Jim Ross On Huge Star’s Time In WWE – “One Of The Most Fumbled Pushes Of Anybody I Can Recall”
Jim Ross has explained why he felt WWE dropped the ball when it came to pushing one of the biggest superstars in the history of the company, the Big Show.
When it comes to giants in wrestling, few of them were as big and as successful as former WWE star Big Show, who works for AEW now as an announcer using his real name, Paul Wight.
During his incredible WWE career that began in 1999 after a main event run in WCW, Big Show was a four-time WWE World Heavyweight Champion and is no doubt a WWE Hall of Famer someday. However, he also had a lot of stop-and-start pushes, far too many heel-face turns and a lot of inconsistency in his career.
On a new episode of his Grilling JR podcast covering the 2003 Royal Rumble, Jim Ross and co-host Conrad Thompson were talking about the opening match that saw Brock Lesnar beat Big Show. That would lead to JR talking about how he felt WWE fumbled in terms of how they used Big Show.
In the opinion of Jim Ross, a guy like Big Show shouldn’t be too many big bumps in a match while pointing out that one big bump for Big Show in a match should have been enough.
“It was a good opener. It also speaks to the fact that I’ve mentioned here on the show before that I thought that Big Show was probably one of the most fumbled pushes of anybody that I can recall off the top of my head in WWE. You don’t book a guy just because he can do all those suplexes and you do them. One major bump for Big Show was enough. And it gets Lesnar over more, because he didn’t have to do 10 things to beat you. And so I thought it was a little bit overdone.”
While JR appreciated Big Show’s willingness to sell for his opponents, Jim Ross believed that WWE repeatedly booked Big Show in an awkward way.
“I admire Paul Wight’s desire to try to be accommodating, I really do. And it was very professional of him in that respect. But it was the wrong place being called. He could have got the same results with less physicality on a guy that was not quite 100%. And so I thought The Big Show was booked in a kind of an awkward way more often than not. But to any event, it was a good opener had a lot of star power.”
“And, you know, if Lesnar had lost, it would have been a total shock, because he’s in there the biggest athlete in the world. But the biggest athlete in the world was taking bumps like he was Juventud Guerrera.”
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