Paul ‘Big Show’ Wight comes home. SC born wrestling star discusses career, Scott Hall, AEW
Around the mid 2010s, the world’s biggest wrestling promotion was in London and its biggest bad guy at more than 7-feet tall was headed to the ring, getting booed by the thousands in attendance and loving it.
The crowd in London was shouting “bloody wanker” and other insults at him, Paul Wight said.
When World Wrestling Entertainment, better known as WWE, traveled across the pond the next year, the fans were cheering Wight’s character name — “Big Show. Big Show. Big Show.” This time, the South Carolina native was a baby face, the wrestling term for a good guy.
Some titans of the wrestling business remain either bad guys, better known as heels in the business, or baby faces their entire careers. Many keep the same character name. But not Wight.
Wrestling observers have theorized that Wight has made more swerves in his career than any other major wrestler. That flexibility, coupled with a penchant for experimenting in and out of the ring, has kept him thriving, he said. He’s currently making a sci-fi show funded by non-fungible tokens that entails viewer participation in the story line.
Wight is in the midst of his latest transition with All Elite Wrestling, a promotion known for its wrestling-over-entertainment values. AEW makes its South Carolina debut at the Colonial Life Arena on March 30. Tickets are available online or at the CLA box office.
Again showing that he’s the chameleon a wrestling promotion needs, Wight is a commentator on the promotion’s YouTube show ‘AEW Dark: Elevation’ and on its roster of clothes-liners and power-bomb droppers.
The first swerve of his career might just have come when Wight was a high school athlete in South Carolina.
Swerving and getting over
At Palmetto Pig buffet on Devine Street near the Vista, piling a plate high with pulled pork, fried chicken, coleslaw as well as rice and hash, Wight is getting back to his roots.
“Yeah. It’s me,” Wight says to a woman working at the restaurant, who is noting — not so quietly —that the man at the buffet is “The Big Show.”
After a couple handshakes and even more glares from shocked eyes, Wight sits down with his plate and talks about his South Carolina origins
Wight grew up in the Aiken area, his father a mechanic at the Savannah River Site and his mother a deputy with the county sheriff’s department at one time.
He played football and was an elite basketball center in high school. He remembers looking through The State newspaper each week to make sure he was still the highest ranked basketball player in South Carolina. He graduated from W.W. King Academy.
That first swerve came after a high school football coach chewed him out, saying “I owed him . . . and I needed to suit up.” So to show the coach he was all in, Wight left the football team to join the cheerleading squad.
“My dad thought it was the most brilliant move of my life,” Wight said. “It was part of my youthful stubbornness.”
His height and strength made him a natural for college basketball and professional wrestling after that, where he has continued to flip his character and names to suit whatever a promotion needs.
When he debuted in World Championship Wrestling in 1995 he was known as The Giant, son of Andre the Giant, a bit of wrestling storytelling that many still believe and ask Wight about. The son gimmick got dropped soon, and he was just The Giant, a heel until a few months later when he was a baby face. For a brief moment in Adam Sandler’s 1998 movie “The Water Boy,” Wight was known as Captain Insano, who might be making a comeback in AEW, Wight hinted.
Wight successfully made the jump from WCW to WWE in the late ‘90s, a move that killed other wrestlers’ careers, eventually becoming his most well known character, The Big Show.
From 1995 to 2020 when he left WWE, the Wrestling Talk website counted 36 character turns from good to bad guy for Wight.
“One fan said I had more turns than NASCAR,” Wight said. “That’s why I was able to stay around as long as I have. That’s why I’m still working now.”
Knowing he’s now in the legacy building stage of his career, Wight is with AEW to help other up-and-comers make their transition.
He believes in the talent of AEW’s roster.
“The authenticity of the talent” makes AEW stand above other promotions, Wight said. “If you don’t believe what you’re saying, the audience won’t either.”
The talent has what it takes to raise the promotion to new heights, and Wight has a plan to help do that. He wants to take AEW to the place where just a couple years ago he was booed then cheered on his return — England and from there the rest of Europe. Fans there are “ravenous” for American wrestling, he said.
In the wrestling world it’s called “getting over,” meaning to win the fans’ hearts and reach the heights of your abilities.
He’s made enough moves in his career. He’s gotten over plenty of times. Now, he’s with AEW to help the younger wrestlers get over.
“Not everyone gets to be a Hulk Hogan, John Cena or The Rock,” Wight said. “You want to contribute to the industry, contribute to the locker room and make it better than when you got in however you can.”
“I’m just lucky I get to get in the ring and help do that,” he said.
Thinking of Scott Hall
Wight remembers the car rides with then-fellow wrestling star Scott Hall, going show to show together.
Wight would cram into a vehicle, preferably an SUV, with Hall and fellow big man Kevin Nash in the trio’s last few years together at WCW. Wight and Nash constantly had the windows down, much to Hall’s chagrin.
Hall, who was from sunny Florida, “was always freezing to death because Kevin and I would always have the windows down in the winter time because we were hot.”
Last week, when the world found out Hall had died from post-surgery heart attacks, a journalist asked Wight for his thoughts. He didn’t want to talk about Hall then, Wight said. The emotions were overwhelming his thoughts.
“I wasn’t ready for it,” Wight said.
After a week, Wight was ready to talk about Hall. It’s the first time Wight has publicly spoken about Hall since his death.
Being in South Carolina, the place he grew up, brought to Wight’s mind the lessons that Hall taught him.
In the mid 1990s when Wight was a fresh in WCW, Hall would call him “G” — “G as in Giant.”
“He’d come up to me when I was frustrated with what was going on and he’d lift that eyebrow and in his real calm voice he’d say ‘G, I dare you to go out there and be a giant and get over,’” Wight said.
Hall taught Wight to believe in himself and his abilities as a wrestler and to “quit letting all these other things” drag him down
Despite the well-documented personal demons Hall battled, he had a positive influence on Wight. Hall knew the problems Wight was dealing with as a young wrestler even when Wight didn’t understand the problems. Hall always had a phrase to explain and solve those issues.
“He’d say, ‘G, remember man, they can tell you how to finish but they can’t tell you how to get there,’” Wight said. “That means they can tell you who’s going to win or lose the match, but they can’t tell you how to get there. That’s up to you as an artist.”
“He was a brilliant mind for wrestling,” Wight said.
This story was originally published March 25, 2022 at 9:56 AM.