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#6 "The Lethal Weapon" Steve Blackman
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Karate Dudes don't necessarily make for great professional wrestlers. Don't get me wrong, Steve Blackman was a really good professional wrestler. But, he was a great Karate Dude. Like, a guy you would not want to run afoul of in real life. In fact, Chuck Norris had to apologize to Steve Blackman, because it turns out all those stupid joke "facts" about Norris were actually about Blackman.
That last part isn't true. But it should be.
"Let me tell you something. That whole thing with that Brawl For All, [Blackman] was dead serious about hurting people. I mean, this guy, I kid you not, Steve, he isn't anybody to mess with... I wasn't about to push him over that edge where I was going to come up missing because I'm serious - Steve is no joke. I'd put him in the same class as Meng, basically. Steve's dangerous. He's dangerous. I talked to him actually probably about five [or] six weeks ago for the first time in years. [Steve]'s a good dude, funny, one of the nicest people you'd ever meet, but he's just somebody that's dangerous. He's flat dangerous." - Hardcore Holly, The Steve Austin Show
However, that doesn't always translate to a great entertaining ring presence. Steve, for all his great qualities (numerous backstage stories have painted him as a genuinely nice and funny guy out of the ring), really didn't have the charisma needed to be a, you know, "sports entertainer."
The cool thing about Blackman, though, is that he understood this, and use it to his advantage. He played up his "legit tough guy" reputation, and played that up for laughs when he was put into situations that clashed with that. His Head Cheese team with Al Snow is a prime example of that.
It's also inspiring how he came back from two years of suffering from malaria after a wrestling trip to South Africa to reach the level of success he did.
Steve Blackman might not have been a spectacular pro wrestler, but he was - and is - a great guy and an amazing Karate Dude.
