The Great Wight Hope: How WWE's "The Big Show" Almost Became A Boxer (Expanded Edition)

By David Bixenspan

In 2007, WWE Superstar The Big Show, real name Paul Wight, took a hiatus from professional wrestling to heal up and get in shape. That much is well-known. What wasn't was that, thanks to an arrangement with Hulk Hogan and billionaire aerospace magnate Cecile Barker, he spent that time training for a career as a professional boxer.

Even though he was an aging, broken down, cigarette smoking giant in his mid-30s.

In addition to the original "Great Wight Hope" article that was published by SBNation and appears here with permission, this expanded eBook edition includes:

- WWE's version of what happened with Big Show, Hulk Hogan, and Cecile Barker, as explained in a court motion where they attempted to get a lawsuit filed by Barker thrown out.

- Vince McMahon testifying about how The Big Show vs. Floyd Mayweather was NOT the original plan for WrestleMania 24 in Orlando.

- Hulk Hogan testifying in detail about his pro wrestling career, including how he brought The Undertaker to WWE in 1990.

- Cecile Barker's most colorful moments testifying in the lawsuit that stemmed from the fallout of the Big Show boxing endeavor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Bixenspan
• Release date: Jul 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310227769

Book preview

Acknowledgments

In no particular order:

Travis Heckel, for donating some amazing cover art.

SBNation, for everything, including the contractual permission to republish the article myself.

Glenn Stout, for picking up and editing the article.

Johnathan Snowden, for making it clear just what a special story I had my hands on and that I needed to pitch it somewhere.

Patrick Wyman, Jordan Breen, Dave Walsh, and everyone else who served as valuable sounding boards as I put the article together.

Artie Artwell, for going over all of the minutiae I wanted to cover so as to make sure there wasn’t anything that wasn’t covered by his depositions.

T.J. Wilson, for taking his time to give me a very valuable interview.

Cecile Barker’s lawyers, for dragging this out to a ridiculous degree.

Miami-Dade County, for giving me such easy access to everything I sourced here.

And lots of people I’m probably forgetting.

The Great Wight Hope

How Paul Big Show Wight kind of, sort of, almost — OK not really — became heavyweight boxing champion of the world

Note: All quotations are either from original interviews or from deposition testimony in SoBe Entertainment International, LLC v. Paul Wight, Bess Wight and World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., an ongoing civil lawsuit in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

One day in late October 2007, professional wrestling superstar Paul The Big Show Wight found himself growing increasingly terrified by the second. There was nothing unusual about where he was: He was at home in Miami, sitting in his car in front of his house. The problem was that he was parked in the driver’s seat of his Hummer with the keys in the ignition and had no memory of driving there, much less ever stepping foot into his car. The last he remembered, he was at the gym in the middle of a workout.

How did he get home? Why couldn’t he remember? What the hell happened?

When seven-foot tall Wight walked out in front of the crowd at the Joe Louis Arena a dozen years earlier in 1995, almost to the day, it was the beginning of the rest of his life. Dressed like Andre the Giant and billed as his son, to that point he was the most impressive physical specimen in the history of professional wrestling. Stories from the gym had already become the stuff of legend, with fans and wrestlers alike speaking in hushed tones about this kid who was like a young Andre if Andre could do backflips off the top turnbuckle.

They wanted to make me a player, Wight later explained. They said I was the son of Andre The Giant so I had a little bit of credibility with our fans going into it, which was always kind of a rough thing for me because you get some dedicated fans that were very rural that would [say], ‘Oh, I loved your dad,’ and I’m thinking, oh, my dad was an airplane mechanic, but, thanks. But I know who they’re talking about. They’re talking about Andre.

For all intents and purposes, it was his first real match. He had technically made his debut 10 months earlier in a converted shopping center in Clementon, New Jersey, only to be quickly scooped up by Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling (WCW) to hone his skills in their Atlanta training center. His lone match against Frank Finnegan at the Route 30 Market didn’t really count. After all, it couldn’t possibly prepare him for what WCW earmarked for his debut: A pay-per-view main event against Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea), who had taken the sizable youngster under his wing. And when the dust cleared that night in Detroit, Wight had defeated Hogan to become the heavyweight champion of the world. The win was designed to be controversial, part of a convoluted storyline that involved Monster Trucks, his father’s wardrobe from The Princess Bride, Hogan shoving Wight off the roof of Cobo Hall and a mummy named The Yeti.

It was obvious that the man best known these days as Big Show was going to be a big star for a long time. What had taken place was unprecedented. Winning the heavyweight championship of the world in his first real match? From the biggest star in the history of pro wrestling? Wight was made.

Twelve years later, on the fateful day in 2007 when Wight found himself in his Hummer in front of his home with no idea how he had gotten there, it all came full circle. As he tried and failed to rebuild his memories of the day, he eventually would come to realize that this could all be traced to a question that Hogan had asked him about a year earlier.

Paul, have you ever boxed?

Wight’s path to the ring can be traced back to when he was nine years old, when the symptoms of acromegaly first manifested. An excess of growth hormone caused by a tumor on the pituitary gland caused Wight to grow to 6’2 tall by the time he was 12 years old. He grew another six inches in the next two years, and by the time he was a college freshman playing basketball at Northern Oklahoma College, he stood 7’1 and had become a cartoonishly big eater: His metabolism was so accelerated that McDonald’s staffers were regularly wowed as Wight downed enough Big Macs and fries for five. Wight was officially diagnosed with acromegaly during his freshman year playing college ball, at which point he learned that he wasn’t blessed the way he thought he was. If he didn’t stop growing, he risked enlarged internal organs, spinal problems, diabetes and scads of other medical issues. Although surgery at age 19 stopped his