Paul Wight's (better known as The Big Show in WWE) All Elite Wrestling debut came as a huge shock, especially as it looked like he would be forever loyal to the company which made him a star.
While it's no secret that WWE didn't exactly value Wight as he neared the end of his career, he's now revealed what, for him, was the straw which broke the camel's back. "The last RAW that I did that was just absolutely horrendous because I was going through the contract negotiations then," he revealed on the latest Talk Is Jericho (via Wrestling Inc). "Sometimes, when you’re going through contract negotiations with them, they’ll try to, lack of better term, make things a little bit more awkward, difficult or to prove a point."
"They wanted Randy Orton to ‘pieface’ me into a chair, basically, push me in the face and knock me down. Then I was supposed to sit there in a chair and take it, and I’m like, ‘Well, he’s not going to shove me on my ass.’ I mean, no disrespect to Randy, but Randy knows he couldn’t do it if I didn’t want him to."
Wight went on to explain that while they came to a compromise, he soon realised that being sent out on stage with retired wrestlers Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, and Booker T was indicative of how they viewed him.
"They’re taking my passion away from me. They were taking wrestling away from me and then to just sit there on the ramp and then get called a has-been while I sit there and watch a match, it’s just you talk so much about legends, and respect for legends and respect for Hall of Famers but any time Hall of Famers are around, they get run into the ground," Wight explained. "The talent doesn’t have anything left. The fans don’t have anything left for them, and for me, that was just the icing on the cake where I’m like, you know, I need to restart. I need to rebrand myself."
As we mentioned in the teaser, it's now much easier to understand Wight's thought process for leaving WWE. In AEW, he'll get to sit behind the commentary table each week and occasionally step into the ring. The hope is that when he does, the former Big Show will be booked as Andre the Giant once was.