John Tenta and Fred Ottman, better known as Earthquake and Typhoon, will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2025 this April, the company confirmed today to The Ringer. The Natural Disasters dominated the World Wrestling Federation tag team scene in the early 1990s, their combined 800-plus pounds of girth and power making them arguably the purest embodiment of what former WWE champion Big E famously celebrated as "big meaty men slapping meat." Their brief WWF Tag Team Championship reign and ring-shaking run together represented a peak that neither achieved in their singles careers, proving that in tag team wrestling, the whole can indeed be greater than the sum of its parts—even if that sum has to be weighed on a livestock scale.
The 2025 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony will be held on Friday, April 18, in Winchester, Nevada, at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas in its BleauLive Theater, the night before WrestleMania 41.
Before teaming up to create seismic activity in WWE rings, Tenta and Ottman traveled remarkably different paths to wrestling stardom. Tenta's journey was particularly unique. He began as a legitimate amateur wrestler in Canada. Born in Surrey, British Columbia, in 1963, Tenta showed promise early on; he was a Canadian junior champion by 1981 and finished sixth in the super heavyweight division at the World Junior Wrestling Championships.
At a massive 6-foot-6 and well over 300 pounds as a teenager, Tenta secured a wrestling scholarship to Louisiana State University. There, he competed against the likes of Bruce Baumgartner and even defeated future pro wrestling great Gary Albright as a collegiate heavyweight wrestler. He also spent some time buried on the depth chart of the LSU football team as a defensive tackle after Title IX–related cuts led to the scrapping of LSU’s wrestling program.
Not making any headway on the gridiron, Tenta was offered an opportunity by legendary sumo wrestler Kotozakura Masakatsu to try that sport and made the extraordinary decision to relocate to Japan. In October 1985, he joined the successful Sadogatake stable under the name Kototenta (which he later changed to Kototenzan). What followed was one of the most remarkable runs in modern sumo history—Tenta compiled an undefeated 21-0-7 record across the three lower divisions of the sport (Jonukuchi, Jonidan, and Sandanme), winning titles in each before stopping short at the Makushita division, the true first step toward what would have been a highly paid professional career during Japan’s economic boom in the 1980s.
In a 1986 CBC interview after leaving sumo, Tenta explained his departure: "There's a lot of demands and a lot of pressure put on you. I had to answer to guys that were much younger than me. I had to do anything that my senior wrestlers asked me." Regarding the physical toll, he added, "They're trying to get you to your top condition so that you don't feel pain. If you're sick or injured, you practice anyway because during the tournament, if you have a match, you have a match and you have to be there, so they're just trying to get you mentally tough and physically tough." (That sumo toughness never left Tenta, though—he was unafraid to throw down with Koji Kitao, who had reached sumo’s highest rank of Yokozuna, when a pro wrestling match between them went sideways in 1991.)
Walking away from sumo without a loss, Tenta joined All Japan Pro Wrestling in May 1987 under Shohei “Giant” Baba and sharpened his craft working alongside names like Jumbo Tsuruta, the Great Kabuki, and Baba himself. It was a trial by fire, yet Tenta—who was agile enough to throw standing dropkicks during this period—soon caught the attention of U.S. promotions, including Vince McMahon’s size-obsessed WWF, which began using him in 1989.
After briefly wrestling in dark matches, Tenta made his WWF television debut as a planted "fan" during one of Canadian bad guy Dino Bravo’s strength demonstrations. The Canadian Earthquake was born when Tenta flattened the Ultimate Warrior with a seated senton during that segment. By WrestleMania VI, now simply known as Earthquake, Tenta was positioned as an unstoppable monster, crushing Hercules, previously one of the federation’s top musclemen, in quick fashion. His true breakthrough came in his 1990 feud with Hulk Hogan when he repeatedly splashed and injured the company's biggest star on "The Brother Love Show." This angle became one of the most memorable of the era, with the WWF encouraging young fans to write letters of support to the injured Hogan (the very large Hogan getting injured by mountain-sized men was an evergreen story line, having worked equally well with King Kong Bundy leading up to WrestleMania 2).
Meanwhile, Fred Ottman took a more traditional path to pro wrestling stardom. Born in 1956, the Miami native became an accomplished powerlifter before entering the business. A 1981 Florida newspaper article detailed his incredible physical specifications—23-inch arms, a chest exceeding 60 inches, and the ability to bench-press 590 pounds, squat 765, and deadlift 770. Standing 6-foot-3, his newsworthy size and strength made him an imposing figure—so much so, he told the reporter, "my size scares some girls," though not his first wife, Bobbi Rodriguez, the sister of Dusty Rhodes’s wife, Michelle Rubio, and aunt to Cody.
In a recent interview, Ottman recalled his start in the business: "I'm born and raised in Miami, Florida, and the gym I trained at down there, a lot of the wrestlers when they were in town working for Florida Championship Wrestling … would stop by and train in the gym,” with some telling Ottoman he should consider getting into pro wrestling. After receiving initial training from the legendary Boris Malenko, Ottman worked throughout the territories as Big Steel Man and Big Bubba before joining the WWF in 1989.
After working dark matches as Big Steel Man, he was repackaged as Tugboat—a cheerful, maritime-themed ally of Hulk Hogan who wore a striped shirt, white sailor pants, and a jaunty cap. In this role, he urged fans to support Hogan during the champion's recovery from Earthquake's depredations, setting the stage for what appeared to be a long-term feud between the two super heavyweights.
