biography of omos in wwe

• Living people
• Male wrestlers
• Nigerian wrestlers
• WWE NXT alumni
• World Wrestling Entertainment current roster
• WWE Tag Team Champions
• View history
• 1 Early life
• 2.1.1 NXT (2019-2020)
• 2.1.2 Raw brand (2020-present)
• 3 In wrestling
• 4 Championships and accomplishments
• 5 External links

Omogbehin was born in Lagos, Nigeria. After his family migrated to the United States , Omogbehin attended and graduated from Atlantic Shores Christian Academy in Chesapeake, Virginia . Through high school, he played basketball and continued in the sport after choosing to attend University of South Florida (USF) from 2012 - 2014 . While in USF, Omogbehin played center position. While in USF, Omogbehin claims to have met basketball legend Hakeem Olajuwon during the USF Bull's team trip to Houston, Texas during 2014. Omogbehin also played basketball at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland after transferring from USF. He played center position for the Morgan State Bears from 2014 - 2015 .

Professional wrestling career

World wrestling entertainment (2018-present).

It was reported October 17 , 2018 , that WWE signed a total of seven athletes to train at the WWE Performance Center . Among them, Omogbehin was signed.

NXT (2019-2020)

In 2019 , Omogbehin made his in-ring debut during a July 18 house show , defeating team 3.0 in a Two-On-One Handicap match . He returned the following month during a August 24 house show winning a 15-Man battle royal match. During the October house shows , Omogbehin was victorious in singles matches defeating competitors Cezar Bononi and Kona Reeves . He also wrestled his first tag match teaming with fellow recruits Denzel Dejournette & Tehuti Miles , losing to The Forgotten Sons . Omogbehin returned in 2020 during a February 15 house show to team with Bronson Reed to defeat Aleksandar Jaksic & Tehuti Miles .

Raw brand (2020-present)

In 2020, during the June 15, episode of Monday Night RAW , Omogbehin debuted as a surprise member of Akira Tozawa 's ninja faction. Appearing as the tallest member of the faction, Omogbehin was referred to as the "Big Ninja" as he stood at ringside during team Tozawa's tag match against The Street Profits and The Viking Raiders . Big Ninja was also confronted by Big Show during the post-match brawl between the teams.

In 2021 he was renamed Omos and made his pay-per-view debut at WrestleMania 37 as the tag partner of AJ Styles . Together they won the WWE Raw Tag Team Championship after defeating The New Day Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods . They successfully defeated The New Day in a title rematch on the May 3 episode of Monday Night RAW . They remained Tag Team Champions until SummerSlam 2021 where they lost the titles to RK-Bro ( Randy Orton & Riddle ). Omos and Styles pursued a rivalry with RK-Bro that continued on Monday Night RAW episodes as well as through the house shows, with RK-Bro successfully defending the Tag Team titles during the house shows. Omos enjoyed singular success with a victory over RK-Bro member Riddle on the October 11 episode of Monday Night RAW and later at the Survivor Series winning a battle royal match .

In wrestling

• Two-handed Chokeslam
• Signature moves
• Pendulum backbreaker
• " Phenomenal " by CFO$ (Used while teaming with A.J. Styles )
• "Shake the Ground" by def rebel ( WWE ; August 2, 2021 - Present)

Championships and accomplishments

• WWE Raw Tag Team Championship ( 1 time ) with A.J. Styles

External links

• UFS Bulls Team Profile
• Morgan State Bears Team Profile
• 1 Veronica Lane
• 2 Samantha Irvin
• 3 List of members of the WWE Hall of Fame

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Meet Omos, a Former College Basketball Player Turned WrestleMania's New Superstar

• Author: Madeline Coleman

Did you know WrestleMania 37 will feature the in-ring debut of a wrestler who's over 7-feet tall, AJ Styles’s bodyguard and a former college basketball player? 

Meet Omos, whose real name is Jordan Omogbehin. 

Omos is a former college basketball player and AJ Styles' bodyguard. 

The WWE giant will partner with Styles to take on The New Day for the Raw tag team championship . 

Born in Nigeria, Omogbehin competed as a center for the University of South Florida and Morgan State University from 2012–15. He played a total of 189 minutes in 43 games across three seasons. 

He signed with WWE in 2018, but didn't make his NXT in-ring debut until 2019 when he defeated team 3.0 in a two-on-one handicap match. Omos has wrestled a handful of house show matches while in NXT, and has been Styles’s bodyguard for several months now. 

The 7' 3" giant was introduced as Omos at Survivor Series last year, where he was ringside while Styles captained Team Raw to a win over SmackDown in the traditional men's 5-on-5 elimination match. 

"‘It’s funny, people just see what he does on TV, so they see him the one time a week on TV or whatever," Triple H told Metro.co.uk  on Monday. "They don’t see him in the gym, still at the PC, they don’t see him in the ring at the PC. They don’t see him training every day, still, to be something special. He’s putting in the effort. He just really is one of those hard working, hard work ethic people that is putting in the effort to really be good at this, and I think he will be."

Styles has won every WWE title except the tag team championship, the only thing standing in the way of being dubbed a Grand Slam Champion. The matchup will take place on the first night of WrestleMania 37 (Saturday, April 10) .

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‘He needed a miracle’: How Omos’ odyssey from college basketball enigma to WWE champion saved his life

The show opens with a wide shot of Raymond James Stadium and its roaring, rain-blessed crowd. Rows of men and women stretch across a massive stage, at attention and smiling behind the guy in the suit who’s about to start the proceedings. Jordan Omogbehin stands in the third row, a few feet beyond the left shoulder of the man on the microphone, taking one deep breath after another as WrestleMania begins. As ever, you can’t miss him.

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He’s been especially nervous for the last day or so. Omogbehin knows what’s coming, of course. In a couple hours, he’ll stand in the ring with his arms outstretched and a partner sitting atop his shoulders and screaming, holding up the championship belts they’d just won — and he’s been in the business for all of four years. He’s lived a few lives before this: a kid from Lagos content to sketch in the candlelight, a hopeful teenage immigrant, a basketball player at a college not far from here, a young man saved from blindness or worse by damn near sheer luck, an aimless 20-something behemoth tugging at any thread that might drag him into a clear future.

This is better. This makes sense.

Omogbehin looks out at 25,000-plus faces he knows are there mostly by the sound they’re making. He finally understands what’s going through the dozens of heads around him, below the cloud deck. He’s bigger than any of them — officially 7-3 and 350-ish pounds, though his employers tack on an inch and a few dozen pounds to make him seem even more inexplicable — but the moment shrinks him until he realizes it’s why all of these people on stage do this, and that it’s the only thing he can see himself doing from this instant forward. The giant known to the world as “Omos” is steps away from Vince McMahon at WrestleMania and he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be, only a few miles from where he nearly lost everything.

Wrestlers, when it comes down to it, are storytellers. So the resonant voice on the other end of the line has a question.

“Where do you want to start?” Omogbehin asks.

