One MIND-BLOWING Secret From Every Year Of WCW History
4. 1998 | The Giant Wanted To Do What?!
Paul ‘The Giant’ Wight very visibly fell out of love with wrestling in 1998.
Legend has it that the guy was such a grafter and such an athletic specimen that he was physically capable of executing a moonsault that you never ended up seeing because, understandably, nobody was prepared to take it. GIFs of the Giant taking a PerfectPlex still do the rounds on Twitter and Reddit. He could have been the best big man worker ever, a prototype for the modern variant his successors could never match, but then he realised that he didn’t have to do anything. When wrestlers these days say they’re hungry, it’s a trite way of describing their motivation level. When Wight was hungry in 1998, he ate so much that Jim Ross spent much of a decade passive-aggressively burying him for it on his blog. Wight also really enjoyed a cigarette. This is not big nor clever, but it was funny watching him do it mid-match to convey just how easy it was for him to defeat the latest hapless enhancement talent.
When Wight made the jump to the WWF - in a deal brokered by of all people Bushwhacker Luke (!) - the promotion was so appalled at his conditioning that he enjoys the rare distinction of being so large and marketable and yet so unmotivated that he was demoted to developmental after winning the World title. If an item from the August 24 Observer is to be believed, that disastrous 1999 run, and the 30+ babyface and heel runs that followed, might not have happened.
Supposedly, the Giant wanted out of WCW in order to re-train as a heavyweight boxer. This might have made sense at a much younger age; the guy was freakishly strong and very obviously huge. However, by 27, and smoking a Paris suburb’s worth of tabs every day, it wasn’t going to work.
In another Giant-related story, it was reported by Meltzer in the same edition that he interfered in Chris Jericho’s matches, in a quickly dropped storyline, to try and get Jericho in the New World Order. Jericho very cleverly refused, knowing that he was actually on the way out, and that he’d have lowered his value milling about next to Brian Adams as a glorified background pixel.