WWE Killed Paul Wight’s Deal With Wolfgang Puck To Sell ‘Big Show Burgers’

Big Show left WWE, and he had plenty of reasons to seek out a new company. WWE just wasn’t the right fit for him anymore, and that was obvious. They even killed a big business deal that he had in line.

While speaking to Talk Is Jericho, Paul Wight explained that WWE wanted to use his notoriety and do community work. They wanted him out of the wrestling ring, but he still believes that he has more gas in the tank.

Paul Wight also revealed how WWE killed a deal that he had with world-famous chef Wolfgang Puck to make “Big Show Burgers.” The deal was apparently pretty far along, but Vince McMahon’s company squashed it when they got involved.

“They want to use my notoriety to do community work and do overseas media.  They are taking my passion away from me. They were taking wrestling away from me. Then, to sit there on the ramp and get called a has been while I sit there and watch a match, you talk so much about legends and respect for legends and respect for Hall of Famers, but anytime Hall of Famers are around, they get run into the ground.” 

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“That’s one of those things where the machine is always moving forward. It’s about moving forward and any blood they can get out of whatever stone it is, they are going to get that last drop until there is nothing left for anyone. The talent doesn’t have anything left. The fans don’t have anything left for them.” 

“For me, that was the icing on the cake where I had to restart. I had to rebrand myself. There were a couple of business deals that I tried to do with WWE and use my own brand and it was incredible to me that after 20 years of building a brand because they own the intellectual property, I wanted to do a Big Show Burger. It would have been a half pound patty, no antibiotics, no hormones, anywhere in the U.S in 36 hours. You order online. It was humane and everything is done properly.  I went to Vince and said this is what I want to do. I had it set up. I had Wolfgang Puck and we were going to do a meatloaf together to promote it like an infomercial talking about Big Show Burgers.” 

“You would have thought that I was some guy that walked in off the street with the numbers they hit me with to use a brand that I helped build. I mean, we’re talking seven figures up front. 18 months later, another installment of seven figures.  37% of profit. They wanted me to cough up seven figures right off the bat and then seven months later, another seven figures. It killed the whole deal for me.” 

If it wasn’t for WWE’s business tactics, fans might be enjoying Big Show Burgers as we speak. Instead, Paul Wight watched WWE swoop in and sour that deal. We’ll have to see if Wolfgang Puck and Paul Wight can get together on a project in the future, but WWE still has a tight hold of the Big Show name, so they’ll have to call those burgers something else.

Thanks to Wrestling News for the quote