Electricity in Lagos, Nigeria, can be notoriously unreliable. Outages are common. So when the sun went down, and when the Ketu neighborhood’s power grid followed suit, Jordan Omogbehin found a lantern or a candle and continued to draw or paint or sketch as everything else faded into darkness. “My goal was, OK, there has never been an African with the skill of a Van Gogh,” he says. “That is what I was trying to reach. I’m going to be the African Van Gogh. When it’s all said and done, I’m going to be the greatest artist in the world. People are going to come here to visit me and come to my galleries and buy my art. That was my life’s purpose.”

This purpose left precious little space for sports, or pretty much anything else, not that Omogbehin had any interest anyway. (Whenever his mother took him shopping or asked for gift suggestions, the wish list was always the same: art supplies.) But every kid needs something to do. Omogbehin’s something was tennis. His aunt worked for the Nigerian Sports Association and arranged for Omogbehin and his younger brother to attend tennis camps during the summers, just to keep them busy. This was fine until it crashed headlong into the inevitabilities brought about by a preteen growth spurt and suggestions from the instructors that a 12-year-old who’s 6-foot-2 probably needs to head to a basketball court.

The following summer, he was duly directed there: Masai Ujiri, who grew up in Nigeria and is currently the Toronto Raptors’ president, had founded an organization called Giants of Africa that aimed to use basketball as a way to enrich the lives of the youth in his home country. There was a camp targeted at promising young players with the potential to play college basketball in America. Omogbehin didn’t expect to make the cut; most of the participants had played the previous year, and no one knew anything about him. But he lined up for an interview anyway.

When his turn came, he met with Ujiri and former NBA agent Ugo Udezue, who now runs the African Basketball League. Omogbehin told them his name. He said he was now 6-7, at last check. Then the organizers asked how old he was.

“Thirteen,” Omogbehin said.

“You’re lying,” they said.

He pointed them toward his aunt for confirmation and, in an instant, Omogbehin was the youngest talent in a camp filled with aspiring, polished 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds. Still, the general camp ethos worked for a would-be artist; basketball, the participants were told, was a means to the end of getting an education and earning a living, in whatever form that took. That much reverberated with him. As he continued to grow exponentially, and as he improved at a game he never thought he’d play, he began to change his mind. Omogbehin soon fancied himself a future star, someone destined to rise to superstardom on the level of Jordan or Shaq. He was connected with various American high schools and received a scholarship to play at vaunted Montrose Christian in Maryland, a national powerhouse that produced Kevin Durant and others.

In January of 2008, he boarded a flight bound for Atlanta with one winter coat and $1,000 stuffed in a sock. “No wallet or anything,” Omogbehin says. He missed his connection at Hartsfield and effectively wound up stranded in Atlanta for a night. He didn’t even know how to work a pay phone. But he eventually connected with the people at Montrose, who arranged a hotel. With a night to kill, he did what any teenager with cash on hand might be inclined to do: He went shopping for an iPod.

The store clerk informed him that they were sold out of iPods, but he might have something else of interest. This is how Jordan Omogbehin, on his first day in America, became the proud owner of a Zune. “I’ve never really had anything nice in my life,” he says now. “I’m like, gimme that. I’ll take it. Without even asking for the price. I just wanted something I never had before.”

He caught a flight and a cab the next day to Montrose. Omogbehin’s arrival was otherwise not immediately felicitous from a basketball performance standpoint; he was still carpaccio-raw as a player, he had hardly any impact on the floor in two years there and fatefully bounced to two other schools before his prep career was over. But teenagers who are 7 feet tall are bound to catch someone’s eye, and in this case the eyes belonged to Doug Martin, who worked with the D.C. Blue Devils grassroots program at the time. “Hands-down, the biggest human being you’ve ever laid eyes on, just sitting on the end of the bench,” Martin says now. He brought Omogbehin aboard for the summer.

The skill set, again, was not refined. Never mind scoring or getting his timing right for blocking shots; Omogbehin at first couldn’t keep up well enough to get in position to score or swat an attempt at the rim. “He couldn’t stop his momentum,” Martin says. “He had to like banana-cut in a semi-circle to come back the other way, and by the time he started to head back, the team is going the other way. It was a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit. You’re looking at it and you go, this has to be like a Harlem Globetrotters thing, because it looked so bizarre.”

But Omogbehin became fast friends with Martin’s son, and it wasn’t long before Omogbehin began peppering Martin with calls about what he was doing on the weekend, and could he come by the house to hang out. This evolved fairly quickly into Martin housing what was essentially a live-in nephew. Omogbehin had a bedroom in the basement where he’d fall asleep watching “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons.” He’d stretch the household food budget nearly beyond capacity. When Martin and his then-girlfriend had rotisserie chicken on the menu for dinner, they picked up two whole chickens at the store: one for them, good for dinner and leftovers the next day. And one entire chicken for Omogbehin, all by himself. “Whatever you can imagine, imagine it,” Martin says. “That dude was a professional eater.”

Omogbehin’s relative basketball naivete worked in his favor, to some degree. His confidence grew because he didn’t know any better; for years, he’d brag to Martin about winning an MVP award at a weekend tournament with players “who couldn’t play dead” in the grassroots coach’s estimation, and summertime circuit matchups with future pros like Josh Smith and Loren Meyer were victories in the sense that Omogbehin managed to not get dominated while grabbing a couple buckets and boards. He’d continued to evolve into a bet worth taking.

On Feb. 3, 2010, a surging South Florida team traveled to Georgetown and upset the then-No. 7 Hoyas. Eric Skeeters, one of South Florida’s assistant coaches, remained in the area to recruit. The very next night, Skeeters ventured to Maryland to scout a guard named Brandon Young, when the sight of the center for opposing National Christian Academy caught his eye. Skeeters still can replay the sequence in his mind: Omogbehin running the floor and tomahawk-dunking a drop-off pass with such ferocity that Skeeters feared the entire basketball apparatus might fall out of the ceiling. “He dunked it,” Skeeters says, “they went back down on defense, came back down on offense and the basket was still shaking. I’m like, he’s a monster.”

In that moment, this was true, in the best way possible. “This is like peak Jordan — healthy, no injuries,” Omogbehin recalls. “I’m thinking I’m Baby Shaq, dunking everything. I’m at this game going crazy, showing out.” After the game, Skeeters caught up with Martin. Naturally, Omogbehin was in close proximity. You don’t know me now, Skeeters told the massive young center, but you will. Skeeters later brought then-South Florida coach Stan Heath to a gym to evaluate Omogbehin, and the decision to take a gamble on a behemoth was finalized; since the Bulls were still a member of the Big East at the time, loading up on big bodies was a priority. Omogbehin thus had an offer to play college basketball at South Florida. “We knew he had a ways to go, but what happens if he can lose a little weight, becomes a little bit more mobile?” Heath says now. “He’s a force. Nobody’s probably seen a guy like this before.”

Coincidentally, Omogbehin had his mind set on Georgetown, but some of his latent basketball innocence intervened, fatefully. During the April AAU window of his junior season, two months after Skeeters first set eyes on him, Omogbehin decided to play an event with National Christian instead of his club team. He tweaked his knee in the first game on Friday night. He played through the pain during a Saturday morning game. In fact, he’d torn his ACL, and as the rehab process grew increasingly onerous, his Georgetown dream evaporated.

