Thor: Ragnarok – Who Were Grandmaster’s Champions Before Hulk?

This article contains Thor: Ragnarok spoilers.

It was obvious from the very first trailer for Thor: Ragnarok that the Hulk was the Grandmaster’s chosen champion. After all, it’s how and why he ended up fighting Thor. But Hulk was far from the first champion of the planet Sakaar, and there are some pretty great clues about who the previous champions were.

Hulk takes up residence in an enormous tower that dominates the skyline of Sakaar. And that tower has numerous almost familiar faces carved into it. Those faces are almost certainly those of the earlier champions, and they’re all characters from Marvel history, some specific to Thor, some specific to Hulk, and others that are just…weird!

The first face (the one with the elephantine nose) is Man-Thing. Yes, Man-Thing, infamous for appearing in a comic known as, I shit you not, Giant-Sized Man-Thing. Down and to the right of him is Marvel’s Ares. Perhaps not coincidentally, Michael Avon Oeming, who wrote the comic book story that inspired much of this movie, also wrote a killer Ares comic.

On the left you will find none other than Beta Ray Bill. That’s a character we would all desperately like to see in a Marvel movie one of these days. And if it isn’t Bill himself, it could very well be a member of his race, but based on the fact that in the the animated version of Planet Hulk, it was Bill who fought Hulk rather than Thor, he would make sense here.

Down and to the right of Beta Ray Bill is the rarely seen these days Hulk baddie, the Bi-Beast (he’s the guy with two faces). The bottom two faces are actually little-known Hulk villain Dark-Crawler and legendary Jack Kirby created dragon Fin Fang Foom!

Don’t believe us? Watch the video for proof!

Thor: Ragnarok arrives on Blu-ray and DVD this week. You can order it here.