Aiken Co. native with growth disorder risked his health — and life — for the lifestyle provided by pro wrestling

By KENT BABB

AUGUSTA— There was a moment when the giant looked reborn. He moved with grace, bounced his fist off his opponent’s skull, primed himself for victory.

What a way to go out it would be, to retire as world heavyweight champion. The Big Show is winning this wrestling match, pounding Bobby Lashley into oblivion. The only thing left is the Big Show’s finishing move, the devastating ...

Hold it. In a flash, Lashley flips the switch. Now he is pounding the Big Show. One ... two ... three punches and a running elbow that knocks the giant on his back. This is no way to go out — no way to begin the final descent of the Big Show’s career, looking up at a snarling opponent.

Look around. Thousands have piled into James Brown Arena on this night, a Sunday in December. They came for this, to watch this main event and to watch the Big Show, who grew up less than an hour from the arena. In here, he is an attraction. Listed at 7 feet and 507 pounds, he is something to see. He is one of the largest characters in a business of tall tales.

Out there, outside the ring and beyond the spotlights, he is Paul Wight. He grew up in New Holland, a town in rural Aiken County. He was a football player and all-state basketball player at Batesburg’s W.W. King Academy.

In here, he is marketable. His size has earned him millions of dollars, a house on a Florida lake and a diverse career as a wrestler, actor and businessman. Without his looming body, none of it would have been possible.

Out there, his size represents a health risk. Wight is morbidly obese and has an enlarged heart. His work and travel schedules allow little time for proper rest and nutrition, which has prevented many of his injuries from healing. He cannot stand for more than a few minutes. He cannot sit for much longer.

Wight is 35 years old, but his mother, Dorothy, says her only son’s body operates as if it were 40 years older.

Wight’s size was partly caused by a tumor on his pituitary gland, which controls growth and tells most bodies to stop growing at a certain age. The tumor, which prevented those signals from reaching his brain, was removed when Wight was 19 ... and 7 feet tall ... and nearly 350 pounds.

Was the tumor the best thing to happen to Wight or the worst thing? It created unimaginable opportunities. It also created a world of health problems that could shorten his life.

In here, none of that matters. He is the Big Show, and on this night that is what he is putting on. His job is to suspend reality, ignore its consequences and keep the thousands at James Brown Arena mesmerized by what might happen next.

But what comes next for Wight? As of this night, he has three months remaining on his contract with World Wrestling Entertainment. His plans, according to Dorothy Wight, are to take time off and possibly retire. She and others have urged Paul Wight to stay retired, to stay out there for good.

But out there is reality. Out there, consequences are waiting.

One life offers riches and fame ... at the expense of health. The other life stomps opportunities but promises a healthier, potentially longer life.

Even in a world of tall tales, straddling both sides can be done for only so long.

“He had a Nissan truck or a little old Toyota. For exercise, he’d go out to the back of it, grab it by the fender and start picking it up. He was the picture of a monster when it comes to strong.”

— Bill Scyphers, Wight’s basketball coach his senior season at W.W. King

“We heard we were getting a new basketball recruit who was really tall and really good. He got to the school and walked toward the football field. It looked like he kept growing and growing and growing the closer he got to us.”

— Jason Booth, a former football teammate of Wight’s at W.W. King

A GIANT UPBRINGING

Dorothy Wight did the math and shook her head. The equation must have been off. Dorothy and her husband, Paul, did not notice their son’s rapid growth until a Southern tradition yielded startling results.

The equation suggests that, at a child’s first birthday, multiplying its height by three will predict its height as an adult. The result suggested the younger Wight would grow to 7 feet, 4 inches.

Dorothy, who is 5-foot-10, scoffed at the prediction. So did her 6-3 husband. Then again, Paul was always hungry. Two weeks after Paul’s birth, Dorothy stopped buying baby formula because it served only as an appetizer. When she fried chicken, the baby smelled the cooking meat and screamed until his mother gave him a taste. Years later, when Paul was a teen, Dorothy needed a plan for her son’s hunger, which required about 6,000 calories per day. Weekly trips to a wholesale food store yielded 10 pounds of ground beef and 50 pounds of potatoes.

“I was in labor for 14½ hours,” Dorothy says. “He didn’t want to come out. When he was ready, he popped out, started growing and said he was ready to eat.”

