Paul Wight, better known as Big Show, has described the moment he believed he had seriously injured Rey Mysterio during a match in 2003, admitting the incident stayed with him long after the night ended and nearly led him to walk away from WWE altogether.Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Wight revisited a match against Mysterio at Backlash 2003, a bout that has remained memorable for a stretcher spot that went wrong.
The moment that went wrong
The sequence was designed to be dramatic rather than dangerous. Mysterio had been strapped to a stretcher, and Wight planned to swing it into the ring post before returning him to the ring.It was his idea.“I hate that spot. That gives me nightmares. That went so bad. Oh, that went terrible because it was my idea,” Wight said, explaining how the moment came together in the hours before the match.He had discussed adding the visual earlier in the day, recalling how he told Mysterio: “So what about swinging the pole?” to which the response came back: “Oh my God, that’ll look crazy.”The plan, as he described it, was controlled and repeatable—two swings into the post before pushing the stretcher back into the ring.It did not unfold that way.“I just killed Rey”As Wight lifted the stretcher and drove it toward the post, he lost his grip.“So, when I swung Rey into that pole, that thing popped right out of my hands, like it squeezed, like a hard-boiled egg or something. It just popped right out, then I saw Rey go, and I went, ‘Oh, I just killed Rey. Oh, Jesus!’” he said.Even as the match continued, the moment stayed with him.“So I’m freaking out on the inside, but we’re still doing our thing. He’s moving. ‘Oh god, they’re putting him in the ambulance. Oh my god.’”The reaction didn’t show on the surface. In front of the crowd, he stayed in character and didn’t slip out of it, even though inside he was tense and unsettled, thinking through what had just happened and what might come next.
Leaving the arena, heading to the hospital
Backstage, Wight went straight from the ring to the locker room and then out to his car, already thinking he would walk away from WWE if anything serious had happened to Mysterio.“I ran back to the locker room, grabbed my clothes, threw them in the car, and drove to the hospital in my rental car, because I’m thinking, ‘Man, if Rey’s seriously f*cked up, I’m done. I’m quitting. I’m done,’” he said.“Because I really cared about taking care of the other guys,” he added.
What actually happened
Despite how it looked in the moment, Mysterio was not seriously injured. Wight recalled arriving at the hospital expecting the worst, only to find Mysterio in a completely different state. “I get there, and Rey sits in the hospital bed with his hands behind his head, just chilling. ‘Hey, man, that was good, huh?’” he said. The reaction caught him off guard. “I’m like, ‘You’re okay?’ [He says] ‘Oh yeah, man, I’m fine.’ I’m like, ‘You know what I went through driving over here worrying?!’” He also pointed out that the kind of high-risk moments that worried him were often something Mysterio leaned into during matches. “Rey used to love in the house shows when he worked. He used to love to sit on the top turnbuckle and have me chop him in the chest, and he would bump from the top turnbuckle to the floor, and it looked like he got assassinated. There’s a loud smack, and then boom, there’s no more Rey. He just disappears and goes down.” Arn Anderson, who was working as the agent for the match, had his own reaction to those spots. “Arn said, ‘You know, when I see you do that to Rey, I want to call the police on you.’ It’s not me. It’s his idea. That’s not me doing that. That’s Rey. That’s getting me in trouble.”
