Giant Silva
Brazilian basketball player, mixed martial artist and professional wrestler
Paulo César da Silva (born July 21, 1963) is a Brazilian former national basketball player for the Brazilian national basketball team and later mixed martial artist and professional wrestler, better known by his ring name Giant Silva. He stands 2.18 m (7 ft 2 in) and weighs 175 kg (386 lb). A super-heavyweight wrestler, he was both a face and a heel in several professional wrestling promotions. Known for his great height, in 2014 he was described as the sixth tallest professional wrestler in history.
Basketball career
In the 1980s, Silva was originally a professional basketball player. He played with the senior Brazilian national basketball team at the 1988 Summer Olympics with the nickname "Paulão" (Big Paulo). Very much like El Gigante/Giant Gonzales, who also started as a basketball player, the 7 ft 2 in (218 cm) tall Silva played as a reserve center on Brazil's national team, wearing the #13 jersey.
Professional wrestling career
World Wrestling Federation (1998–1999)
After turning pro in late 1997, Silva signed with World Wrestling Federation. After debuting he was given the name: "Giant Silva" and was a member of the Oddities stable. For most of his WWF tenure, Silva was a cornerman for the Oddities and his matches on TV were tag matches, teaming up with Golga and/or Kurrgan.
The public source identifies “Giant Silva” as brazilian basketball player, mixed martial artist and professional wrestler. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Giant, Silva and Brazilian.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Giant Silva”, the useful work is to connect “brazilian basketball player, mixed martial artist and professional wrestler” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3177620. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 2014, 1988 and 1998.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Giant Silva”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Giant Silva primary sources, Giant Silva archive and Giant research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Giant Silva” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.