He arrived in Tampa in the summer of 2011, where a snafu with his I-20 form — essentially a certificate of eligibility — nearly undercut his college career before it began. At the last minute, the paperwork came through. Jordan Omogbehin was a college basketball player. “He needed a miracle,” Skeeters says now. It wasn’t the last one he needed, nor the last one he’d get.

Omogbehin’s Division I college basketball career produced the following totals, accrued at two different stops across four seasons: 43 appearances, 189 minutes played, 23 points scored, 42 rebounds grabbed, 10 shots blocked. He was the project left forever unfinished. It wasn’t for lack of trying or humility or willingness to put in the work; Omogbehin might not have been a lot of things for South Florida, but he was a presence.

“A smile on his face every day,” Heath says.

“Everybody wanted to talk to him,” says Steve Roccaforte, a South Florida assistant coach at the time. “He was just a good dude to be around. Zero maintenance.”

“He’s like Shrek,” Skeeters says. “The biggest, nicest kid you’ll ever want to meet. Lights up the room.”

Omogbehin babysat Skeeters’ children; Skeeters’ son brought Omogbehin in for his kindergarten Show and Tell exercise, and Omogbehin happily talked to the class about art and basketball.

He somewhat accidentally participated in what might be one of the great South Florida men’s basketball pickup game legends of all time: As the story goes, the physicality between Omogbehin and rugged forward Victor Rudd crescendoed with Rudd landing a full-force punch flush on Omogbehin’s jaw. Omogbehin stared at the 6-9, 230-pound Rudd. Then looked back to the rest of his teammates.

“Can we play now?” Omogbehin asked.

“Like he ate that punch — chewed it up and spit it out and was like, ‘Did a fly just hit me?’” Skeeters says. “‘Did you just punch me? Can we play basketball now, or is there something you want to do? Because I think you tried to punch me, but I didn’t really feel it.’”

Legendary gym tales aside, the story of the end of Jordan Omogbehin, basketball player, is an unfortunately familiar one. The end-to-end speed of Division I competition proved too much to handle, and, ultimately, the frame that had given him so much failed him. First, within a couple months of arriving at South Florida, he again tore his ACL playing pickup with pro players idling during the 2011 NBA lockout. Omogbehin likely was bound for a redshirt season anyway, but this guaranteed a year of inaction. It also might have been the reason he can have a conversation about it today.

Among the crowd at South Florida’s home game against Cincinnati on Feb. 26, 2012, was a doctor named David Vesely, a Tampa-area endocrinologist. Vesely noticed the sheer outrageousness of Omogbehin’s size. He saw a pronounced jawline. After the game, Vesely met Omogbehin and shook his massive hand. It wasn’t overwhelming evidence, these interactions from near and far. And it certainly didn’t constitute a medical examination. But Veseley’s suspicions pooled. He returned home and logged into his email account.

On Monday, Heath called Omogbehin into his office and showed him the email sent by Vesely over the weekend, addressed to Heath and South Florida’s president and athletic director. Because of Omogbehin’s size, because of his unusual features, Vesely suggested the player be examined for a possible tumor in or near his pituitary gland.

Omogbehin had an MRI that afternoon. There it was: a tiny spot in a very large human, a revelatory speck, positioned just so to explain why Jordan Omogbehin was who he was. “That puts a lot of things into perspective now, about how large I am,” he says with a laugh. “I had the super-booster.”

The super-booster required him to undergo brain surgery as soon as possible. Doctors told Omogbehin the tumor was encroaching on his optic nerve. They said he was on the verge of going blind in two months. “Mentally, the kid was always positive, optimistic,” Skeeters says, “but he was devastated.”

The first surgery occurred that week. The following year Omogbehin had another brain surgery to clean up any residual issues. He’d preserved his life, as a matter of fate or luck or whatever. He remained the gentle giant for whom everyone at South Florida rooted, even when they could see how the story was unfolding.

It nevertheless doomed his basketball fortunes. The toll exacted was too much. He remained on the roster at South Florida, until a coaching change prompted a move to Morgan State as a grad transfer. He used one final year of eligibility at Division II Kings University, picking up a master’s degree along the way. Omogbehin kept playing, but only as an outline, a profile with empty space between the lines. “The moment they go in there, it literally screws up your whole hormonal system,” he says. “My body never quite felt the same. My confidence was low. I never really could recoup. I always felt like I was a shadow of myself.”

He was left to wander. He spent time with the Dream Vision basketball program in San Diego, which proved pivotal in restoring him physically — “The whole thing was, we’re going to help you conquer your fears; you’re going to trust your legs, you’re going to trust your body,” Omogbehin says — though it did not rekindle his basketball prospects. He wondered about playing overseas, but he had no real hoops credentials, and the potential for immigration issues to maroon him overseas was too real a threat. He attended a job convention held by the U.S. military in Tampa. He and his girlfriend had moved into her parents’ house; she studying to get into medical school, he somewhat aimlessly flailing about. “She’s trying to figure out her life, I’m trying to figure out my life, we’re both depressed, we’re sad as hell,” Omogbehin says.

Over lunch one day, a friend’s suggestion brought Omogbehin back to college, to a conversation not long before he transferred schools for the first time. A football player named Antoine Pozniak told Omogbehin about a meeting he had scheduled for the next day. He was connecting with Steve Keirn, a local wrestling promoter, and he suggested Omogbehin come along. Never one to turn down a free meal, Omogbehin happily agreed. Kern’s reaction to the mass of humanity at the table mirrored that of the Giants of Africa officials when 13-year-old Jordan Omogbehin appeared before them. “If you come do wrestling,” Kern told him, “you’re going to be so fulfilled, and you’re going to be a millionaire in four years.” Kern even connected Omogbehin with Canyon Ceman, the director of talent development for the WWE, but the idea nevertheless came and went. Omogbehin was dead set on finding satisfaction and happiness in the only places he’d ever known to look.

Now, years later, Omogbehin’s friend was asking about that day. Why not reach out to Ceman? Why not see if that path was still available? His friend’s reasoning was fairly iron-clad: It can’t get any worse than where you are right now.

Omogbehin searched through his email inbox. He sent Ceman another message, saying he’d like to give pro wrestling a crack, if there was still a chance pro wrestling was interested in him.

A week passed without a reply. Omogbehin and his girlfriend were dog-sitting for a friend on a Sunday night when an email landed. Ceman asked if Omogbehn was busy. He was not. So Ceman called. He wondered what Omogbehin had on his schedule for Tuesday. The answer, of course, was absolutely nothing.

“Can you come to Orlando?” Ceman asked.

The WWE Performance Center in Orlando opened in 2013. The 26,000-square-foot complex is where the organization’s talent goes to train before they make appearances on various rosters. Sometimes they’re experienced wrestlers seeking a bigger break. Sometimes they’re 7-foot-3, 350-pound former college basketball players without a moment of experience in the business.

And so Jordan Omogbehin dove headlong into a new life. He was there for a tryout on Tuesday followed by a visit to the Wednesday taping of WWE NXT — essentially the talent feeder program for the roster comprising wrestlers for WWE’s core “Raw” and “SmackDown” broadcasts. He didn’t even know how to get into a ring, at first trying to snake his body through the ropes before realizing he could just step over the top. But there was no easing into it.

