Paul Wight says no one saw his AEW debut coming, not even him.
Wight was the latest guest on Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette and talked about the passage of events that led to him leaving WWE and joining All Elite Wrestling. Joking that he’s “had more turns than NASCAR”, Wight said no one saw him leaving WWE but explained what finally led him to leaving the company he’d spent 20-plus years with.
“[People were like] ‘yeah, we saw that coming…’ I didn’t see it coming. This was a very quick decision that was made in a matter of 48 hours for me. For me, I think it was just creatively, frustration. I had gone back and forth with Paul Heyman, Bruce Prichard, and Vince [McMahon]. I had some medical issues a couple of years ago where I had problems with a hip real bad, and you know how things are there, where if you get out of the loop a little,” Wight explained, “it’s real hard for them to work you back into the loop, no matter how much talent you have, no matter how much you have to offer. It was frustrating for me because, yeah, I was making money and working once against Drew [McIntyre] after WrestleMania there and did a couple of things, like I came in to be partners with Kevin Owens and Samoa Joe, but then that went out and it’s like, ‘I need more than this.’
“I’ve never been—ever—a ‘sit on the bench’ guy, you know? I’m not going to take my money, sit at home, and be happy like a little princess,” Wight said, “that’s not my deal. I like to work for my money and earn it and I like performing. I went 18 years in WWE without missing a single Europe tour, spring or fall… I had two choices; I could go to work or I could not, and I love doing what I’m doing. That was the biggest thing that was a letdown for me, was not being able to get something going creatively. And I’ve known Vince for a long time and when he gets focused and gets blinders on, and doing what he’s doing it’s hard to be the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. If you’re not at TV and sitting there, nobody’s saying, ‘Hey, you know Paul Wight is still signed, he’s cleared and he can work.’ It got frustrating to the point of—I got frustrated trying to knock on the door.
“They were trying to use me for other things like [public] relations, which is stuff I like to do anyway,” Wight said, “but they were trying to do me a favor and put me in ‘Shady Pines’. I’m like, ‘Don’t put me in ‘Shady Pines’’ and I had another opportunity to do something else and I took it.”
Wight explained that no one was mad or upset, echoing his comments from the AEW Revolution post-show when he said there’s no dirt and Vince was happy for him. Wight said he’s not trying to turn around and bury WWE because that’s not who he is, and it’s just business.
Related: Paul Wight Says Vince McMahon Called And Wished Him Luck With All Elite Wrestling
Later in the episode, Wight explained the hip issues he had referenced earlier and said he continued to work hurt because he felt like he didn’t want to let anyone down.
“For me personally, when I was doing that angle with Braun [Strowman], I had—and I’ll send a picture of it later so you can put it up—I had holes in my ball joint. I worked a year-and-a-half like that, because I felt a duty to the guys in the locker room to keep the angles going. Even I did the thing with The Bar, I came in because I didn’t want to leave those guys hanging, but the metal device in my hip was broken. I had surgery the next day, but I still came to Minneapolis because I didn’t want to let Sheamus and Cesaro down and have people think Big Show disappeared.”
Wight explained that he had a titanium cap initially placed over his ball joint, so it was a resurfacing, not a replacement. After 21 days, he had what his doctor believed was a red bump caused by a residual stitch from the surgery, and referred to it as a “sensitive staph infection.” He went back in to have it corrected and said he took one flight before it blew back up again, so he ended up having to treat it with picc lines multiple times a day. Wight joked that he got too skinny during his time off and said he had another surgery, his third for the same issue, and it left him with a bilateral scar across his hip and he ultimately experienced neuropathy all of the time.
Noting that he “went through hell to get back” and speaking about his WrestleMania 35 match with Drew McIntyre, Wight also revealed he was previously told he would never main event WrestleMania again and would be relegated to putting over NXT stars.
“I got the speech five years ago that’s a pretty bad speech. I got pulled into a talent relations office and got told that I will never main event a WrestleMania again, I will never main event a pay-per-view again and I will only be used to get over NXT talent. That was said to my face. There’s your fucking inspiration, now go work hard. Vince didn’t say that to me, it wasn’t him,” Wight explained, “but nothing gets said to you without it, you know, you know where it comes from. So it hurt a little bit. It was like really, that’s where we’re at? Because they had to think about the future and I’m sitting here, like ‘OK…’
“And then I went and got in shape, the abs, all that shit. I made the joke to Vince that I used to chain smoke two fuckin’ packs of cigarettes a day, drank Jack Daniels like water and weighed 500 pounds, I was a fuckin’ World Champion. I got abs, now I can’t get a fuckin’ match now!”
Wight explained that he now understands where WWE was coming from on their end, and they were trying to give him a heads up to slow down, but he has no plans of slowing down and still has more he wants to do.
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