R.I.P. Bam Bam Bigelow
The wrestling world lost yet another of it's own at a far too young age when Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow was found dead in his apartment a few days ago.
I was saddened to hear of his passing this weekend, b/c while Bam Bam was never one of my all-time favorite wrestlers, I always respected him. The guy was like 350 pounds (if not more) and was able to do dropkicks, moonsaults and all other sorts of athletic moves guys his size shouldn't have been able to do.
Most of you may remember Bam Bam as the guy who fought former NFL superstar, Lawrence Taylor in the main event of Wrestlemania XI. But I remember him mostly for his classic matches against guys like Bret Hart, Taz and Rob Van Dam (let's also not forget his massacre of Spike Dudley).
But I actually have a personal story about Bigelow. Kayfabe in wrestling was broken to me for the first time by Bigelow. Kayfabe, to all those who don't know is basically: Wrestlers obviously pretend to hate each other for television, and they are supposed to keep that up in the presence of fans. But sometimes wrestlers "break" kayfabe, by hanging out with their "hated rivals" in public.
I was about 12-13 years old, and the WWE (then the WWF) held a wrestling show over at the gymnasium of Mount Saint Michael HS in the Bronx. My dad took me, my sis and my grandfather and we had a fun time [As a side note: I also remember this night well b/c one of the matches featured a young Triple H (then known as Hunter Hearst Helmsley) battling Doink the Clown. This was memorable b/c during the match, me and my sister started screaming at Triple H to do certain moves to Doink to beat him up, and Triple H actually looked our way and started to do the moves we were screaming out at him. That was just very cool and fun.]
But I digress. The point of the story was that the main event of the show was Bam Bam Bigelow vs King Kong Bundy. The match ended in either a Double-DQ or Double Count-Out (I forget), but then it became a tag team match when King Kong Bundy teamed with Mabel (you may now know him as Viscera) to fight Bigelow and Adam Bomb. These guys all kicked each other's asses all over the gym, and in the end Bam Bam and Adam Bomb won.
So after the event was over, we stuck around for awhile to get autographs from some of the wrestlers, and just as we got into my dad's van to leave we see Bam Bam Bigelow and King Kong Bundy get into the same car and drive off together! This was shocking to me, b/c these guys just beat the daylights out of each other and now they were friends giving each other a ride?!?
Then my dad explained to me "see, it's like I told you. Wrestling is fake (that I was aware of), these guys might be good friends in real life. They both live in Jersey, so Bam Bam is probably just giving Bundy a ride home. They don't really hate each other like on TV and probably hang out to get beers after the shows (this was a sort of revelation to me)."
So from that point on, I knew for sure that everything on the wrestling shows was fake (not just the pre-determined outcomes and stuff). This let me see wrestling in a whole new (and better) way. And I have Bam Bam Bigelow to thank for that.
So R.I.P. Bam Bam, you will be missed.
I was saddened to hear of his passing this weekend, b/c while Bam Bam was never one of my all-time favorite wrestlers, I always respected him. The guy was like 350 pounds (if not more) and was able to do dropkicks, moonsaults and all other sorts of athletic moves guys his size shouldn't have been able to do.
Most of you may remember Bam Bam as the guy who fought former NFL superstar, Lawrence Taylor in the main event of Wrestlemania XI. But I remember him mostly for his classic matches against guys like Bret Hart, Taz and Rob Van Dam (let's also not forget his massacre of Spike Dudley).
But I actually have a personal story about Bigelow. Kayfabe in wrestling was broken to me for the first time by Bigelow. Kayfabe, to all those who don't know is basically: Wrestlers obviously pretend to hate each other for television, and they are supposed to keep that up in the presence of fans. But sometimes wrestlers "break" kayfabe, by hanging out with their "hated rivals" in public.
I was about 12-13 years old, and the WWE (then the WWF) held a wrestling show over at the gymnasium of Mount Saint Michael HS in the Bronx. My dad took me, my sis and my grandfather and we had a fun time [As a side note: I also remember this night well b/c one of the matches featured a young Triple H (then known as Hunter Hearst Helmsley) battling Doink the Clown. This was memorable b/c during the match, me and my sister started screaming at Triple H to do certain moves to Doink to beat him up, and Triple H actually looked our way and started to do the moves we were screaming out at him. That was just very cool and fun.]
But I digress. The point of the story was that the main event of the show was Bam Bam Bigelow vs King Kong Bundy. The match ended in either a Double-DQ or Double Count-Out (I forget), but then it became a tag team match when King Kong Bundy teamed with Mabel (you may now know him as Viscera) to fight Bigelow and Adam Bomb. These guys all kicked each other's asses all over the gym, and in the end Bam Bam and Adam Bomb won.
So after the event was over, we stuck around for awhile to get autographs from some of the wrestlers, and just as we got into my dad's van to leave we see Bam Bam Bigelow and King Kong Bundy get into the same car and drive off together! This was shocking to me, b/c these guys just beat the daylights out of each other and now they were friends giving each other a ride?!?
Then my dad explained to me "see, it's like I told you. Wrestling is fake (that I was aware of), these guys might be good friends in real life. They both live in Jersey, so Bam Bam is probably just giving Bundy a ride home. They don't really hate each other like on TV and probably hang out to get beers after the shows (this was a sort of revelation to me)."
So from that point on, I knew for sure that everything on the wrestling shows was fake (not just the pre-determined outcomes and stuff). This let me see wrestling in a whole new (and better) way. And I have Bam Bam Bigelow to thank for that.
So R.I.P. Bam Bam, you will be missed.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home