“During my basketball career, even in practice, it was, don’t be too tough, don’t be too tough,” Omogbehin says. “I always felt caged. I’m not trying to hurt you anyway, but in the spirit of athletics, I’m going to be physical. I can’t help it. Came to my tryout and it was, give me more. We want more. Let it out. It just felt like someone came, opened the cage, took off the leash and said, ‘Fly.’ I had never felt anything like that in my life. It felt so liberating. For the first time, I felt like myself.”

At the end of it, he was pulled aside by Ceman and Matt Bloom, the head coach of the Performance Center. “If you want a job,” Bloom told him, “you have a job.”

He told Omogbehin to think about it. But the experience already had cracked open a vast new realm. The next day Omogbehin attended the rehearsal for the NXT taping and came face-to-face with Paul Levesque, aka Triple H, the WWE’s Executive Vice President of Global Talent Strategy & Development and the founder of NXT. Levesque greeted Omogbehin warmly and reiterated the offer. As Omogbehin and Ceman took in the show, Ceman’s phone buzzed with a text message notification. He opened it and showed it to Omogbehin. It was Levesque. “What does the big man think?” he’d asked.

The big man didn’t need to think any longer. “I’m in,” Omogbehin replied. An October 2018 release from the company listed Omogbehin as one of the new additions to the Performance Center, complete with a head-and-torso shot of Omogbehin wearing a gray WWE-issued training shirt. He’d found a purpose, or purpose had found him.

Professional wrestling has long drawn from the amateur ranks, football and, more recently, the mixed martial arts scene to fill its rosters. A transition for ex-basketball players is rarer. While stars such as Kevin Nash (Tennessee) and Mark “The Undertaker “ Calaway (Texas Wesleyan) played at the college level before embarking on Hall of Fame wrestling careers, it’s not a terribly long list. Which makes sense. It’s not often a human at or near 7 feet packs on enough bulk to fit a professional wrestling profile while also maintaining enough athleticism to perform acrobatics with another, much smaller human, to say nothing of having sufficient personality and charisma for the more theatrical demands of the job.

And yet at this intersection, we find Jordan Omogbehin.

Omogbehin was athletic enough to earn a scholarship to a Division I program. He was strong enough to break a backboard once at South Florida. He was a player who operated well in the relatively confined space of the lane. He was a guy who was willing to work, to listen and to learn. He was someone who knew what it meant to fail, and he knew failure didn’t always end the story. “I don’t know any professional wrestlers,” Martin says. “But I can’t imagine there’s anybody more passionate about what he’s doing today than Big Jordan.”

Omogbehin’s body, in the end, couldn’t hold up the bargain basketball demanded of it. But moving fluidly in a 20-by-20-foot wrestling ring? Using his natural strength instead of reining it in, lest someone get hurt? Simply being there, literal heads and shoulders above everyone else, looking like the problem you run away from instead of daring to solve? That made sense. That was something he was built to do.

“Basketball had a lot to do with that — how to move your feet, how to not get flat-footed, how to bang on the low position and not only deliver, but to receive,” says Bloom. “I’m sure there were guys that realized, I gotta hit this guy pretty hard to move him. People probably work a little harder against a 7-4 guy. So he knows how to take contact. He knows how to give contact, and safely, dare I say, because he didn’t want to foul out.”

There’s a simple explanation for his uncommonly rapid ascent from utter greenhorn to main-roster talent in less than four years. “Listen, when you see somebody his size, that turns heads the way he does, you accelerate him a little quicker than the next guy,” Bloom says. “Because someone like him doesn’t come around very often.” This is true. But wrestling is not a thing merely happening to Omogbehin. He is living and breathing it and absorbing its essence. He has gleefully and gratefully taken notes from Nash and Calaway after they watched video of his performances and offered pointers. (“I’m not a person to get very starstruck,” Omogbehin says. “I’ve never felt more starstruck than when I met The Undertaker.”) Ask about veterans of the business who have gone out of their way to help him, and Omogbehin can hardly stop himself, dropping names like Randy Orton and Sheamus and Adam Pearce and going on and on from there. Every single coach in the Performance Center has played a vital role in Jordan Omogbehin’s rise, according to Jordan Omogbehin.

He might have seen a handful of wrestling matches, ever, before he arrived in Orlando. But what else is new: He knows what it means to grow. “Do more with less,” Omogbehin says. “That’s been the thing. I don’t need to go out here and do everything. Do more with less. I need just to be powerful. Powerful and athletic.”

And yet the greatest growth may be happening now. After relatively minor television arcs as a gigantic ninja henchman (seriously) and a doorman for an underground “Fight Club” of sorts concluded, Omogbehin idled as he waited for WWE’s writers to find a storyline for him. He arrived for a workout one Thursday last fall to see he’d been booked for the upcoming “Raw” broadcast three days later. On a follow-up call, he was told he’d be working with AJ Styles, a 20-year veteran and one of the best and most decorated performers in the business. Also? Omogbehin needed to bring a suit to the show.

After a somewhat frenzied search of the greater Orlando area for a suit to fit a 7-foot-3 person — and the decision to go with a turtleneck underneath instead of a dress shirt — Omogbehin showed up for “Raw” on the following Monday. He put on the suit and received the approval of WWE chairman Vince McMahon himself. He’d settled on the ring name of “Omos,” a family surname before his father changed it to Omogbehin, as a way to allude to his Nigerian heritage without resorting to stereotypes. And out they walked that night, AJ Styles and Omos, the villainous star and his hired muscle.

Optically, there was no mistaking the purpose of pairing the 5-foot-11 Styles with Omogbehin. What could frame Omos as a dangerous, menacing behemoth better than this juxtaposition? (“The last time I saw something as big as Omos,” WWE television analyst Corey Graves said during one broadcast, “was in the Museum of Natural History.”) But as the storyline progressed, an intriguing evolution took place: It became less a classic employer-employee dynamic than a partnership, with the vastly more accomplished Styles treating Omos as an equal on television — and at times reacting to the giant’s feats of strength like his hyper, wide-eyed biggest fan. Styles, wholly entitled to hoard the spotlight, chose to elevate the big man at his side. “When you have two people out there or four people out there and their main goal is to get each other over, it’s beauty,” Bloom says. “It’s the magic of what we do. AJ understands that — listen, if I can make this guy my friend, my equal, there’s so much more you can do with it down the road.”

In short, Omogbehin walked into the equivalent of a professional jackpot. He has, as Bloom puts it, a “real-time coach” standing a few feet away, every single night. “Me being paired with AJ Styles is the best thing that could ever happen for my career,” he says. “The best thing. That’s the best I can put it. The best thing. He’s been like a big brother to me. I just listen to him and absorb.”

The out-of-sight partnership might be the most impactful of all. Omogbehin spends a significant amount of time with a generational talent, learning the craft, ring approach and the psychology behind it. It’s ever-evolving but was never as poignant as it was on April 10, not long after Omogbehin stood on the stage and listened to McMahon speak to the crowd and began to think less about where he’d been and more about the exploding possibilities in what would come next. The agitated, pulsating energy in a young talent was plain to see.

