Shane Bigelow says there were plans to pair his father with Bruiser Brody, and that one of the people pushing Bam Bam Bigelow early on was a young Paul Heyman.
Speaking on Stu’s Wrestling Podcast, the son of the late Bam Bam Bigelow went through a collection of family photos, and one of them was taken by Heyman. Shane said Heyman put on a show to showcase his father at Studio 54 in New York, one of Heyman’s first big events from his days taking pictures and writing for magazines, years before ECW.
“They wanted to try to pair them up, and that would have been something else,” Shane said of his father and Brody, adding that the team probably would have happened in Japan. The plans never came together. Brody was killed in Puerto Rico in July 1988.
Japan came up throughout the interview. Shane said he has documented his father making the trip more than 80 times, and that working for Antonio Inoki and New Japan was his father’s favorite part of the business. He also said a fan sent him footage within the last year of Andre the Giant’s final match in Mexico, a six-man tag that included his father. “He almost choked my father out of the business in the beginning,” Shane said of Andre, referring to the heat his father took as a fast-rising rookie. Shane said seeing the two in Andre’s last match together was a full-circle moment.
Shane also talked about his father’s matches with Bret Hart, including the 1993 King of the Ring build. He said a promo in which his father set a photo of Hart on fire never aired at the time but has recently been surfacing online, and that he remembers his father practicing the flash paper trick at home in the living room. He said Hart was always great to him as a kid backstage and used to give him the single-pane sunglasses.
On the WrestleMania XI main event with Lawrence Taylor, Shane addressed the criticism the match has received online. He said Taylor has praised his father every time they have crossed paths since, calling him one of the best athletes Taylor had been around, and Shane pointed to the celebrity main events that run from Mr. T at the first WrestleMania through Mike Tyson and Dennis Rodman.
Shane shared several family stories during the interview. He said his father would stay up all night stuck on the same Super Mario 64 level, that the Anoa’i family once carried a pig into the Bigelows’ backyard and buried it in a pit before a show, then came back afterward to eat, and that Ray Apollo, the final Doink the Clown and the godfather of Shane’s brother, was his father’s longtime road partner, with Dink riding in the back of a cold Lincoln Continental. Shane named the ECW Living Dangerously 1999 match with Taz in Asbury Park as his favorite of his father’s matches, and said he watched it from the top row.
Shane said the one piece of ring gear the family still has is the flame jacket, which WWE borrowed for a display during WrestleMania 29 weekend. He said he was told talent normally did not keep gear like that, and that nobody had told his father not to take it.
Bam Bam Bigelow passed away in 2007 at 45. His family previously told his story in Dark Side of the Ring’s 2023 episode, Bam Bam Bigelow: The Beast from the East. Shane, now a teacher in New Jersey, said talking about his father keeps the legacy alive, and invited fans to reach out on Instagram at big_low78, where he reposts the photos and footage fans send him.
The full episode of Stu’s Wrestling Podcast, episode 224, is available now on the show’s YouTube channel and on Spotify.
