Ranking The Top 20 Best Characters, Gimmicks In Wrestling

20. Sami Calliham: Impact, NJPW, Basically Everywhere

Who doesn’t love an intense promo? I mean, duh, it sure beats listening to someone robotically read rehearsed retorts to an apathetic crowd.

When you listen to Sami Callihan’s apologetic promos, you can’t help but feel the rage pulsating through his vocal cords as he literally spits out vitriol directed towards his competitors. Callihan has been a star in the business for years, busting his butt in CZW, Impact, NJPW, WWE, PWG, and Lucha Underground during his career.

Callihan, who once went by the moniker “Cannonball Sami”, was told to stop kissing wrestlers in the ring, which was one of his ways of getting in the heads of opposing wrestlers.

So what is Callihan’s character, exactly? He’s basically just a crazy, disturbed individual who yells at the top of his lungs, screws with his competitors, and antagonizes himself to the higher-ups of the companies he works at. Callihan gets compared to Dean Ambrose’s Indy character (Jon Moxley), but he is probably even more intense promo-wise.

Don’t believe me? Listen to this (NSFW language warning!) incredible diatribe, which includes burials of Lucha Underground and NXT, as well as the exclamation, “Independent wrestling runs through me!”

As Jeremiah Crane in Lucha Underground, he was a maniac who enjoyed nothing more than “getting paid for hurting people” and who didn’t mind getting hurt himself. Pretty bad-ass, huh?

Ever want a convincing anti-authority heel? Callihan is your man. And to think Triple H let this guy slip through his grasp…