So when Omogbehin and Styles awaited their cue to walk the ramp for their tag team championship match against the reigning titlists, The New Day, Styles slipped into sensei mode: Relax. You prepared for this moment and you’re going to be fine. Just do you. It’s going to be a lot. It’s going to be overwhelming. Take deep breaths and just go out there and do it.

On possibly the biggest night of an uncommon life, everything went as planned. Omos idled on the ring apron, an unspoken threat. The opponents did everything and anything to avoid facing the looming colossus, but Styles eventually escaped. He dove to make the tag.

And for the very first time, over the ropes came Omos.

“The moment I stepped into that ring, all that nervousness? Everything just disappeared,” Omogbehin says. “I had laser focus. Once I stepped into the ring, I did not hear a single thing. It was weird. I did not hear a thing, but I still felt the emotion in there. I never went to Woodstock, but boy, did it sure feel close.”

In short order, Omos and Styles dispatched their opponents and claimed the belts. The sight of Styles climbing atop Omogbehin’s shoulders to celebrate the victory was absurd and profound all at once, and as such probably everything WWE officials intended it to be. When the pair returned to the backstage area, Styles celebrated the victory with Omogbehin as if everything had been left to the fates to decide.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Styles exclaimed.

Omogbehin, meanwhile, felt a lot of things. Relief, for one. And also a fresh sensation of satisfaction: He’d given the crowd exactly what it wanted. And he’d won a championship at WrestleMania. Only a few miles away, less than a decade earlier, he sat at the end of a bench, a relative basketball nobody, and a doctor took a look at him and that was the beginning of the end for everything he’d ever known. Now the same body that failed him was everything he’d ever needed, bringing him to a place only a select few people have ever been.

“I have never felt anything like that in my life,” the man they call “Omos” says. “I’ll never, ever forget that day.”

The routine is essential, because Omogbehin can’t stand to be late to the day or what he might accomplish during it: up before 7 a.m., reading and meditation, breakfast, a couple hours at a gym. And then he paints. It gives him serenity. He’s throwing weights or humans around in one moment and, in the next, the only noise is a brush bristle sliding across the surface. He doesn’t own a gallery everyone will come to see, at least not yet, but the kid who worked by candlelight is still out there — thegiantomos and jordanthaartist . A giant, gliding from canvas to canvas.

Coaches and mentors program their DVRs just to behold the joyful but star-crossed big man they knew, wondering not what’s become of him but marveling at what he’s become. Just wait until his true personality comes out, they say. He’ll be bigger than Hulk Hogan. Bigger than The Rock. Still thousands more will come to bear witness, too, with WWE once again holding live arena events starting in mid-July. The fans might pay to see someone else. They won’t be able to take their eyes off Jordan Omogbehin. He is a story unto himself.

“If he can learn how to decipher all this information he’s going to keep getting throughout his career — which he will — the sky’s the limit,” Bloom says.

BAD DECISION, @IAmEliasWWE … You just felt the WRATH of @TheGiantOmos ! #WWERaw pic.twitter.com/hyfP8nh55P — WWE (@WWE) May 25, 2021

Over the past couple months, the exploits of Omos have continued apace. He has grabbed the microphone for the first time and scowled and addressed interloping The New Day as “morons” before adding, “It seems like I did not knock enough sense into you at WrestleMania.” He has chased down an antagonist and heaved him into an LED wall like a potato sack. He palmed an opponent’s skull and threw him across the ring while that guy’s tag team partner scurried away and abandoned him. It’s all a backdrop to one tantalizing thought: This is merely the latest of his many new beginnings. He’s still learning. Learning how to move, how to take a punch, how to act mean. Learning what he is meant to do.

“Man, to be honest, the main overarching goal is to be the greatest big man to ever put on a pair of boots,” Jordan Omogbehin says. “I know that’s a tall order to fill. But I know I have what it takes to get to that.”

That, he’s told, is quite the aspiration.

“Shoot for the stars,” he says, “land on the moon.”

(Graphic: Wes McCabe / The Athletic ; Photos: WWE, J. Meric / Getty Images)

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NOT-SO-GENTLE GIANT

W WE superstar Omos doesn’t look like your typical babyface.

With a seven-foot-three, 400-plus-pound frame and a stern resting face, Omos (Jordan Omogbehin), brow furrowed, cuts the figure of a typical WWE villain. He was recruited as an obvious “big bad,” a Goliath destined to serve as foil to any number of underdog good guys. He is a spiritual descendant of Andre the Giant, The Great Khali, Big Show, and Kane, men so physically imposing their mere presence creates peril for opponents and automatic table stakes for fans.

Billed as “The Nigerian Giant,” his WWE career to date has placed him in exactly that role. From bodyguard for Shane McMahon’s short-lived Raw Underground to tag-team partner and heavy for A.J. Styles, Omos’s introduction to the WWE universe has been exactly what you’d expect. And it’s been successful, with marquee matches and a run as a tag-team champion.

As he’s struck out on his own as a singles wrestler, though, a strange thing has happened. The online wrestling community has put a spotlight on a more lovable side of Jordan Omogbehin, celebrating his artwork and his sense of humour, sharing his “Giant Problems” social media posts, and inundating him and his new wife with well-wishes on their wedding day . These “Omosapiens,” as they call themselves, have seen in Omogbehin one of their own, one who just happens to be enormous enough to wreak havoc in a WWE ring.

OMOSAPIENS are coming unglued for @TheGiantOmos on #RawAfterMania ! pic.twitter.com/yA9AllSbyF — WWE (@WWE) April 4, 2023

The response hasn’t changed his on-screen presentation, for now, but this massive, intimidating, vicious heel has developed an earnest and wholesome fanbase. And in an era where wrestling fans are as aware of the person as they are the character, Omogbehin’s popularity threatens to usurp the unlikability of Omos. A swell of online support and pockets of cheers for the bad guy from live crowds begs an unexpected question: Could WWE’s next big villain be a massive babyface in waiting?

“From a psychology standpoint, it can be very challenging for someone who’s seven-foot-three, muscles, and huge and intimidating, to get sympathy,” Omos says. “Heels don’t inspire people, only babyfaces do. And for me, that’s going to be the challenge: How can this big, giant person inspire people? Because there’s no relatability to someone who’s seven-foot-three … the moment where you see me with somebody smaller than me, the brain says, ‘I want the little guy to kick the big guy’s ass.’”

That’s usually true. Then again, very little about Omogbehin’s journey from shy Nigerian teen to top NCAA basketball prospect to WWE superstar has been usual.

O mogbehin playing a character in front of thousands of fans live and millions on TV is not something those who knew him in his youth envisioned. A shy, quiet kid growing up in Lagos, he was more content to be alone drawing and painting, watching anime, and occasionally watching WCW with his grandmother than he was to be outside socializing.

It was basketball that first brought him out of his shell and, eventually, took him to the United States. After shooting up to six-foot-seven around age 12, Omogbehin was recruited for a basketball camp run by Masai Ujiri’s Giants of Africa program.

“I had just started playing basketball that summer, and I just kind of bum-rushed into the camp,” Omogbehin says. “I was a very tall kid that couldn’t walk and chew bubblegum.”

