Back in the day, when The Big Show was just known as Paul Wight, he was a bench warmer center for the Shockers.
You learn something new everyday around here. The interesting thing is that during that time the then 7-foot 441 pound Show found out about the potential life threatening condition that was causing him to grow so fast.
In high school, Wight was a multi-sport athlete. Everyone wanted him to focus on football, he said, but he wanted basketball. Wichita State, without a football team, was a great place for him.
It was when he was going into his sophomore year, he said, that Wichita State doctors diagnosed him with Acromegaly.
“My first physical as an athlete, the doctor said, “‘You’ve got giantism,’” said Big Show, who is listed on the WWE website as 7-foot, 441 pounds. “I thought, ‘F.U., I do not.’ I was a small-town kid from South Carolina What is he talking about? I don’t have some kind of diseases.’’
He was told he needed surgery, but Wight said he’d wait till he was finished with college. Instead, he had it that summer — a tumor removed from his pituitary gland, he said. And then, a few weeks before the season started, he dislocated two bones in his wrist.
Eventually he gave up basketball and ended doing Karaoke shows in Chicago where Danny Bonaduce of all people introduced to……….Hulk Hogan.
The rest as they say is history.
H/T UPROXX