{"id":24311,"date":"2020-08-10T14:01:21","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T18:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=24311"},"modified":"2021-05-22T09:48:58","modified_gmt":"2021-05-22T13:48:58","slug":"rip-james-kamala-harris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=24311","title":{"rendered":"RIP – James “Kamala” Harris"},"content":{"rendered":"

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James Harris better known as the professional wrestler Kamala the Ugandan Giant has died at the age of 70 due to complications from Covid-19.<\/p>\n

Harris began his pro wrestling career in 1978 after meeting Hall of Fame Wrestler Bobo Brazil.\u00a0 In his early years Harris wrestled under the names, Ugly Bear Harris<\/em>, Big Jim Harris<\/em> and Bad News Harris<\/em>.\u00a0 In 1982, Harris signed with promoter Jerry Lawler’s Continental Wrestling Association.\u00a0 Harris and Lawler created the Kamala<\/em> character — a giant headhunter brought to the US from the jungles of Uganda.<\/p>\n

Harris wrestled for all of the major companies and was a fan favorite.\u00a0 When my sons and nephews were young, I took them to a live wrestling event where Kamala was one of the featured stars.\u00a0 I overheard the boys telling my youngest son, Chris, that Kamala was a cannibal and a headhunter who ate little kids.\u00a0 They went on to tell Chris that if Kamala got hungry he would begin slapping his belly and then climb out of the ring to look for a meal.\u00a0 (Slapping his belly was a signature move for Kamala and he did it in every match.)<\/p>\n

Needless to say when Kamala came out to wrestle Chris seemed to move a bit closer to me with eyes as big as saucers watching the Ugandan giant enter the ring.\u00a0 Sure enough, part way through the match he began to slap his belly.\u00a0 Chris grabbed my hand, and said, “C’mon dad.\u00a0 Time to go, Kamala’s getting ready to look for a meal!”<\/p>\n

Our thoughts and prayers go out to James Kamala Harris’ family, friends and fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Harris better known as the professional wrestler Kamala the Ugandan Giant has died at the age of 70 due<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-rip"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24312,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24311\/revisions\/24312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}