Raw was par for the course for a still-emerging Giants of Africa program in 2005. Ujiri remembers Omogbehin as “just learning the sport, learning the game,” and Omogbehin’s early camp work focused on developing a baseline skill level and understanding. From there, his size and commitment to improving took over, turning a raw kid into an interesting prospect.

Through the connections made at those camps, Omogbehin got on the radar of prep schools in the United States. A few years after his first camp, Ujiri and Giants of Africa co-founder Godwin Owinje helped him find a fit at Atlantic Shores Christian School in Virginia and transition to the United States, where he’d be away from his family for an extended period for the first time.

“Without them, there’s no coming,” Omogbehin says. “What Masai has done with Giants of Africa is primarily the reason why I’m here in WWE. Without him having that for us young Nigerian kids, without Giants of Africa, there is no Omos.”

Immersed in basketball (and sneaker) culture, Omogbehin set goals for himself. He wanted to become a top-50 prospect in his college class, earn a scholarship to Georgetown University, and eventually make the NBA. He picked up advanced aspects of the game quickly, and coaches found the right buttons to push to bring the competitive fire out of the otherwise quiet teenager.

On his way to those goals, though, he tore his ACL, costing him his senior year of high school in 2010 and slowing his momentum as a collegiate prospect. Instead of Georgetown, Omogbehin landed at the University of South Florida. As he was rehabilitating, he tore that same ACL again. He admits, in retrospect, this is when he first considered what his path might be if basketball didn’t work out. In the moment, though, he pushed forward. There were bigger obstacles to come.

Following a game with USF, once Omogbehin had returned to play, a doctor in attendance raised a concern to the team. Based on Omogbehin’s particular size and facial structure, the doctor worried Omogbehin had an undiagnosed brain tumor. It was a bold assessment from afar. It was also a correct one, and one that may have saved Omogbehin from more serious complications down the line.

The months that followed included surgery and a period as a self-described “guinea pig” while doctors tried to figure out the right mix of medications and hormone treatments. As endocrinologists studied Omogbehin, he was also diagnosed with acromegaly (which he sums up as “you grow wide and big”) and gigantism (“you grow tall”). The rare combination of conditions made for a lot of trial-and-error with specialists, and, he says, some of “the darkest moments of my life.”

“It broke me down for a little bit,” he says. “It was tough, because in that moment you’re alone. And, you know, imagine that type of information being put in an 18-, 19-year-old kid. The ACL injuries I could handle, I could recover from, but this was completely far from what I had imagined. And for me, at that point in time, it was a lot for me to take on.”

The impact was far-reaching. Omogbehin dealt with a great deal of uncertainty about his health and future, and the feeling he was failing to accomplish the basketball goals his family had sacrificed for him to achieve. He also had to contend with altered hormone levels in a hyper-competitive sports environment.

“I was all over the place, man,” he says. “Even when I got a hold of it [medically], I was all over the place emotionally. I got severely depressed. It was bad.”

Basketball reality set in, too. He’d played just 159 minutes over three years at South Florida, had two ACL repairs on his record, and was now dealing with multiple major medical conditions. At the same time, the NBA was transitioning away from the type of centre he’d envisioned himself as and worked to become, away from “the Greg Monroes and the Roy Hibberts” who spent years in college and emerged as system-oriented bigs.

Omogbehin eventually transferred to Morgan State for a season, then to Division II King’s University to complete a master’s in business. During that time, the wheels were turning on what could come next.

D oug Martin knew how to get the competitive fire out of Omogbehin on the AAU circuit. Now a G League coach in the Los Angeles Clippers’ organization, Martin would prod at Omogbehin and tell him basketball wasn’t for him, and that they were going to instead ship him to Connecticut to wrestle for WWE.

“I used to get infuriated,” Omogbehin remembers. “It was just something he said to get me to play hard. And I used to get so mad and I would go and score 20 points and say, ‘See, it’s there!’”

The seeds that were planted tongue-in-cheek eventually bore fruit. When Omogbehin was at South Florida, he’d accompanied football player Antoine Pozniak to a meeting with Steve Keirn, who ran a WWE developmental territory, Florida Championship Wrestling, at the time. Keirn quickly became enamoured but even though Omogbehin says “the sales pitch was great,” he initially pocketed the idea for when he was officially done with basketball.

That time came a few years later, when Omogbehin’s college eligibility was up and a deal to play in China fell through due to immigration issues. A friend reminded him of his flirtation with wrestling, and with no other ideas front of mind, Omogbehin thought it was worth revisiting.

On a whim, he sent a casual email to Canyon Ceman, then WWE’s senior director of talent development. Ceman asked Omogbehin to send some recent pictures, then asked him to call as soon as he could. That was on a Sunday. They wanted him in for a tryout Monday morning.

Omogbehin had no idea what to expect when he and his then-girlfriend (now wife) made the drive from Tampa to Orlando to WWE’s Performance Center.

“From the first time I hit the ropes, I said, ‘Ohhh, this is fun,’” he remembers. “I just felt so liberated. I never felt this in basketball.”

WWE was as enthralled as Omogbehin, telling him he had a job whenever he wanted one. The next day, he attended a taping of NXT, where he met Paul “Triple H” Levesque and Shawn Michaels, a pair of WWE Hall of Famers and key figures in the company’s developmental system.

Levesque did the soft sell, telling Omogbehin to chase basketball if he needed to and to let them know if and when he wanted to try wrestling. Quietly, though, Levesque texted Ceman during the show, asking if Omogbehin was taking to the experience.

“He shows me the text, and I’m like, “Yup, I’m doing this!’” Omogbehin says. “And that is how this whole life started.”

Omogbehin called Coach Martin — eventually the best man in his wedding — and reminded him of the threat he used to make to him as a teenager.

“I said, ‘You’re not gonna believe what happened,’” Omogbehin says. “He was just, like, cracking up on the phone. He always said it. I just never imagined me being a wrestler, but once I got there, wrestling felt more home than basketball.”

T he wrestling education of Omos progressed quickly.

Seeing a potential star, WWE made sure he was surrounded with training and resources, including legendary big men like The Undertaker, Mark Henry, and Kevin Nash to learn from. A self-described sponge, Omogbehin still spends downtime watching older footage to learn the business and pick up anything he can from stars of the past.

WWE responded to his aptitude by pushing him, if carefully. First, he was behind a mask as a giant ninja as part of a series of semi-serious backstage segments. (“I’m one of the Hidden Village in Naruto ,” he said to himself to get hyped up to play that part, referring to a Japanese manga series about a ninja.) A supporting role alongside an established character like McMahon helped him loosen up and learn to play off his counterparts on camera. Teaming with Styles put him in big matches where his physical duties were limited alongside one of the greatest in-ring performers of the generation. Early as a solo wrestler, he was managed by MVP, one of the best character-workers of recent vintage.

Through the early years, Omos’s character has been pretty straightforward. “Bad guy, a couple suits, let’s get it done,” he says. As he’s improved, WWE has given him more opportunity to show what he can do, putting him in marquee programs with main event stars like Bobby Lashley, Brock Lesnar, and Seth Rollins. He’s developed into a menacing presence those who knew a teenage Omogbehin chuckle at.

