Big Show, now known as Paul Wight in AEW, discussed turning down a surprising WCW contract offer from Eric Bischoff in the mid-90’s on Oral Sessions with Renee Young. Wrestling-Edge transcribed the first quote. Big Show’s new AEW character name has leaked.
“Eric Bischoff offered me I think it was $700 a week to train at the Power Plant. I was blown away.”
He added that Jimmy Hart turned down the deal on his behalf. “Jimmy, I almost beat up in the parking lot of the CNN Towers. Jimmy goes, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? $700 a week for him? He’s a one of a kind athlete. Fucking call me when you’re serious.’”
Big Show was furious at Hart, as he was broke at the time and needed the money. Hart insisted they would call, which they eventually did, offering him a much bigger contract.
He also discussed a bad backstage speech fom 5 years ago, “I got the speech five years ago that’s a pretty bad speech. I got pulled into a talent relations office and got told I will never main event WrestleMania again, I will not main event a pay-per-view again, and I will only be used to get over NXT talent. That was said to my face. There’s your inspiration, now go work hurt. Vince didn’t say that to me, it wasn’t him, but nothing gets said to you without…you know where it comes from.
It hurt a little bit, but that’s where we’re at. I understand where they’re coming from, they were trying to give me a heads up. ‘You’ve done everything we can do with you, you’ve had a great career, maybe it’s time to think about slowing down.’ Fuck that. I want to go to Vince and say, ‘Are you going to slow down? Well, then don’t ask me to slow down.’ If I hadn’t gone through everything I went through, I wouldn’t have had the courage to walk away when this contract expired.” Fightful transcribed the second quote about the backstage meeting.
