Khali is someone whose usefulness is pretty limited in my eyes. While it's true he's an extremely big man, freakishly big when you take into account the fact that he has a ton of muscle mass whereas most men in his general height range don't, this isn't 1975 or even 1995 for that matter. A lot of fans just aren't impressed by wrestlers who are giants or have herculean physiques. I believe that's partially due to wrestling losing some of its mystique in the modern era, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in this case in my opinion. Contrary to popular belief, most of the biggest stars in the history of WWE haven't been these 6'6" or more, 300+ pound mountains of muscle. An even greater majority haven't been guys around or in excess of 7 feet in height. When people see Khali and compare him to legends, modern stars or even indie stars like Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Kurt Angle, Triple H, Ric Flair, Randy Savage, Ricky Steamboat, CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler, Jeff Hardy, Antonio Cesaro, Kassius Ohno, Sami Zayn, Chris Benoit, Rey Mysterio, The Shield, etc., they see a guy who really can't wrestle. He's extremely limited and does his best despite his limitations, but he really does come off awful when you compare him to those guys I listed and many others I didn't. When he was a heel, how often did you hear the "you can't wrestle" chant break out when Khali was out there in a match?
A surprising number of people seem to like Khali in the role he has now, the role of the sorta fun loving, dancing gentle giant. It doesn't do much for me but I don't flat out hate it either, due in large part to the fact that Khali isn't on television all that often. I'd feel much different if he popped up in every other segment and was in the midst of a big push. He gets pretty decent pops and people enjoy seeing him come out every once in a while and knock guys like 3MB around. Khali, in my eyes, looked more useful than he has in a long time during his recent tag matches against The Real Americans in which he was put in the Cesaro Swing. This is definitely an instance of where Khali's size was a genuine benefit because, frankly, Cesaro performing that move on a guy Khali's size made him look like a friggin' beast. Khali is a legit 7'1'' or 7'2'' and about 350 pounds or so. The average American male is about 5'8" and weighs around 180-190 pounds, it impresses fans more these days to see giants on the receiving end of power moves rather than give them as they're simply not awed by these guys' size they way they were 20-40 years ago.
The only real reason I can think of as to why Vince still has Khali on the roster, from a business perspective, is that he must be a good draw among Indian viewers of WWE programming. India is the 10th largest economy in the world and is expected to be in the top 5 in less than 20 years. It's current population is at 1.210 billion, so imagine just 1 or 2% of the population watched WWE programming, which would be between 12& 24 million viewers.
