Paul Wight Convinced Vince McMahon To Do Controversial Storyline
Paul Wight has revealed an interesting story from his WWE career that led to his head being shaved by Kurt Angle.
While Paul Wight has been a part of AEW since early 2021, he was known as the Big Show in WWE for over 20 years and he was The Giant in WCW for a few years before that.
There is no doubt that Paul Wight is a future WWE Hall of Famer thanks to his six World Championship reigns (counting WWE & WCW) as well as being a main event level performer for over 20 years.
On the September 23, 2004 edition of Smackdown, Wight as Big Show was part of a controversial angle that involved his head being shaved. It was part of a feud he was in with Kurt Angle, who “knocked out” the giant by using a tranquilizer gun.
In an interview with Wes & Walker, Wight recalled pitching the storyline to Vince McMahon, which involved Kurt Angle using the tranquilizer gun on Big Show as if he was some animal in the wild and that led to the head shaving. Wight spoke about the process of pitching it to Vince McMahon.
“Everything I’ve ever done, most of it has been my idea on doing a lot of stuff. There’s a famous one where Kurt Angle shot me with a dart gun to shave my head. I was in the production meeting and I first pitched it out, and everyone started laughing. I was like, ‘No, I saw this thing on National Geographic where they had to shoot this Water Buffalo to transfer it to another park.’”
“I’m like, ‘It’d be great. You’re going to shave my head, and I’m a giant. What are you going to knock me out with that I’m going to lay there long enough?’ He shot me with a real dart, there was nothing in it, but I wanted the visual of the dart sticking my back because I thought, ‘That’d be great,’ and I could do the roar and the sell and fall down and I’m helpless.”
“How do you tell that story? I was all wrapped up in the mechanics of it and finally talked Vince [Vince McMahon] into doing it. Vince was kind of crazy back then. He thought I was just trying to be tough. When I started to explain it to him more, he really got into it. If I wanted to get out of it, we weren’t getting out of it.”
“I was into it, except for that part where my friend Kurt Angle has OCD and instead of pumping the gun once, he pumped it six times. When he shot me in the back with that thing, from five feet away because we wanted to make sure there was no missing and no accident. When he hit me, you’ll see me look over my shoulder at Kurt because, in my mind, I’m like, ‘Oww!’ It was intense. I’ve never been shot before, and I’m sure being really shot hurts much worse, but that’s all I need to know of ever getting shot.”
When Was Paul Wight’s Last Match?
At 51 years old, Paul Wight doesn’t wrestle that often anymore. While he’s not fully retired, he has taken a step back due to age and injuries taking their toll.
The last time that Wight wrestled in AEW was on the November 15th edition of AEW Dynamite when he was part of an eight-man tag team Street Fight. During the match, Powerhouse Hobbs powerslammed Wight onto a car and Wight didn’t do anything else in the match, yet his team managed to pick up the win.