June 30, 2008 - Sure, the announcement of six new superstars for Smackdown vs. Raw 09 is exciting. Finding out the details of who will be in THQ's next wrestling game is cool and all, but what you won't find in SvR09 are fake wrestlers. Heroes like Kin Corn Karn and King Slender may sound like names of MC's now, but they were fake grappling legends back in the day.

To properly honor those fake heroes of wrestling, we've prepared a list that details the Ten Best Fake Wrestlers in Videogame History. Our list is based solely on awesomeness; neither technical prowess, athleticism, nor build enters into the equation. We start, then, with the list's only tag team, whose name has gone on to slightly larger stardom in another arena.

10. The Strong Bads (Tag Team Wrestling)

The Strong Bads are in there somewhere. We're not exactly sure where.


Tag Team Wrestling is almost universally reviled as one of the NES' worst games, and is alternately accredited to the work of Technos Japan, Data East, and Nintendo saboteurs. In Tag Team Wrestling, you compete in a tag team match as either the Ricky Fighters or the Strong Bads, presumably the babyfaces and heels. Neither does anything in the way of recognizable wrestling moves, although when each player chooses to tag his opponent, the word "TOUCH" appears on the screen. Actually, that doesn't mitigate that lack of moves at all. The Strong Bads have become slightly more famous as the name of a certain Homestar Runner villain and, soon, the title of a new video game.



9. Kinnikuman (M.U.S.C.L.E.)

Kinnikuman hides in the corner.


The protagonist of the eponymous manga, Suguru Kinniku served as the hero in this 1985 NES release as well. While M.U.S.C.L.E. is arguably better known in the US for its action figures, this game offers gameplay in a similar vein to Tag Team Wrestling, but allows you to choose eight wrestlers. The game prominently featured finishers for the first time in a wrestling video game, with Kinnikuman's finisher being the aptly-put Kinniku Driver. Japanese "fighting opera" HUSTLE has returned the "-man" prefix to fighters in the last several years, with Tetushiro Kuroda appearing as "Kurodaman", MMA fighter Kevin Randleman competing as "Randleman", and Mark Coleman as "Coleman".

Another neat trivia note? Kinniku's Kinniku Driver would eventually become known as the "Kinniku Buster", which would then become the "Muscle Buster" and eventually became one of the finishing moves of TNA World Heavyweight Champion Samoa Joe.



8. Biff Slamkovich (Saturday Night Slam Masters)

Presumably not the same Biff who appeared in Road Rash as a yuppy biker.


In the Japanese version of the game, Slamkovich is known as Aleksey Zalazof, which reveals both the heritage of his character and his link to a faintly familiar fighter who appears elsewhere on this list from another Capcom game. Slamkovich studied underneath Mike Haggar, where he learned to take men and "break them like icicles in summer". Speaking of, actually…


7. Mayor Mike Haggar (Final Fight/SNSM)

We'd vote for him.


In the original Final Fight, Haggar was elected mayor after becoming a Street Fighter champion, only for his daughter to become kidnapped. (Chuck Liddell might never want to run for mayor with that in mind.) Haggar appears in the sequels to Final Fight, but also appeared in Saturday Night Slam Masters and its two sequels, Muscle Bomber Duo and Ring of Destructions: Slam Masters II. He used a piledriver as a damaging maneuver in most places, a move which one of his rivals stole and added dramatic force to. We know him as Victor. You know him as…



6. Zangief (Street Fighter)

Badass.


Zangief is seen as a colleague of Slamkovich, by virtue of the fact that Slamkovich refers to Zangief as his comrade and complains about how "they" are all cheaters when he's defeated. If you're reading this, you're likely familiar with Zangief as a character in the millions of Street Fighter games that came out. What you may not know is that Zangief was based on a real-life Victor Zangief, a Russian amateur wrestler who appeared in New Japan Pro Wrestling and very briefly in WCW.