He became a top draw portraying a stereotypical menacing African warrior who was always supposed to lose to his white opponents. He died of Covid-19.
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here. As a professional wrestler, James Harris was Kamala, the “Ugandan Giant” who filled the ring with his menacing wails. Billed most often at 6 feet 7 inches tall and weighing about 400 pounds, he towered over opponents, an edge he exploited by tilting back, hoisting a fist high above his head and then swinging it downward, appearing to strike foes with the force of his entire body. Outside the ring, this colossus vanished. He retreated to his hotel room after fights, not wanting to be heard laughing in public (lest he upend the image of the angry Kamala). He avoided restaurants, instead cooking catfish and hush puppies in his apartment. “He didn’t want to ever be seen, the big monster at the bar just kind of hanging out with people and eating a sandwich,” Kenny Casanova, the co-author of Mr. Harris’s autobiography, “Kamala Speaks,” said in a phone interview. “You couldn’t hang out with King Kong.” Mr. Harris died on Aug.9 at Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi in Oxford. He was 70. His wife, Emmer Jean Bradley Harris, said the cause was Covid-19. After debuting in a regional wrestling league in the South in 1978, Mr. Harris cycled through aliases.
