Ok there's a lot of talk about monsters ITT.
One of my all time favorite monsters was brought into being by Jimmy Hart and Jerry Lawler in the mid 80s. His name was Lord Humongous, "The Original Road Warrior" (obviously playing against the LOD who were very popular in nearby territories at the time).
What set Humongous apart from any other wrestler up till his debut is that he borrowed heavily from a character in a well known movie.. with some modifications. He was huge, strong, and wore two masks -- a hockey mask over a flesh colored under-mask to further protect his identity.
He came along around April 1984 as part of Jimmy Hart's First Family. He beat the living hell out of jobbers and eventually crushed Lawler to win the CWA championship. He would continue to pummel Lawler for the next few weeks (along with studio jobbers).
Humongous' finisher was a version of the Cobra Clutch called the Shananumaki. He applied the choke hold while simultaneously lifting his opponent off the mat and sometimes shaking them violently. It looked absolutely brutal.
Mike Stark played the initial character in Memphis 1984 (original promo from 1984). Lawler eventually won the CWA title back after he (Jerry) started wearing the same style hockey mask in their matches. Toward the end of their feud, Ox Baker and Jim (the Anvil) Neidhart would join forces with Lord Humongous.
Stark went on to do other things, so the exact same gimmick was picked up by Jeff van Camp and used around Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama (promo 1, promo 2, promo 3, promo 4, footage with Austin Idol and Ron Fuller), and eventually Texas as part of Mid South wrestling. Van Camp's version was pretty much identical down to the costume and finisher. Camp was taller but not quite as muscular as Mike Stark (former football player and weight training coach).
The second version of Lord Humongous would be partly managed by Percival Pringle. He had some great matches with Dick Murdoch(great application of the shananumaki) and a phenomenal feud with Jake Roberts. This version of Humongous was a tweener, and eventually disappeared from Mid South.
In the late 80's Sid picked up the Humongous gimmick in Memphis, but with modifications. First, he was a heel. Second, there was less emphasis on looking like the character from Mad Max's The Road Warrior.. It was basically Sid with black trunks and a white hockey mask. No attempt was made to cover his hair. Eventually Sid moved on and the gimmick was done for in Memphis, for good.
A few other wrestlers have tried the Humongous gimmick but each new version had less in common with the previous. John Garvin played the character for a while. Sid Eudy's son took the name on but looked every bit like Jason from Friday the 13th (as a side note, there was also a Jason gimmick in Memphis during the mid 80's). A version of Humongous showed up in IWA for a time. Someone picked up the gimmick this year down in Florida and looks a lot like the very first version.
When Braun first appeared a couple weeks ago he gave me a very similar vibe to when I first saw the original 1984 Lord Humongous 31 years ago. His finisher is very similar (though obviously WWE'ed down for the children).