I think Khali was duped into believing he could wrestle. I've deconstructed this match in an earlier post, so no new jokes there. It is such an awful match that you really need to see it to believe it.

The article says that Khali went to the US from Japan where he was snapped up by WWE soon after. What isn't pointed out is the fact that Khali botched a basic move on a wrestler who then died. The Great Khali killed somebody because of his own in-ring incompetence. He wasn't even that green, having wrestled near-Main Event matches in Japan (though he hides his experience very well in his Japanese matches).

The article posted on the BBC's site angers me. It genuinely does. Not because of the massively kayfabe and story-line-sticking journalism, but because it's as though Khali's agent has actually hacked into the BBC's site and posted a press release there screaming to people that he's looking for acting work. There is absolutely no merit in that journalism whatsoever. In fact, I'd be willing to to say, based on that article, that this blog has more journalistic merit than the BBC.

The long and short of it is that I watch pirated DVDs of Pay-per-Views and spend all day reading rumour sites to get that kind of opinionated fiction, I don't want my licence fee contributing to that kind of self-promotion at all.