In shots of the Grandmaster's Palace, you can see the heads of various Gladiator Champions carved on the side. The Hulk is clearly being constructed on the top. One of them (I'm fairly certain) was Beta Ray Bill. Another may have been the Bi-Beast (hat tip to a commentor on io9).
Any idea who else was on there? I seem to recall that there were five heads: Hulk, plus four completed ones.
Answer
Given this imperfect still, I might surmise the Man-Thing, Ares (the God of War), Beta Ray Bill and The Bi-Beast have all been champions at one point or another in the Grandmaster’s games.
Each of these beings is highly formidable and given their capabilities would have made fine champions for the Grandmasters gladiatorial games.
Man-Thing: A creature formed of muck and science, the Man-Thing has two properties which would make it a fine gladiator.
The first is that it’s crazy durable. As long as you can keep it supplied with swamp and muck, it is effectively immortal and indestructible. It has increased its strength under certain circumstances allowing it to be as strong as the Hulk.
Against people using conventional bashing weapons, they would eventually tire, or even possibly become afraid. Which is where its second power comes in: Who ever knows fear, burns at the Man-Thing’s touch. The creature is sensitive to emotional states and if a creature becomes afraid of it, the Man-Thing will secrete sulfuric acid causing nasty caustic burns where ever the Man-Thing is touching it.
The Bi-Beast: A creature of fantastic strength and savagery, the Bi-Beast has strength and durability rivaling the Hulk’s.
- Created as a creature purely designed to fight the Hulk and win, the Bi-Beast has changed in appearance and power levels over the years. He first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #169 (1973). He probably made the Grandmaster a lot of money during his time as a gladiator due to his incredible strength and durability. His one weakness was his psychological instability.
Ares - God of War: The son of Zeus and Hera, Ares was worshiped as the god of war in ancient Greece and Rome. While physically not quite as powerful as the Bi-Beast or the Hulk, what Ares lacked in superhuman strength compared to both of those titans, he made up for in his sheer versatility, skill and capacity for violence.
Ares was the god of brutal warfare and being trapped in an arena where most of the fighters were bigger and stronger but likely lacking the training his thousands of years of fighting had given him, would make him a long-running champion.
How Ares might have come to be under the control of the Grandmaster is anyone’s guess, since the Grandmaster was thought to have never been to Earth, Ares may have been a museum piece of the Collector and traded to the Grandmaster in the past.
However he may have arrived here, his expertise in killing would have made him a crowd favorite until he made his escape. Being a god would give him a great degree of patience and he would have likely only spent a few years before escaping.
Beta Ray Bill: The cybernetic champion of the Korbinites, a species all but destroyed by the actions of the fire-demon Surtur, Bill protected the last of his species from destruction with the aid of his AI warship, Skuttlebutt.
In the comics, even before his transformation into Beta Ray Thor, Bill had proven he had the fighting capacity to best Thor in a hand to hand struggle. He was also worthy of wielding Mjolnir which made his relationship with the Thunder God even more challenging.
With his cybernetic reconstruction, Beta Ray Bill would have been a terror to face in the Grandmaster’s games and would have likely remained a noted champion until he and Skuttlebutt figured out a way to escape. Bill’s dedication to his people would not have allowed him to remain away from them for too long. Beta Ray Bill was created by Walt Simonson and first appeared in Thor #337 (1983). In the comics, Odin was so impressed with Beta Ray Bill and his quest, he gave him his own hammer and enchanted it with capacities for energy manipulation similar to Mjolnir.
Stormbreaker was a warhammer enchanted with powers similar to Mjolnir’s. Bill can use it to fly, manipulate weather, absorb and channel various energies, teleport, and sense various energies.
This article was written by me and first appeared on Quora as part of the question: Who were the grand champions depicted on the Grandmaster's tower in Thor: Ragnarok?
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