Paul Wight talks his many turns in wrestling.
Paul Wight, even before going to WWE in 1999, was the only wrestler in WCW to have ever turned heel to join the nWo, leave the group and fight for WCW as a babyface, and then go back to fighting for nWo Hollywood as a heel. Then, in WWE, he would shift moral alignments more than a dozen times.
Now, Wight is reflecting on his heel turns through the years and naming the ones he can remember.
"I’ve had more turns than NASCAR. I remember some of the key ones," Wight told Tempest during AEW All Out weekend in London. "Seems like every time we did a brand, I would tear my shirt off, and I’d be on the other brand. That seems like that turned into a rib. RAW to SmackDown or SmackDown to RAW and all that crap. I think one of the better turns was the turn on Cena. That was a good one. Sometimes, I would turn, and I remember being at the gorilla position, and my joke with Vince was, ‘Am I smiling or not?’ ‘Cause I didn’t know. We were working so much. ‘Am I smiling or not?’ He’d be like, ‘Smile! Big smile!’ ‘Okay, I’m a good guy.’ ‘No smile.’ ‘Okay, I’m a bad guy, got it.’ Sometimes, you just gotta go with the flow and be versatile. It kept me employed for a long time because I was able to be the heel that an upcoming babyface had to beat to move on to the next level. Then when I was a babyface, I was the one that could help an upcoming heel get some heat. For me, it kept me employed and kept me working, kept me in the game."
Wight also spoke about enjoying working as a heel more because it was easier to tell a better story from a psychological standpoint.
"I think it was easier to be a heel. Because it’s easier to tell that story from a psychological standpoint. People understand presence and size and all that. I think babyface was a little harder sometimes because if you’re selling and your opponent’s not aggressive enough, they kind go, ‘C’mon, you big pussy. Get up,’ you know what I mean? ‘No, I’m trying to sell. He’s just really doesn’t know what to do yet.’ But as a heel, I think it was easier because I had more control over the match on how things went, and the heel is very important in a match, especially in a giant match. The heel is very important for setting a lot of the tone and a lot of the pace and setting up the babyface. So I felt like I did a really good job of working with talent as a heel and setting them up, then either when they picked me up or did whatever they did, it meant something," said the former Big Show.
While he has not wrestled much in AEW, Wight has opened up in the past about wanting to work with Darby Allin as a heel. Read more here.
Paul Wight is hopeful that he may wrestle in AEW as Captain Insano. Learn more here.