“There’s a big difference from that youthful kid,” Ujiri says by phone, between a trip to South Africa for Basketball Without Borders and this August’s 20th anniversary Giants of Africa event in Rwanda. “He’s just a really lovable, big kid, and that was it. It’s a big contrast, but very, very interesting.”

Omogbehin is trying to get Ujiri out to a WWE event, which Ujiri says he’d love to do. In the meantime, Ujiri understands the potential for Omogbehin to inspire the next generation of African athletes beyond just basketball.

“These kids need a lot of opportunity, and some of them might fall into basketball and follow that path. There’s a huge ecosystem, you know, that if you don’t play basketball, you could do something within sports where you realize your dreams, like Jordan,” Ujiri says.

A character like Omos inspiring people is not the usual formula you see in wrestling, or generally in storytelling. As Omogbehin laid out, it’s natural to root for a physical underdog. Still, a tide turned around the time of his match with Rollins. It was Omos’s best performance to date from an in-ring quality standpoint, his physical development and understanding of wrestling psychology reaching a level where he seemed ready for a true solo run. That coincided with Omogbehin becoming more open sharing his life on social media, from his art to his love of anime to his recent wedding. Initially starting as a joke on Cameo, the movement of Omosapiens has become larger and louder in wrestling communities on Twitter and Reddit.

“It’s been interesting to see, and see them enjoy, you know, me as Omos and also Jordan the person, and everything I do and what I’m interested in outside of wrestling,” Omogbehin says. “it’s been a trip, man. It’s been fun to watch.”

He still has his hesitations about his potential as a fan-favourite on-screen. The timing and execution have to be perfect, and Omogbehin worries about his character as sympathetic failing to be believable. He may ultimately prefer to keep his inspirational personal story, from Nigeria through medical hardship to WWE, purely off-screen. “But I have thought about it quite a bit,” he says, a slow chuckle from deep in his chest emerging behind a wide smile.

If his life in wrestling continues to unfold as it has so far, he may not have a choice. He made his debut and a WrestleMania appearance in the same city, Tampa, where he spent so much time thinking he was failing. That “poetic justice,” in his words, doesn’t go unappreciated by the audience. Nor does his affability on social media, in interviews, or when he breaks character to make a young fan smile at a live show.

A babyface arc for Omos almost writes itself: From a young, quiet, artistic kid watching WCW with his grandma in Nigeria, to the United States through the Giants of Africa basketball program, through a series of medical scares, and to the largest wrestling stage in the world.

“This is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. This is fun,” Omogbehin says. “To wake up every day, go to work, play a character on TV that either people love or hate, people are so invested in the character you present on TV. What we do, it’s so amazing, man. And to know that some kid out there watching the show, they’re going to grow up watching me on TV. I could have never pictured this life.”

Little about Omogbehin’s life has played out the way he pictured, so no path can be ruled out from here. Even one as an unlikely fan favourite.

Omos Reveals WWE Hall Of Famer Helped Calm Him Before WrestleMania Debut

Former Raw Tag Team Champion Omos sat down in a recent interview with Barstool Sports' Brandon Walker . During the interview, Omos reflected on his first year with the WWE and what he's learned.

"It's been a lot, but I'm just taking it one day at a time and just absorbing every moment," says Omos. "Cause, this is on [me]. I'm learning a lot from AJ [Styles], just listening to him and making sure I'm very present in the moment."

Omos would later go on to discuss his pairing with AJ Styles. He reveals it was a random decision and that he had only wrestled singles matches until that point and that he had to learn about tag team wrestling.

"Pretty much all my training at PC all I did was singles [matches]," shared Omos. "And when I came up [to the main roster], it was like, 'Okay, you're doing tag team now.' So, it was an adjustment mentally for me, and having to learn different spots and when to come in, and hot tags. It was just different. But I've been learning a lot these last four months, so I think I'm getting a hang of it now.

"I think one of the hardest matches we did was the Money In The Bank with the Viking Raiders . That was really challenging for me, but after that it was just like, 'Oh, I get it now. I get the tag team. I can do the spots.' So, yeah."

The 7 foot and 3 inches man also discussed making his WrestleMania debut . He mentions that he had gone to college at University of South Florida in Tampa, so the event was kind of a homecoming for him. He then revealed that being in front of the crowd for the first time was a bit overwhelming for him at first.

"For me, it was insane," Omos quickly answered. "I went to college in Tampa, I went to USF. Going back there, performing on the stage, the first time I came out, the first time the superstars came out, I was so overwhelmed with emotions that Kevin Nash saw me in the hallway and had to bring me down to earth. My emotions were so [motions upward] up here. Because I had never felt anything like that. When I got brought up, it was the ThunderDome, which was fine there. I got used to it. I didn't know the experience of being on T.V. and doing live shows.

"Once I got to Mania, that first audience interaction was insane. Then after going out with the New Day, Xavier Woods and Kofi [Kingston]. But going out there and having that match, and the way that match played out, and you know me, becoming champion on my debut. I just felt goosebumps on my back. And when I [went] out there, I felt the whole energy of the arena come down in there. It was almost like an out of body experience. I could see myself, and everything was so slow. It was magical."

Omos went on to say that basketball crowds in the NCAA do not even compare to wrestling crowds. He goes on to say that wrestling crowds are some of the best in the world.

"I was telling all my basketball friends in tournaments in the NCAA, there's nothing better than wrestling crowds," says Omos. "That is the top of the line. You can hit the game-winning shot and everyone is cheering. But, coming to a wrestling event and hearing the fans go crazy and boo, all that stuff. You just take all of that in, it's just magical. I'm getting chills just thinking about it."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Rasslin' With Brandon F. Walker with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.

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In 2019, Omos made his in-ring debut for WWE during a July 18 NXT house show, defeating Ever-Rise  in a two-on-one handicap match. He returned the following month during an August 24 house show, winning a 15-man battle royal. During October house shows, Omos was victorious in singles matches defeating competitors  Cezar Bononi and Kona Reeves . Omos returned in 2020 during an NXT house show to team with Bronson Reed and defeat Aleksandar Jaksic and Tehuti Miles .

During the June 15, 2020 episode of Monday Night Raw , Omos debuted as a surprise member of  Akira Tozawa 's ninja faction. Appearing as the tallest member of the faction, Omos was referred to as the " Big Ninja " as he stood at ringside during team Tozawa's tag match against The Street Profits  and  The Viking Raiders . Big Ninja was also confronted by  Big Show  during the post-match brawl between the teams.

Between August and October, he served as the security guard for  Shane McMahon 's Raw Underground .