The food fueled Wight’s growth, which never seemed to slow. When he was a junior at W.W. King, Wight was 6 feet, 9 inches and weighed 325 pounds — with 7 percent body fat.

He wore size-38 pants and a XXXXL shirt the day he walked into David Rankin’s office and asked how a kid might sign up to play football.

“I said, ‘What grade?’ because I thought he had a young’un or something,” Rankin says. “He said, ‘I’m going to be a junior.”

Football was Wight’s first love, but basketball grabbed him by the ear and didn’t let go. He was an unstoppable post presence, sure. But he liked to shoot 3-pointers. When the Knights had a lead that satisfied coach Bill Scyphers — 70 points or so, Scyphers says — Wight had permission to leave the lane and pop 3-pointers until his shoulders ached.

He was an all-state player in 1990, his senior season, and had several scholarship offers to play college basketball. He spent a year at an Oklahoma junior college before playing the 1991-92 season at Wichita State.

Wight was a 19-year-old sophomore when he noticed blurry spots in his vision. Regular checkups found nothing unusual, but his vision remained unclear. A trip to the Mayo Clinic, a renowned hospital in Minnesota, yielded an answer. There was a tumor on his pituitary gland, doctors said. It was smaller than a grain of sand. If it was not removed, Wight’s vision might never improve. And he might never stop growing.

Surgery eliminated the tumor, but it came during the most difficult time in Wight’s life. He gained about 100 pounds after the procedure, making basketball more difficult than ever. At the end of Wight’s sophomore season, Wichita State coach Mike Cohen was fired. Soon afterward, Wight’s father died of cancer.

Wight was finished with school. In the summer of 1992, he dropped out of Wichita State and shuffled among a handful low-wage jobs. Wight’s luck changed in 1994 when he was invited to appear in a celebrity basketball game in Illinois. One of his teammates was legendary wrestler Hulk Hogan, who was stunned by Wight’s agility and size and offered to connect him with the right people in wrestling.

Wight, a longtime wrestling fan, accepted Hogan’s invitation and began training.

In his first match, with World Championship Wrestling in 1995, Wight — known as “the Giant” — beat Hogan to win the world heavyweight championship.

“He could take a Coke can and hold it in his hand. His hand was so big, the only thing you could see was the ends.”

— Rankin, Wight’s football coach at King Academy

SUCCESS ... WITH A PRICE

Wight’s wrestling success earned him a 10-year contract with WWE in 1999. It paid him about $1 million per year. His exposure also opened doors for movie roles and appearances in TV commercials.

He is a real-life giant, and he is more marketable when he is at his largest. His listed weight of 507 pounds is part of the show; to make the figure believable, Wight has weighed around 450 pounds since his 1995 debut.

But the heavier Wight is, the more his body breaks down. The weight strains his muscles and joints; he has had several knee surgeries, one of which deflated his chances of reviving his basketball career at a small college in Illinois. His mother says Wight has an enlarged heart, which she downplays as being part of the large package.

Still, the show must go on. And if Wight wants to be paid, he must weigh enough to look like a giant — and he must be silent about his weaknesses.

Dorothy Wight said her son’s contract forbade him from participating in interviews without permission from WWE officials. Upon learning this story would examine Wight’s health and the strains wrestling puts on it, WWE spokesman Joe Villa said The State would not be permitted to interview Wight at the Augusta show in December. Phone calls and messages left at Wight’s Tampa, Fla., residence and home office were not returned.

It was in late 2006, however, when Wight’s body began breaking down to a point WWE could no longer hide it.

“When he got his high-school ring, as a junior, he had the second-largest ring that Jostens had made. ... It looked like a bracelet, the thing was so big.”

— Keith Gibson, former basketball coach at W.W. King

“I’ve seen eight people try to tackle him and eight people bounce off like he was a steel wall. I never saw one or two tackle him. That just didn’t happen.”

— Jason Booth, one of Wight’s former football teammates at W.W. King

THE UPSIDE OF LOSING

It is all staged, of course. Scripted, yes. But ask any wrestler: It is sure not fake. The action, like a compelling tall tale, has a beginning, middle and end. The chaos is kept in order by, of all people, the referee. The wrestlers are the players. The referee is the director.

