Thanks to Mike Informer for link to this article:  Aiken Today || The Big Show is coming home

The Big Show is coming home

Tues, Nov 28, 2006

Paul Wight, right, aka "the Big Show," clashes with fellow wrestlers Test, center, and Rob Van Dam during a press conference Monday at the James Brown Arena in Augusta. (Tony Baughman photo)

By TONY BAUGHMAN Staff writer

To professional wrestling fans, the Big Show is one of the biggest, baddest beasts in the ring.

But away from the cameras and cheering crowds, the man behind the "Show" – 7-foot-tall, 507-pound Aiken native Paul Wight – is a soft-spoken Southern boy-made-good who hasn't forgotten his small-town roots.

"From very, very humble beginnings to now traveling the world and being a superstar, it's crazy," said Wight, 34, nursing a coffee in his mammoth hands following a promotional appearance Monday at Augusta's James Brown Arena.

Wight, in character as the villainous Big Show, will headline an Extreme Championship Wrestling pay-per-view broadcast live from Augusta this Sunday, Dec. 3. ECW's "December to Dismember" begins at 7:45 p.m.

Tickets start at $20 and are available at the arena box office or at www.ticketmaster.com.

For the current World Champion in ECW – an edgier offshoot of Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment – this weekend's performance will mark an emotional homecoming after more than a dozen years as one of wrestling's most recognized (and sometimes reviled) road warriors.

"It's going to be awesome. It's really an overwhelming feeling of pride," Wight said. "I'm a 'bad guy' now, so I can't really vocalize how much this means to me to represent and put on the best show that we absolutely can for our fans. But I'm really hoping that all my friends from Aiken will come over here and check it out – come out and boo me."

Growing up in Aiken County, Wight knew early on that he was different from other kids. On the football field and basketball court, he towered over teammates and competitors. As a cadet in the Aiken County Sheriff's Department Explorers Scout troupe, he dwarfed his instructors.

Wight had moments of insecurity about his size, but he parlayed his height and athletic ability into success at Wyman King Academy, a small private school in Batesburg-Leesville. There, he was an all-state and all-conference standout in basketball and excelled in football, baseball and track.

He was recruited by more than 50 colleges, including Clemson and USC, and finally settled on Wichita State University. Kansas would become a brief but life-altering detour in the making of The Big Show.

In March 1992, during Wight's sophomore season, Wichita State coach Mike Cohen was ousted by the university. That shake-up was the final blow in string of heartaches for then 20-year-old Wight, who soon dropped out of school.

"I had lost my dad a few months earlier, lost my grandfather, and Coach Cohen was kind of like a father to me," he said. "I just lost my heart. I really didn't have a heart for anything anymore."

Wight worked odd jobs while trying to figure out the rest of his life. He moved to Chicago and considered trying out for the Bears, hoping his size 22EEEEE shoes might follow the footsteps of another sizable Aikenite, William Perry, into the NFL.

"I missed home, but I didn't want to come back to South Carolina without trying to do something with my life," Wight said. "As a young man leaving South Carolina, I felt like I had a lot of pressure to do well for my hometown, and I just couldn't come back with my tail between my legs."

A chance encounter with legendary wrestler Hulk Hogan (himself an Augusta native) and former child star Danny Bonaduce would be Wight's big break. Bonaduce, then a Chicago morning radio host, hired Wight as his "ringer" in a charity basketball game against Hogan and actor Mr. T.

"So I got a chance to meet Hulk. He was very gracious and gave me an opportunity, and I guess the rest is history," Wight said.

Media mogul Ted Turner's now-defunct World Championship Wrestling in Atlanta hired Wight as a character called "The Giant," the modern-day answer to gargantuan 1970s-era wrestler Andre the Giant. He made his first WCW appearance in July 1995, launching a scripted feud with his mentor Hogan.

WCW started Wight at the top. His first match was an impromptu WCW Championship challenge against Hogan on Oct. 29, 1995, during a pay-per-view card at Detroit's Cobo Hall. Hogan was disqualified, and because of a secret clause in the contract, the title was awarded to Wight. (A week later, WCW officials ruled the contract invalid and "stripped" Wight of the title.)

Six months later, Wight "won" the WCW Championship a second time over another wrestling legend, "Nature Boy" Ric Flair.

"Beating Ric Flair for the title was great because I was such a fan of Ric Flair's growing up," Wight said. "I used to 'Woooo!' and strut (like Flair) playing basketball. I got in trouble all the time for acting like Ric Flair."

Less than a year after his debut, Wight was an instant superstar in professional wrestling, which at the time was the highest-rated programming on cable television. He headlined arenas across America. He teamed with other wrestlers on storylines that gave him tag team titles, and he developed a global fan base.

"I'm a small-town kid from South Carolina, and I'm walking around London, looking at Big Ben. I'm in Berlin, looking at the wall. I'm in Japan," he said. "It was really heavy for a kid like me. I was blown away by everything. I had never been to California until I got into wrestling. My first trip to L.A., I expected everywhere I looked to be movie stars. But they're smart; they hide."

In February 1999, Wight jumped from the struggling WCW to the resurgent WWE (then called World Wrestling Federation), where he was first dubbed "Big Nasty" and finally "The Big Show." In the seven years since, he has "won" and "lost" the WWE championship twice, the WWE tag team title three times and a special "hard-core" title three times and has performed in main events against such wrestling elite as Dwight "The Rock" Johnson, Triple H and John Cena.

Last July 4, after the WWE resurrected renegade promoter Paul Heyman's defunct Extreme Championship Wrestling, Wight won the ECW title. According to his official WWE biography, "the Big Show" is the only man ever to win the WCW Heavyweight Championship, the WWE Championship and the ECW title.

These days, when he's not performing, Wight lives in Tampa, Fla., with his second wife, Bess, and four dogs, four cats, a bird, a fish and a turtle.

"My wife has a thing for animals; that's why she married me. The next thing that walks in that house better be on two legs and call me Dad – and not be a chimpanzee with a speech machine," said Wight (who has a daughter, Sierra, from his first marriage).

Because of the demands of his job – about 275 shows a year – Wight doesn't return to Aiken as often as he would like. When the WWE promotes events in Columbia and other nearby cities, he can visit with his mother and other family who still live in this area, but those homecomings are all too brief. They also conjure sweet memories.

"I drove by South Aiken High School when I went through Aiken the last time. I didn't go to school at South Aiken, but I went to school at Kennedy Middle School and Millbrook Elementary," Wight said. "I remember riding my bike to school. That little neighborhood, I remember I used to walk it, and it was a dirt road. I almost couldn't find my way back to my house because now it's all subdivisions and all built up. I remember it being nothing but pine trees, back when I was building forts in the woods."

On Monday, riding in the back of a stretch limousine to the James Brown Arena, one childhood memory came flooding back, reminding Paul Wight that no matter where you might travel, no matter how big of a "Show" you become, home is always a special place.

"When I was 14, I used to drive my grandfather from Aiken over here (to Augusta) because he couldn't see very good. I'd take his big Buick LeSabre, this big boat, and drive to Fox's Appliance Store to buy electrical parts because my grandfather was an electrician," he said. "I remember being a kid in there, buying the breakers and the ballast and the wiring and all that stuff. I remember the smell of the place. There's no place like this. New York's got its flavor and its style, but there's this great hometown peace about the Aiken-Augusta area. It's good to be home."