In October, he would begin to accompany  AJ Styles  to the ring as his "associate" when Styles returned to the Raw brand. At the 2020 Survivor Series event, he was introduced with a new ring name, Omos . At TLC: Tables, Ladders and Chairs , Omos was involved in the WWE Championship TLC match, preventing The Miz from reaching the title and dropping him onto a table placed outside the ring before chasing John Morrison to the back. During the 2021 Royal Rumble match, Omos involved himself by preventing AJ Styles from being eliminated on a few occasions. Omos also eliminated Big E and Rey Mysterio despite not being in the match. He would also go on to help Styles enter the Elimination Chamber match early before being ejected by WWE official Adam Pearce . On the March 15, 2021 episode of Raw , Omos announced that he would be making his in-ring debut at WrestleMania 37 alongside Styles against The New Day for the WWE Raw Tag Team Championships . On April 10, 2021, at WrestleMania 37, Omos and Styles defeated The New Day for the Raw Tag Team Championships, Omos' first championship in WWE. On the July 19 episode of Raw , Styles, Omos, and John Morrison lost to Riddle and the Viking Raiders. During the match, Riddle sprayed Omos with water, and The Miz, who was at ringside, was accused of spraying him. Omos subsequently went to attack Miz, and Morrison, who was trying to stop Omos from attacking him, was thrown back to the ring by Omos, which caused the Viking Warriors to perform their finisher on Morrison and win the match. At SummerSlam , Omos and Styles lost the Raw Tag Team Championships to RK-Bro ( Randy Orton and Riddle). At Extreme Rules , Omos and Styles teamed with Bobby Lashley to take on The New Day in a six-man tag team match, in which Styles, Omos and Lashley lost. After this, it was announced that Styles and Omos would face RK-Bro in a rematch for the tag titles at Crown Jewel . At the event, they failed to regain the titles.

At Survivor Series on November 21, Omos participated in a twenty-five man dual-branded battle royal to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Rock 's debut. Omos had the most eliminations at twelve, and won the match by last eliminating Ricochet . After weeks of tension between the two, on the December 20, 2021 episode of Raw , Omos refused to tag into their match against Rey Mysterio and Dominik Mysterio , ultimately costing them the match. A fight then broke out between the two, effectively ending their alliance.

On the January 3, 2022 episode of Raw , a week after splitting up from Styles, a match was set up between the two, where Omos defeated Styles. On January 29, at the Royal Rumble , Omos entered the namesake match for the first time in his career at number eleven, where he eliminated Montez Ford , Angelo Dawkins , and Damian Priest before he was eliminated by Styles, Austin Theory , Chad Gable , Dominik Mysterio, Ricochet, and Ridge Holland . On night two of WrestleMania 38 , he faced Bobby Lashley in a losing effort, marking his first loss in WWE. On the April 4 episode of Raw , Omos and MVP attacked Bobby Lashley, thus forming an alliance between the two. He defeated Lashley at WrestleMania Backlash with MVP’s help, but lost to him in a steel cage match on the May 16 episode of Raw . At Hell in a Cell , Omos and MVP lost to Lashley in a two-on-one handicap match, ending their feud.

On June 20, Omos would qualify for the men’s Money in the Bank ladder match after defeating Riddle. At the event , he would fail at winning the match after being thrown through a table by all the other competitors. On the October 14 episode of SmackDown , Omos confronted Braun Strowman , starting a feud between the two. At Crown Jewel on November 5, Omos lost to Strowman. At the Royal Rumble on January 28, 2023, Omos entered the Royal Rumble match at number twenty-four, but was eliminated by Strowman. On March 20, on Monday Night Raw , Omos defeated Mustafa Ali in two minutes. After calling out Brock Lesnar for a match at WrestleMania 39 , Lesnar would eventually accept. At the event, Lesnar defeated Omos. He would then lose to Seth Rollins at Backlash .

Omos would return after a short hiatus as the final entry in the SummerSlam battle royal on August 5, being introduced by MVP, but was unsuccessful in winning the match after being eliminated by eight individuals. In the 2024 Royal Rumble match, Omos entered at number twenty-one before being eliminated by Bron Breakker .

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Omos (May 17, 1994) is a Nigerian professional wrestler, currently signed to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) where he performs on the Raw brand. He is a former WWE Raw Tag Team Champion with AJ Styles.

Powers and Stats

Tier : At least 8-C , higher with Two-handed Chokeslam

Name: Omos, The Nigerian Giant, The Colossus

Origin: WWE

Gender: Male

Classification: Human, Professional Wrestler

Powers and Abilities:

• Superhuman Physical Characteristics
• Martial Arts (Skilled Wrestler; has won The Raw Tag Team Championship with AJ Styles before)
• Weapon Mastery (Able to utilize tables, ladders, chairs, or even parts of the ring such as the steel stairs efficiently)

Attack Potency : At least Building level (Has held his own against the likes of Brock Lesnar and overpowered Bobby Lashley, the latter of whom The Nigerian Giant was capable of tossing through the steel cage cell . Superior to wrestlers like Cesaro, who cratered the ring ), higher with Two-handed Chokeslam (Finishing moves in wrestling tend to do more damage than standard moves)

Speed : Peak Human (Able to dodge the attacks from other Wrestlers and swings from blunt objects)

Lifting Strength : Class 5 to Class 25 (Capable of casually throwing other wrestlers, such as Brock Lesnar, around; Held his own against Bobby Lashley in an arm wrestling contest , although he would end up losing to the aforementioned wrestler. Lashley is strong enough to also hold his own against Braun Strowman in a previous arm wrestling contest , who Omos has previously been seen being capable of easily lifting )

Striking Strength : At least Building level (Causes most wrestlers to stagger from his punches)

Durability : At least Building level (Able to tank hits from superstars far below his weight of 335 lbs; shown to be unfazed by attacks from upper mid-carders, such as John Morrison and able to take damage from Brock Lesnar and Braun Strowman)

Stamina : Peak Human , possibly Superhuman

Range : Standard Melee Range

Standard Equipment : None notable

Intelligence : Above Average

Weaknesses: Standard human weaknesses

Notable Attacks/Techniques:

• Two-handed Chokeslam: Similar to a regular chokeslam, except Omos grabs the opponent's neck with two hands
• Big Boot: A running boot to the face of the opponent
• Pendulum backbreaker: A type of backbreaker

Notable Matchups

Notable Victories:

Notable Losses:

Inconclusive Matches:

Discussions

• 1 Tiering System
• 2 Attack Potency
• 3 Satoru Gojo

Omos Missing from WWE Draft Pools – Where is he?

A s WWE gears up for its annual draft, one prominent absence from the draft pools has caught fans’ attention. Omos, known as the Nigerian Giant, seems to be nowhere on the radar for both SmackDown and RAW drafts. With the roster shake-up imminent, Omos’s absence raises questions about his future brand affiliation.

Last seen competing in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal on SmackDown before WrestleMania, Omos has been notably absent from television for months. Despite sporadic appearances mainly at house shows, he’s notably absent from draft considerations.

MuscleManMalcolm highlighted this absence, noting Omos’s absence from the draft pool. Last year, Omos was a free agent during the draft, able to appear on any brand. However, recent times have seen him mostly on house show circuits, seldom on TV screens.

Injured Braun Strowman’s Experience with Omos

Injured former Universal Champion Braun Strowman shared insights into his experience working with Omos at Crown Jewel 2022. Recalling their match, Strowman marveled at Omos’s immense stature, admitting to rarely encountering someone larger.

Strowman emphasized Omos’s physical presence, labeling him as “one big, bad S.O.B.” Reflecting on his own size, Strowman admitted humorously that Omos’s sheer enormity made him feel dwarfed in comparison.

With Braun Strowman slated for potential selection in the upcoming WWE Draft, fans await news on his return. As for Omos, his mysterious absence from the draft pool leaves fans speculating on his future and brand allegiance.

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