10 best heels in wrestling history

#8 The Great Muta

Keiji Mutoh's most beloved character was the Great Muta

Keiji Mutoh was a military commander and a martial arts black belt before taking professional wrestling as his career.

He went through a variety of gimmicks over the years and almost all of them involving ninjas. It wasn't until he debuted for the NWA as Great Muta that he finally found his mojo.

The Great Muta was, in many ways, the NWA's version of the Monster Heel trope. Muta was a bad guy, but he was a bad guy who was very, very good at wrestling. Muta's fisherman suplex, innovative submission holds, and martial arts strikes combined with his face paint and mysticism created an unstoppable force that chewed through the NWA's mid and upper card, even defeating the legendary Sting.

After a run with the Television Title captured from the Stinger, Great Muta headed back to Japan, where he would largely wrestle as the face. From time to time he would bring out the Great Muta to the ring and hit his foes with his trademark venom spit and moonsault.

Here's Muta using his mist on the unwary.