During an episode of his weekly ‘Grilling JR’ podcast, Jim Ross spoke about The Big Show’s 1999-2021 WWF/WWE run and stated that he feels WWE overexposed the 7 foot giant in a big way over the years.
Here’s what the legendary play-by-play commentator had to say while discussing Big Show’s WWF debut in 1999:
“Well, I thought at the end of the day over the years that we didn’t do a great job of managing Big Show’s career. I thought we overexposed him, bottom line. He was an attraction.
He was our André, that was the intended direction to go in. But I didn’t think we did an overall start to finish great job and how we utilised Big Show.
I just, too much, we didn’t keep him special, we didn’t keep him unique, and I thought that was a big mistake at the end of the day.
So, but it’s a calculated risk, and also says to a pay-per-view consumer, you never know what’s going to happen.
They had a surprise, they have Big Show come out there. Well, we didn’t know he was even going to be there. So that’s kind of the theory behind that is that when you watch a WWE pay-per-view, you just really never know what’s going to happen, who’s going to show up.
That was the theory behind Big Show debuting that night. And it was a good out for Steve (Austin) to win the match without climbing over the top of the cage with those bad knees and all that stuff. So I thought that was a decent finish actually.”
After years in Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling (1995-1999) as The Giant, Paul Wight debuted LIVE on PPV during the World Wrestling Federation’s ‘WWF In Your House 27: St. Valentine’s Day Massacre’ event at the Memphis Pyramid in Memphis, Tennessee on February 14th 1999.
Also Read: “If I ever did a Moonsault again, he’d never work with me again” – Big Show On Hulk Hogan
