Jim Ross has claimed that one former World Champion was rarely helped by the way that he was booked by WWE.
By the time that Paul Wight signed with WWE in 1999 he was a former WCW World Champion on top of having one of the most unique looks in all of professional wrestling. After arriving on television in shocking fashion and being presented as a huge star the bloom was quickly off the rose.
Through reasons of his own making, scattergun booking and multiple heel/face turns, the star known as The Big Show often struggled to find his way in the company. This was despite him being signed to a monster contract and often being prominently featured.
On the most recent episode of his podcast, Grilling JR, Jim Ross looked back the 2003 Royal Rumble. At the time, Big Show was in a feud with Brock Lesnar, who he had defeated at Survivor Series to win the WWE Championship. During the bout Paul Heyman turned on Lesnar to align with Big Show. At the Royal Rumble the pair met to earn a spot in the Royal Rumble match later in the night.
In the end it was Lesnar who scored the win before winning the Rumble match.
Jim Ross Comments On Big Show’s Botched Push
While offering his thoughts on the match, Ross said that Big Show may have had one of the “most fumbled” pushes in WWE history.
“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 get 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.
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 wrong plays 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.”
After winning the Royal Rumble, Brock Lesnar went on to WrestleMania 19 to defeat Kurt Angle in the main event. The match is best remembered for Lesnar botching a Shooting Star Press which left him with a concussion.
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