By Phil Allely
This new release from Silver Vision is a rather nice looking triple DVD set looking at the life and career of the organisations largest performer the Big Show. The seven foot tall athlete is by far an unbelievable sight in a world where larger than life performances and actions are everyday events. The charming and comically talented Wight is a perfect example of someone who enjoys his job and relishs the responsibilities and demands it brings.
This set offers up not only a one hour documentary about Paul’s life and career to date, but also presents some of his finest in-ring moments. The documentary is pretty well made, we learn about the young man’s diagnosis of Acromegaly (the condition that saw Andre the Giant grow to such gigantic proportions and die at a young age) Wight is upbeat about his condition, the stress and strain it put on him and the operation he underwent to try to halt its progression.
His rise through the ranks of basketball leagues and his chance meeting with Hulk Hogan (which led to his signing with WWE rival WCW) are covered nicely if briefly. The early career of his on-screen character The Giant are treated similarly, the main bulk of the documentary piece cover the WWE side of things and show how the once toned and athletic wrestler slowly became an overweight embarrassment. Wight’s removal form WWE TV and subsequent time in Ohio Valley Wrestling are mentioned briefly too, this is a time where he felt humbled and saw that his fame, money and WWE career could be gone in mere moments if he did not work for them. Work he did though as Big Show is now one of the more reliable and crowd-drawing members of a rapidly depleting roster, amassing many world titles, singles belts and currently residing as one half of the Tag Team Champions (alongside Kane).
The Big Show/Floyd Mayweather at Wrestlemania boxer/wrestler encounter is rightly mentioned as one of the highlights of the mans career, it bringing the WWE and Big Show to great national notice and creating huge PPV buy-rates along the way.
On the match front there are too many to mention in full, but of them there are some great moment where the Big Show/Giant shone as a true star in the making. The early matches in WCW have their moments and the World Title victory over Hulk Hogan is a very good example of how the Giants character worked so well in that company. And in that era. There are also some choice encounters with Sting and Lex Luger, the WWE portion of matches are very decent too, featuring encounters with Kurt Angle, Steve Austin, Undertaker, Brock Lesnar and Rob Van Dam amongst others.
This box set is a very good way of celebrating the life and times of Paul ‘Big Show’ Wight and perfectly showcases his considerable talents, his progression to acting, dedication to his job and optimism all shine through too. Whilst some of the matches are slightly repetitive in style, they do show the career of the man retrospectively and allow us to see him grow as a performer.
The Big Show - A Giant’s World is available now from www.silvervision.co.uk and all good retailers.
Coming soon from Silver Vision are:
WWE TLC - Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2010
WWE Tagged Classics - Rebellion 2001 & Insurrection 2002
DX - One Last Stand
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