The Big Show is practically an institution in WWE at this point but there was a time in his WWE career where things didn’t look so positive. He was way out of shape, overweight, smoking heavily, and eating a ton of bad food.
Vince McMahon and other WWE officials finally had enough of Big Show’s promises to get back in to shape and quit smoking when they noticed that every time they would turn around Show was standing beside a production truck having a cigarette and eating junk again.
Bruce Prichard went into the subject of Big Show’s declining health and the reasoning behind sending him down to OVW for some hard lessons on a recent episode of Something To Wrestle With.
“So that was the same kind of thing going on here with Big Show he would go and get — send out for 4 Big Macs, forty pieces of chicken McNuggets, a milk shake — and he just wasn’t taking good care of himself.”
“The fear was also, look at the history of giants. Andre died in his mid-forties and Vince [McMahon] was very concerned that if Show didn’t take care of himself that he would die at a young age. He didn’t want that to happen, really wanted this guy to have a career and for him to be healthy because he’s already got one strike against him.”
“He wasn’t doing it and we felt the only way Big Show was going to take us seriously is if we sent him back to down to OVW. Go down there and get your ass in shape and by getting your ass in shape it’s not just losing weight but get in ring shape. Be able to go, get your cardio better and when you’re right we’ll bring ya back. But Vince had just had it and it wasn’t one match, one night or anything like that. It was a culmination of Show not being able to perform at the level we were looking at him to perform at.”
Thankfully Big Show was able to turn things around and get his massive legs underneath him once more. At this point Big Show is in the best shape of his career and enjoying a fine run with WWE. He’s not doing much, but he’s doing just enough. However, if Vince McMahon and others hadn’t cared about The Big Show’s health so many years ago, who knows how things could have turned out.
If you use any portion of the quotes in this article please credit Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription
