WWE Legend Was Slapped With A Fine For Breaking Vince McMahon Rule

This WWE legend and current AEW star was very different from what Vince McMahon had envisioned for him.

Few athletes in sports entertainment are as huge as Paul Wight, who wrestled in WWE under the nickname Big Show.

The Big Show was a worldwide star when WWE was in the later stages of its Attitude Era and later its Ruthless Aggression Era. He was known for being the 7-feet-tall, 500-pound giant who also had the swiftness and agility of someone far below his weight class.

In WWE, he went on to become a four-time WWE World Champion and was the 12th Grand Slam Champion, having held all the major titles in the business.

The Big Show originally wrestled under his real name, Paul Wight, as a part of WWE’s then-rival WCW from 1995 to 1999.

Wight is now a member of All Elite Wrestling (AEW), WWE’s current rival promotion, led by Tony Khan.

He wrestled as Big Show from 1999 to 2021 in WWE and had major moments during his time there, like imploding the ring on two different occasions, once by being superplexed by Brock Lesnar and the other time by The World’s Strongest Man, Mark Henry.

Wight was no stranger to going to the top rope, but he recently revealed in an interview on Chris Van Vliet’s Insight that it’s not something that Vince McMahon liked.

WWE Legend Paul Wight Says Vince McMahon Fined Him For Doing Top Rope Moves

Wight reveals in the interview that McMahon had a different vision for him, which was akin to that of Andre the Giant, who was a locker room leader and also used simple on-ground offense like giants would.

He says he stopped jumping off the top rope because Vince McMahon once fined him 500 bucks for his actions. He revealed that he had also been called out for doing top rope moves by the likes of Hulk Hogan who blatantly refused to work with Wight if he would do such a move.

Van Vliet: Your size is obvious, but I think your athleticism gets slept on sometimes
Wight: You know I used to jump over the top rope. You know why I stopped doing that? Because Vince fined me 500 bucks for doing it.

Van Vliet: What do you mean?
Wight: Because that’s not how giants move. He was in a different mindset. That was the thing that I was battling. Vince had Andre. Vince wanted Andre. ‘Andre ruled the locker with an iron fist. Andre did this, and Andre did that…’ I’m not Andre. I’m not a raging alcoholic and I’m not a mean person.

Don’t get me wrong, if you talk to Woods and Big E, they’ll say that I’m grumpy, but that’s just from traveling. I’m not really that grumpy person. But I think he was always struggling with that. Everyone had an opinion of how I should work. Some people wanted me to work like Andre. When I was younger, I had so much athleticism, I was like, oh, I need to show this. I need to show this. And then it was like, No, take it away.

I had Hogan call me. Rest in peace. I had Hogan call me in Japan. I threw a drop kick in Japan off the top rope and hit Yasuda with it. I got to my room, there was a blinking light in my hotel, and the message says, ‘Please call Mr. Bollea when you get to your room.’ Oh, hell, they didn’t even say Hulk. It’s Mr. Bollea. I’m in trouble.

So I called Terry collect from Japan back then, ‘Brother, did you just do a drop kick off the top rope in Japan?’ I went, ‘Yeah, I did.’ He just goes, ‘Brother, you ever do that again, I’ll never work with you.’ Click. Because there were guys who wanted Andre. I wasn’t Andre. I wasn’t Kane or Taker either. Those guys are tremendous athletes like Kane and Taker, two of the best big men I’ve ever seen in the business. In my opinion, they’re two of the best big men ever. So I wasn’t them either. I was kind of a weird hybrid. So we tried to find along the way.

Also read: AEW Stops Taking Shots At WWE; Tony Khan Explains Why