Instead, in a shocking twist, Tugboat betrayed Hogan and the fans in May 1991 during a battle royal on Saturday Night's Main Event. A month later, he attacked the Bushwhackers during a six-man tag team match and joined forces with his former rival Earthquake. Now going by Typhoon and wearing a red and black singlet featuring a stylized tidal wave design, Ottman had immediate tag team chemistry with Tenta. Under manager Jimmy Hart's guidance, they christened themselves the Natural Disasters.
When they stood side by side in the ring, their combined mass created a visual spectacle few tag teams could match. The ring visibly shook when they hit the ropes in tandem.
Before executing his devastating Earthquake Splash (a running seated senton), Tenta would stomp around the ring, causing it to shake violently—a preview of the destruction to come. Meanwhile, Typhoon's Tidal Wave finishing move—a running splash—flattened opponents with crushing force.
Their most effective tag team move was brutally simple: Typhoon would trap opponents in the corner with a body avalanche, pinning them helplessly while Earthquake splashed against his partner's back, crushing the victim with their combined weight. It was wrestling at its most primal and impactful, emphasizing raw power over technical precision—the essence of "big meaty men slapping meat."
The Natural Disasters constituted a wall of flesh unlike anything else in a business that was transitioning from the legendary André the Giant, whom the pair attacked after dispatching the Bushwhackers in short order at 1991’s SummerSlam pay-per-view. WWF tag team champions the Legion of Doom showed up to make the save.
The team's career trajectory took a positive turn in early 1992 when Jimmy Hart betrayed them to manage Money Inc. (“Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase and Irwin R. Schyster, a.k.a. IRS). This double-cross transformed the Natural Disasters into fan favorites overnight. At WrestleMania VIII, they challenged Money Inc. for the Tag Team Championship, winning the match by count-out but failing to capture the titles.
The Natural Disasters persisted on the house show circuit, and their efforts were rewarded on July 20, 1992, when they finally defeated Money Inc. to claim the WWF Tag Team Championship. This title victory represented the pinnacle of both men's WWF careers—a height neither achieved as singles competitors despite their high-profile association with Hogan. They successfully defended their titles against teams like the Beverly Brothers at SummerSlam 1992 before eventually losing them back to Money Inc. in October of that year. After that, they were gradually phased out of the tag team division, even attacking each other at the 1993 Royal Rumble to signal a feud that never materialized.
Both men's post-Disasters careers took some unusual turns. Tenta left the WWF and briefly returned in 1994, engaging in a "sumo vs. sumo" program with Yokozuna (massive Samoan American Rodney Anoaʻi, who had no sumo experience) that included an actual sumo match on Raw. He then ventured to WCW, where he cycled through a series of increasingly questionable gimmicks—first as Avalanche, then as the Shark (which led to him modifying the LSU tiger tattoo on his arm accordingly), and finally wrestling under his real name after famously declaring, "I'm not a fish, I’m not an avalanche, I'm a man!"
Tenta had one final run in WWF in 1998 as the masked Golga, a member of the oddball stable the Oddities. (He did make a pair of appearances as Earthquake in 2001, including being a part of the Gimmick Battle Royal match at WrestleMania X-Seven.) He fully retired from the business in 2004 after being diagnosed with bladder cancer. Tenta passed away on June 7, 2006, just weeks shy of his 43rd birthday, leaving behind a legacy as one of wrestling's nicest and most uniquely skilled big men.
According to fellow Canadian Bret Hart, despite Tenta's fearsome ring persona, he was known for his politeness backstage: "When [Tenta] first came in, he was this massive 6'8" 450-pound guy yet he was this quiet, demure gentle giant who said please and thank you to everyone and called everyone 'sir.'" He was so nice, in fact, that he might be the only wrestler whose Dark Side of the Ring special contains nary a hint of darkness save for the fact of his tragic early death.
Ottman, meanwhile, became infamous for perhaps the most embarrassing debut in professional wrestling history. In 1993, he was introduced in WCW as the Shockmaster—a mysterious powerhouse wearing a glittery Star Wars Stormtrooper helmet. During his live reveal during Clash of the Champions, Ottman tripped over a board at the bottom of a wall he was supposed to crash through, sending him tumbling forward and his helmet rolling across the floor as stunned wrestlers broke character in disbelief.
Ottman has displayed good humor about the incident in subsequent years. "They put me in a Stormtrooper mask which they painted and covered in glitter, I couldn't see a thing," he explained in an interview he gave to WWE. "I got to the wall and put my hands up like a double axe handle and bust through. The top broke perfectly, but the bottom didn't give. The momentum took me through the wall and to the floor."
Despite this setback, Ottman persevered, later returning to the WWF briefly as Typhoon in 1994 before working the independent circuit. He retired from active competition in 2001 but has remained connected to the wrestling world as a king-sized presence at conventions and signings.
Though the Natural Disasters' peak barely lasted two years, their 800-pound impact remains significant in WWE history. As a heel team, they posed a genuine physical threat to massively muscled guys like the Legion of Doom. As babyfaces challenging Money Inc., they showed that these two huge teddy bears could easily win over fans. Their style—direct, powerful, smooth, safe, and uncomplicated—represents a timeless approach to big-man tag team wrestling that still resonates with audiences today.
The Natural Disasters dominated the ring, tossing opponents around effortlessly, and delivered a run that earned them a place among WWE's legendary tag teams. In a business where flash often matters more than substance, they delivered both—two massive powerhouses who proved that sometimes in wrestling, two very big men can create even greater feats together than either could achieve alone. They made pro wrestling better by being exactly what they were: giants who knew how to make their size matter.