In the early days of The Big Show’s career, there were athletic feats Paul Wight could do that astounded many. Wight claimed he could do a moonsault in the early days of his career, and while that has never been verified, there had been clips of him doing kip ups and even a dropkick at one point in his career. They were outstanding athletic feats for someone his size, but it also upset the wrong people in WCW.
Eric Bischoff talked about the things Wight could do early in his career on his 83 Weeks podcast, where he talked about how he marveled the athleticism of Wight in those early days, there was a strong debate over if he should be doing those things as a giant character. Bischoff says he saw both sides of the argument.
“What’s interesting about this, is Giant actually got a little heat backstage for doing that dropkick. There was a lot of people that were like, ‘What? You’re killing your giant gimmick. You’re doing stuff that Eddie Guerrero does. Or guys that are 220 pounds do. You’re a giant, work like a giant. Giants don’t dropkick.’ That was a big conversation backstage. I was kind of stuck in the middle of it. I thought, traditionally yes, that would be right, you want to see a big giant be a big giant. You know, ‘don’t go down … … build up to it over weeks or months or years. Don’t go off your feet, you know, and by all means, don’t go do a f**king dropkick. Or a kip-up. Even though you can, don’t do it because it’ll kill your gimmick.’ There was a lot of that conversation backstage.”
In his later years, Wight worked a lot more of the “giant” style of professional wrestling. However, one may have to wonder what the attraction of Paul Wight could have been had he continued to do such athletic moves in his career.
thanks to Fightful for the quote
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