It is a Sunday night in December. This night’s main event is billed as an “Extreme Elimination Chamber” match. Two wrestlers begin the match in the ring, and, according to the rules, four others will enter at random. A wrestler is eliminated by being pinned or disqualified. The last man standing among the six will be the Extreme Championship Wrestling heavyweight champion. ECW is a branch promotion of WWE.

The Big Show is the last wrestler to enter. All but Bobby Lashley, a chiseled man and a former college wrestler, have been eliminated. Neither of these facts happened by accident. Like the match’s ending — Lashley pinned the Big Show to win the championship — Wight’s entrance order and participation were scripted.

He spends 3 minutes, 42 seconds in the ring. The next-shortest appearance is more than twice that amount of time. Wight’s movements, on offense and defense, are slow and careful. Wight, who once could execute a back flip off the top turnbuckle, now has trouble walking. At this stage of Wight’s career, priority is placed on getting him in and out of the ring as quickly as possible.

He entered this night with a torn abdominal muscle, a bulging disk in his back, a weak ankle, a sprained wrist and a history of knee surgeries.

The injuries, and that Wight’s WWE contract will expire in three months, played into promoters’ decision to relieve the Big Show of his championship. Wight accepted the decision with little commotion. After all, losing the title has an upside. His time out of the main-event spotlight means he can spend much of the final months of his contract doing what he could not for the past 10 years: healing.

It was his schedule — Wight’s WWE contract, which expired in March, required him to work 285 dates per year, not including travel days — that left few options for his at-home routine. Upon returning to Tampa, Wight visits a chiropractor. The next stop is the acupuncturist. His final destination, for as long as the calendar will allow, is his sofa.

Wight’s mother, Dorothy, says her son has the body of a 70-year-old. That he smokes cigarettes and maintains a global travel schedule, Dorothy says, is reason to worry. And it is proof that her son’s work is far from fake.

“The body is not designed for that,” she says. “They (pro wrestlers) hurt. They bruise. They get beat up. They do stuff that sane people wouldn’t do. It’s time for him to give this up. He needs to give it up.”

“What he eats, for you and me it would be two meals. For him, it’s one. His latest kick is cutting up four or five hot dogs and pouring Campbell’s Chunky soup over them. Then he’ll drink a gallon of chocolate milk and go to bed.”

— Dorothy Wight

AFTER THE FINAL BELL

Three months after his WWE contract expired, Wight is gone. He is gone from wrestling. Gone from the United States and its demands. Reality, it would appear, can wait.

Dorothy Wight said her son and his wife, Bess, spent last month on vacation in Greece. It is Wight’s chance to relax, unbutton his trousers and exhale.

For now, Wight can wrestle when he wants — and not one match more. A report on a pro wrestling Web site stated Wight wrestled Hulk Hogan, a longtime friend, last month in a small-promotion show in Memphis.

During a news conference before that match, Wight said he no longer would wrestle under the name “the Big Show,” a moniker he jokingly referred to in April as his “slave name.”

Wight said he was tired of living at the mercy of others, presumably promoters who profit from his obesity. It is a role he has played for more than a decade and one he played flawlessly. Wight sacrificed his body and his health in exchange for fame and fortune. It is a trade that eventually wore thin.

Dorothy Wight said Bess, who also works as Wight’s manager, has invested much of the money Wight earned from his various occupations. Dorothy Wight said the couple would have no problem living comfortably, even if Wight never returns to wrestling.

Wight has lived 35 years as a giant, part of a tall tale. He might spend the next decade undoing the damage he did to his body during the past 13 years. Wight said during the Memphis news conference that he had lost 60 pounds since retiring after the December show in Augusta. He said he feels better, mentally and physically, than he has in more than a decade.

“Paul Wight, not the Big Show, is very intelligent,” Dorothy Wight says. “Paul Wight is funny. He’s articulate. He’s a clown. He reads. He’s Stephen King and Star Trek. Heavy stuff. When you get to know Paul the guy, he’s a good, loyal friend.”

Wight came to a crossroad that night in Augusta. There was something about the way he walked up the ramp after losing to Lashley. There was something about the way he paused and stared into the crowd. It was as if he was saying goodbye.

Less than 50 miles from his home, where the growth started and the wild stories of a giant man took flight, Wight turned and walked away. It was in Augusta that Paul Wight took the first steps out of the Big Show’s skin.

Perhaps Wight realized tall tales are better without a sad ending.

Reach Babb at (803) 771-8357.